The upper stage flew for a long time after separation.
The launch was not a complete success, but close to it. What they really needed to do on this flight was to make sure they had engineering fixes for the ‘show stopper’ issues that could kill the project. For this flight, that was the deluge system, the hot staging, separation and booster turnaround. They never got a chance to test the thermal tiles, which would have made the flight a complete success even if the rocket blew up.
All of those things tested worked. The booster might have blown up due to stress on the tank dome from the staging, or perhaps from the G forces for the turnaround (remember, that was a skyscraper you saw flipping around like that). The rest of the issues are pretty straightforward engineering problems with known solutions.
As for Starship, SpaceX tweeted that it had its Flight Termination System activated. That would have happened for a number of reasons such as going off course, losing power, whatever. Or, FTS itself was buggy and detonated a perfectly good spaceship. But they should have received telemetry as to why FTS terminated the flight.
Looking at the video, it appears they were receiving telemetry fine until just a couple of seconds before the thing detonated. So they probably have data about what happened, but it will take a bit of time to go through it.
I’d disagree with this. Technically, the planned flight was suborbital. But suborbital normally carries a strong implication of being a far lower-energy launch than orbit. 1 kg of mass on a suborbital hop to 100 km needs about 1 MJ of energy. But that 1 kg in a 400 km orbit is around 35 MJ of energy. Just nowhere close to the same scale.
The Starship flight would have been much closer to the latter figure than the former. It was just a few tens of meters per second short (out of nearly 8 km/s) of the velocity needed to maintain a real orbit. For the purposes of deciding if Starship can make it to LEO, it’s good enough.
With respect to their stated goals, it was a complete success. They clearly wanted to make it to hot staging and gather data on that–that was a success. And the two major items from the mishap report–the pad destruction and the FTS inadequacy–were also solved. We can also, as outsiders, guess at a few other things they wanted to address, such as Raptor reliability and proving out the new electric thrust vector control system. These also appear to be successes. Actually making it to Hawaii was just a stretch goal and it shouldn’t be counted as a failure that they didn’t get there.
Apparently the target speed was around 27,000 KPH and the starship engines shut down at around 24,000 KPH. So the vehicle got pretty close to the planned shutdown.
Even if the flight had gone completely as planned it wouldn’t have really been in orbit, since it was intended to come down near Hawaii which would only be about, what, 3/4 of the way around the Earth?
I don’t think we can assume the public presenters (and the data displays) have the complete picture at all times. Mission Control probably knew immediately when the FTS was activated, but that might just show up to the presenters as “connection lost.” That’s how it’s worked in pretty much every other stream I’ve watch, SpaceX or otherwise (except when it was obviously catastrophic).
I just came back to post the Scott Manley video. It’s excellent.
It looks like Starship achieved its target altitude and almost hit its target speed. It definitely made it into space - the last telemetry showed an altitude of 148km.
They may still have some sloshing/ullage issues with the booster flip, and it’s possible that the hot staging damaged the thrusters, as there were a lot of erratic puffs and such before the thing detonated.
I hope they can get another launch much quicker than the last one. If it takes 6 months between tests, we’re not getting to the moon before 2030. There is still so much more tech that has to be built out and tested. For all we know, they’ll need 10 launches to figure out on orbit refueling.
You’re welcome to shade the definition of “reach orbit” all you like.
I do not, and the mission (even as planned) would not reach orbit. I will not credit “close enough” or “almost”.
The question in the title of the thread is answered. The most charitable answer is “almost”, which is still “no”.
It’s still a credible accomplishment for a second flight and definitely hit all the intended milestones. It just didn’t reach the threshold of the original question.
Wait–are you talking about what would have happened, or what did (I was responding to the former, since that’s the language you used)? What did happen was clearly short of orbital; it was probably close to 1 km/s short of orbital velocity. But the planned flight was a few tens of meters per second short, and the only reason for not going further was a conscious decision to reenter earlier.
I mean, the OP headline is from July 2022. It’s been answered “no” twice. Barring some miracle of lightspeed bureaucratic after-action happens from this flight, and SpaceX basically sends up the same vehicle design again, 2023 “no” is certain.
The question of the thread title is “will Starship reach orbit this year [2023]”.
I’m addressing this question. The answer to that question is plainly “no” given the unanswered questions and the lack of 2023 remaining to try an orbital shot.
I understand the intention of this shot was not orbit. If the test program could have proceeded perfectly without incidents or delays, the answer to the original question could have turned out “yes”. As it stands the answer is no.
Achieving orbit does not mean you have to orbit the Earth completely. Achieving orbit means hitting orbital speed and altitude. In other words, if you didn’t intervene the rocket would coast a full orbit. If you choose to bring it down early, it still ‘achieved orbit’ if it met those parameters.
Starship didn’t quite get there, but it came awfully close. Close enough that no one should doubt that it will eventually make it to orbit.
One thing maybe a bit concerning is that it looked like it was almost out of fuel when it blew up. It certainly had enough to make orbit, but this is a completely empty rocket. Will it be able to make orbit with 150 tons of payload?
They undoubtedly have more weight-trimming to do, but don’t forget that the last few bits of propellant have a massively outsized effect on delta V. Fully loaded, with a 150 t payload, the Starship weighs about 1470 t. Empty, it’s about 270 t. So, the first 10% of propellant gives less delta V than the last 2%. It’s even more extreme with a modestly reduced payload, say 100 t.
That’s a good point. But it needs enough fuel to make orbit, plus a deorbit burn, plus landing fuel. I don’t know if their fuel left display is only for the main tanks, or if it includes the header tank for deorbit/landing.
