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Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#12976: Mar 4th 2024 at 7:58:04 PM

Both of tonight's launches were successful, setting a couple of new records for SpaceX: 20 hours between three launches, 1 hour and 51 minutes between two. The company also had four orbital missions being operated simultaneously: Transporter 10, Starlink 6-41, Crew-8, and of course Crew-7, which is docked to the ISS. The steamroller continues.

In addition to all the launches, SpaceX posted some beautiful images of Starship's latest wet-dress rehearsal. Here's one. Holy shit that is beautiful.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/gh12v1mbyaezjyn.jpeg


Meanwhile, the space community is up in arms over a 60 Minutes segment on the Artemis program, which has been shown in clips on Twitter. On the one hand, they discuss the lack of fiscal sustainability of the SLS rocket, and on the other they talk about Starship "blowing up", conveniently cutting off Jim Free's (director of human spaceflight at NASA) response. Ugh.

Now, I'm not one to champion SLS's affordability, and the point is entirely valid that any rocket built today that's not reusable has no future. But taking digs at SpaceX, which literally just launched three rockets in one day (one with four humans on board), is cheap as hell.


Speaking of Crew-8, it is scheduled to dock tomorrow morning at 08:00 UTC. I will not be awake for that, but it can be watched via NASA Live and will probably have a dedicated stream as well. Assuming all goes well and weather cooperates, Crew-7 is scheduled to undock on March 9.

Later this week, at 02:00 UTC on March 9, Japanese company Space One is debuting a new rocket, dubbed Kairos, which it is offering as a "quick response" launch vehicle for the country's military. As is common for this type of vehicle, it's a four-stage, solid-fuel rocket. It can carry 250 kg to LEO for an estimated price tag of $9 million, which isn't blowing minds at $36,000/kg. (By comparison, Rocket Lab's Electron costs around $24k/kg). I may or may not cover the launch, depending on whether they have an English translation; the official stream is here.

Serendipitously, Rocket Lab's next launch, dubbed "Owl Night Long", is coming up right afterward: at 14:00 UTC on March 9. As one might surmise from the title, it's the company's third mission for Synspective, deploying a trio of synthetic aperture radar satellites. I have to wonder how long it'll take Rocket Lab to run out of Punny Names for their missions.

Other things to look forward to this month include Starship's third test flight, Rocket Lab's second Electron mission from Wallops Island in Virginia, the Soyuz MS-25 crewed launch to the ISS, SpaceX's CRS-30 resupply mission, a rare Minotaur launch by Northrop Grumman, and the final Delta IV Heavy launch by ULA. Actually, there are a ton of missions NET March according to Next Spaceflight. It's unlikely all of them will fly, so we'll have to wait to see.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 4th 2024 at 11:01:40 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#12977: Mar 6th 2024 at 6:16:30 AM

[It's happening.gif]

SpaceX has scheduled a livestream for the third flight test of Starship for March 14, with the broadcast starting at 12:30 UTC (6:30 AM CST). That timing indicates liftoff at 13:00 UTC (7 AM CST). This does not mean that it will necessarily launch at that date and time, but it is the first official notice that we've gotten.

Edit: Unofficial poll — do we think it'll make it all the way through the flight profile this time? That means:

  • Liftoff, max-q, and staging
  • Boostback, reentry, and splashdown of the booster
  • Second stage ignition, full-duration burn, orbital insertion
  • Deorbit, reentry, and splashdown of the Starship

Edit: Details on the flight profile. If Starship makes it to orbit, it will test the payload door, propellant transfer, Raptor relight while in space, and controlled reentry. They're targeting the Indian Ocean for splashdown this time.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 6th 2024 at 1:23:28 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#12978: Mar 8th 2024 at 8:00:13 AM

Ars Technica: After Astra loses 99 percent of its value, founders take rocket firm private

From a SPAC valuation of $2.1 billion to a repurchase price of $12 million, Astra Space has fallen far from its peak, when it promised to launch cheap rockets daily. After its Rocket 3 failed five times, it went back to the drawing board, promising to build and launch a more reliable Rocket 4, but its stock price collapsed and it was rapidly running out of cash.

Co-founders Chris Kemp and Adam London have entered into an agreement to buy the company back and will take it private for a fraction of the value they extracted during its peak. It's a great deal for them, assuming they can still wrangle some profit out of the struggling business. Its small-launch services face sharp competition from Rocket Lab, Firefly, ABL Space, Stoke Space, and others, not to mention the 800-pound gorilla in the room: SpaceX's Transporter missions.


Additional news for the week can be found in the Ars Technica Rocket Report:

  • UK Government Pledges £10M in Funding to SaxaVord. The struggling spaceport in Scotland desperately needs a cash infusion to continue construction. German startup Rocket Factory Augsburg plans to launch its first RFA ONE from SaxaVord later this year.
  • Russia’s next-generation rocket is a decade old and still flying dummy payloads. The Angara A5 was announced in 1992 and has only flown three times. It will soon fly for the first time from Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia's far east, carrying another dummy payload. It's supposed to replace Proton, but is hampered by a lack of payloads: there's nothing for it to fly.
  • Texas greenlights negotiations with SpaceX for Boca Chica State Park land exchange. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission voted unanimously to approve a land swap with SpaceX in Boca Chica State Park. The deal would allow SpaceX to expand its Starbase facilities into parts of Boca Chica Beach, while returning 477 acres of wildlands to the state. Residents opposed the deal on the grounds that they would lose parts of the beach, but the commission says that public water access will increase.


Reminder that the maiden flight of Japanese company Space One's KAIROS rocket is expected at 02:01 UTC on March 9, or 11:01 JST. The launch attempt will be carried live by Japanese television.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 8th 2024 at 12:11:56 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
amitakartok Since: Feb, 2010 Relationship Status: Don't hug me; I'm scared
#12979: Mar 8th 2024 at 8:30:59 AM

Am hearing that Voyager 1's telemetry has become incoherent. It's still responding to commands, but the data it sends back to Earth is binary gibberish.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#12980: Mar 8th 2024 at 9:22:05 AM

Unless there's an update, the last time we heard about this officially was in December, 2023. NASA posted that Voyager 1's Flight Data System computer is transmitting gibberish, and that efforts to restart it have failed.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#12981: Mar 8th 2024 at 5:58:12 PM

KAIROS is about to launch: T-4 minutes as I type this. 40,000 people are watching the stream, so there's a lot of interest. It's good to see the enthusiasm for domestic launches, especially when they are commercial rather than government-operated.

I don't speak Japanese, but the pre-show involved dancing mascots. It's so delightfully clichéd.

Solid-fueled rockets should be a solved problem by now, but we've seen plenty of them fail due to manufacturing issues, among other things.

T-0 and no liftoff. Looks like an abort. Ah, the clock reset to T-15 minutes. New T-0 at 02:17 UTC.

And a second abort. They are scrubbing for the day.


Pending a new time for the KAIROS launch, next up are dual Starlink missions on Sunday, followed by an Electron on Tuesday and, potentially, Starship on Thursday.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 12th 2024 at 12:00:42 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#12982: Mar 9th 2024 at 5:59:49 AM

Way back when I discussed whether we could miss a binary neutron star close to the solar system. Doing a bit of math shows that we can indeed miss it, but only if it's extremely cold i.e 52000kelvin or lessnote  as otherwise the X-ray emissions would be visible to the Chandra satellite. That's very much at the bottom end of neutron star temperatures. And while the Pleiades have left a bunch of as-yet undiscovered neutron stars around the Solar System, they are all too young to be this cold so they are all a bit farther away.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#12983: Mar 11th 2024 at 6:58:54 AM

Watch the Crew-7 Dragon Endurance undock from the International Space Station today via NASA Live. It's scheduled for 15:20 UTC (11:20 AM EDT). I'll look for a dedicated stream and link that if available.

Returning home are commander Jasmin Moghbeli (NASA), pilot Andreas Mogensen (ESA), and mission specialists Satoshi Furukawa (JAXA) and Konstantin Borisov (Roscosmos), after handing off the station to the Crew-8 team.

They are scheduled to splash down Tuesday at 9:50 UTC.

Edit: Undocking was completed successfully. They're on the way home.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 11th 2024 at 12:17:42 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#12984: Mar 11th 2024 at 2:10:40 PM

The FY2025 NASA budget request by the Office of the President is out, and it's rough: significant year-over-year cuts from previous projections. NASA asked for $27.2 billion in FY24 while getting only $24.8, and was expected to increase that to $27.7 in FY25, but is now asking for a mere $25.4 billion due to the compromise agreement with House Republicans to continue funding the government.

This really is a case of a few toxic GOP members holding up scientific progress.

Several science missions are getting budget reductions, including various current and future space telescopes and observation satellites. Among those are the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, which has required increasing attention to management of its aging systems. Mars Sample Return continues to be in limbo as it awaits an internal architecture review, but its budget request was not even in the original ask.

The space stations (CLD) program is going to see cuts, meaning likely delays in replacing the International Space Station. The vehicle for deorbiting it got no money at all, so that's also in limbo.

SLS is largely unaffected (of course), but Artemis 5 is being postponed into 2030 because of funding cuts for Blue Origin's human lander.

ETA: Per this post, Starship HLS Demo (required prior to Artemis III) is pushed back to 2026 thanks to these budget cuts. The manifest expects HLS Demo and Artemis III to occur in that same year, which seems very ambitious.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 11th 2024 at 6:19:47 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#12985: Mar 12th 2024 at 5:29:56 AM

NASA and SpaceX's Crew-7 mission aboard Dragon Endurance splashed down safely off the coast of Florida this morning. I was not awake for the event, obviously, but you can rewatch it here.

Edit: Apparently it put on quite the show over the southeastern US, including a sonic boom.


Rocket Lab's "Owl Night Long" mission is up next, with liftoff scheduled for 14:13 UTC. It will carry another in a series of StriX synthetic aperture radar satellites for Synspective. Watch here.

Updates: New T-0 of 15:03 UTC. Liftoff successful.

Clean orbital insertion and kick stage separation.

Successful kick stage burn and payload deployment. Congratulations.


The debut launch of Space One's KAIROS rocket is on deck, with liftoff scheduled for 02:13 UTC tonight. It is carrying a prototype satellite for the Japanese intelligence agency. Watch here. The first attempt, last week, was aborted.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 12th 2024 at 11:59:02 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#12986: Mar 12th 2024 at 7:20:29 PM

Well, well. I just watched the KAIROS maiden launch and it appears to have failed. I say "appears", but the outcome is pretty obvious: it launched, flew for a few seconds, then disintegrated and crashed in the forest just next to the launch site. Fortunately it doesn't look like a major fire was started.

It caught me off guard because there was no voiceover or countdown on the stream. I looked up to see the rocket lift off, then it broke up. Hopefully they learn what went wrong and correct it.

Edit: Looks like a different news channel was live-streaming the launch — the one I was looking at must have been an uncommented stream. This clip was posted on X showing it from a much better angle.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 12th 2024 at 10:45:07 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#12987: Mar 13th 2024 at 1:29:20 PM

Before we talk about Starship — and believe me, there's a post coming up for that — I'd like to talk about white dwarf stars. Fraser Cain of the Universe Today site and podcast interviewed Dr. Simon Blouin of the University of Victoria about them, and I learned a couple of fascinating things.


First, astronomical observations have contradicted previous models of white dwarf cooling. It was believed that they lose heat linearly over time, going from blue to white to yellow to red and so on down the black-body spectrum in a predictable manner, but we've found a substantial deviation from these predictions in about six percent of white dwarfs. In a nutshell, they're taking longer than expected to cool down.

New modeling suggests that the phenomenon may be caused by convection in the interiors of these stars. Specifically, as the oxygen-carbon plasma slowly freezes (at millions of Kelvin), it precipitates neon-22 that is "dissolved" in it. That neon remains liquid and falls toward the core, since it is heavier. The solids float upwards and, as the pressure decreases, they melt and recirculate. As heavier material gradually moves downward via this process, it releases gravitational potential energy and warms the star.

The ratio of neon-22 in a white dwarf is highly correlated to its metallicity, which means that older stars should have less of it and therefore cool more rapidly. Collisions and mergers involving white dwarfs can add neon to them and thus slow their cooling rates. Additional observations of globular clusters, which contain populations of similarly-aged stars, should solidify this hypothesis.


Another topic raised in the interview is "pollution" of white dwarfs. Specifically, it is believed that they may accrete material from planets, asteroids, and comets in the solar system that they previously powered. When that happens, the material sinks beneath the surface, since it's heavier than the hydrogen/helium atmosphere. This process may take days or millions of years, and while it's occurring, we can see the spectra of those elements in observations.

Besides confirming that white dwarfs consume their planets, these observations can tell us the compositions of those bodies, to the point of knowing whether they had surface water. In other words, we're performing geology on dead planets as the remnants of their former suns eat them.

Dr. Blouin said that between 25 and 50 percent of white dwarfs show evidence of this sort of pollution in their spectra.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 18th 2024 at 9:01:46 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
amitakartok Since: Feb, 2010 Relationship Status: Don't hug me; I'm scared
#12988: Mar 13th 2024 at 3:17:56 PM

Which I presume means that small exoplanets below out current detection threshold are very common.

Demetrios Lucky Seven from Des Plaines, Illinois (unfortunately) Since: Oct, 2009 Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
Lucky Seven
#12989: Mar 13th 2024 at 5:57:05 PM

With new information like that, how long does it take for white dwarfs to turn into black ones?

Come on! Let's bless them all until we get fershnickered!
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#12990: Mar 13th 2024 at 6:30:06 PM

We're still talking billions to trillions of years for a white dwarf to cool to the temperature of the cosmic microwave background, depending on its initial mass. The main difference that this discovery makes is that it may affect how we use white dwarfs to measure the relative ages of stars in their vicinity, which is very important to understanding distances and patterns of galactic evolution.


Starship Integrated Flight Test 3

The FAA released the license for Starship IFT-3 today, so it's officially on. Liftoff is scheduled at 12:00 UTC tomorrow (7 AM CST). SpaceX dropped a cute little teaser video, and we have been told that evacuation notices were sent to local residents. Everything is ready, as long as the hardware and weather cooperate.

How to watch: SpaceX (X), NASA Spaceflight, Everyday Astronaut, plus probably tons more.

So, what are the goals for this one? Obviously, get to orbit, which they think they have a good chance of doing now that they've put in fixes to prevent fires in Starship's engine bay. It would also be good to see a successful boostback burn for the Super Heavy booster, with a landing burn in the Gulf of Mexico as a bonus.

If Starship reaches orbit, it will attempt a number of demonstrations:

  • Payload bay door opening and closing, for future Starlink missions
  • Propellant transfer between tanks in the vehicle. This is for a NASA Tipping Point contract award and will act as a proof of concept for the on-orbit refilling that will be fundamental to Starship's architecture in the future.
  • Ignition of a Raptor engine in space to help deorbit the vehicle
  • Upon said deorbit, we will see if its heat shield can handle reentry.
  • Belly-flop descent, under flap control, into the ocean

It's worth noting that this Starship won't be coming down near Hawaii like IFT-1 and IFT-2 would have. Instead, it will be targeting a suborbital trajectory that will cause it to splash down in the eastern Indian Ocean. Should the deorbit burn be successful, it will instead target near the coast of Madagascar (insert memes here).

Either way it'll deorbit, so we're safe against the possibility of an uncontrolled reentry. For a visualization of the reentry projection, see here.

As a reminder, neither vehicle will be recovered after this flight, even if it is completely successful. The equipment needed to safe and drag back hundreds of tons of steel from the ocean either doesn't exist or is too expensive. We're not expecting recovery attempts for Starship for some number of flights to come, likely not until after SpaceX has constructed a second launch tower at Starbase.

The launch window is scheduled so that it lifts off in daytime (for the best possible camera coverage) and deorbits at night (presumably so cameras can get the best possible images of reentry and the performance of the heat shield). Should it not lift off tomorrow, there are opportunities Friday and Saturday.

Sadly, I scheduled a doctor's appointment early tomorrow that will interfere with providing live updates. You'll have to settle for someone else posting them, or wait for me to get home.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 13th 2024 at 9:58:06 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#12991: Mar 14th 2024 at 5:49:45 AM

SpaceX has reset T-0 on Starship IFT-3 to 13:25 UTC. That means I get to watch it at home, yay! Propellant loading is underway. Live updates to follow.

  • T-2 minutes... propellant load is complete. It's getting close!
  • LIFTOFF!! It looks so good! And we're getting visuals from the rocket!
  • CLEAN SEPARATION AND BOOSTBACK STARTUP!
  • Booster entry phase is starting. The grid fins are steering it... Looks like the landing burn failed as it went out of control at the transonic regime.
  • Second stage engine shutoff has occurred. Looks clean! Nominal orbital insertion.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 14th 2024 at 9:34:12 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Risa123 Since: Dec, 2021 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
petersohn from Earth, Solar System (Long Runner) Relationship Status: Hiding
#12993: Mar 14th 2024 at 6:34:29 AM

Launch successful. Starship is on its way. Booster failed to light its engines during landing.

Edit: SECO successful.

Edited by petersohn on Mar 14th 2024 at 2:35:08 PM

Fjón þvæ ég af mér fjanda minna rán og reiði ríkra manna.
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#12994: Mar 14th 2024 at 6:37:47 AM

They're now in a coast phase during which additional flight objectives will be tested, as I mentioned earlier. Seeing a lot of venting from the engine section, hopefully that's nominal and not a sign of leaks or fire. Could be the liquid oxygen dump. Thirty minutes or so to reentry.

  • Edit: Payload bay opening sequence has started. And we're getting a few visuals of it as they acquire signal from the ground stations.

The elevator music they're playing over the stream has to be a deliberate troll.

  • Propellant transfer test is underway at T+25 minutes. Test completed at T+26 minutes.
  • At T+30 minutes, engine chill is underway ahead of the in-flight relight demonstration. Payload door is closing.

Worth noting is that the ship appears to be doing a "barbecue roll", a maneuver used by spacecraft to manage thermals, and may also help with propellant settling. SpaceX said that the HD video is coming via Starlink. Wonder if the roll is intermittently cutting off the signal.

Apparently we had it backwards. The relight will increase Starship's perigee instead of decreasing it, extending its trajectory. It doesn't matter, since it'll reenter either way.

  • T+42 minutes: We're hearing that the relight did not happen. They'll review the data on that, of course.
  • T+45 minutes: We're seeing what looks like flap actuation tests. Great views from the flap camera. Wonder if that'll survive reentry.
  • T+47 minutes: Reentry heating is now visible... wow, look at the flap actuation!
  • T+49 minutes: Starting to see significant deceleration. Telemetry is dropping out. Let's hope they have high-altitude aircraft views. This phase is the hardest to get data from. They may have had issues de-tumbling the ship.

If the ship survived reentry, we should get telemetry in a couple of minutes, just past T+1 hour.

They're calling it as a loss of the vehicle, since Starlink and TRDS telemetry fell out at the same time. We may or may not get high-altitude video at some point.

Anyway, this a great test. Looks like only a few more things to get right on both vehicles.

To recap:

  • The Super Heavy booster made it through boostback nominally (as far as we could see), but experienced dynamic instability as it passed through the transonic regime and was unable to successfully relight its engines for landing.
  • Starship made it to orbit and executed the planned payload door and propellant transfer tests. The engine relight test did not occur, and then it appeared to break up on reentry.

The launch site looks healthy and has already been reopened. That's a really good sign for the next flight.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 14th 2024 at 11:16:29 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
petersohn from Earth, Solar System (Long Runner) Relationship Status: Hiding
#12995: Mar 14th 2024 at 7:28:34 AM

It looks like the ship did not survive reentry. It took gorgeous pictures at the end though.

Fjón þvæ ég af mér fjanda minna rán og reiði ríkra manna.
Risa123 Since: Dec, 2021 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#12996: Mar 14th 2024 at 7:30:50 AM

[up] It was not even expected to survive.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#12997: Mar 14th 2024 at 7:37:13 AM

Orbital reentry was the point where they needed to collect the most data, since no Starship has ever attempted it. Hopefully they got enough telemetry to determine what happened and fix it for the next flight.

This launch was successful enough that they might attempt to deploy some Starlink satellites for Flight 4.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 14th 2024 at 10:37:33 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Troper1138 Since: Dec, 2010
#12998: Mar 14th 2024 at 7:38:50 AM

[up][up] Right, but it was hoped it would not survive by making it all the way to the surface in one piece and then crashing into the Indian Ocean at high speed. It seems like it more likely broke up at high altitude (maybe 65 km up).

Still, major progress from the 2nd test, which in turn had shown considerable progress over the 1st test. And some stunning video feeds!

Smeagol17 (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#12999: Mar 14th 2024 at 8:03:17 AM

By time till (catastrophic) failure, this was more than 6 times as successful as the previous test.

Edited by Smeagol17 on Mar 14th 2024 at 7:47:02 PM

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#13000: Mar 14th 2024 at 8:18:53 AM

Several people are surmising that Starship experienced a loss of attitude control on orbit, which is what gave us that long roll. If so, the flaps may have been unable to stabilize it as it hit the more dynamic parts of reentry. That would explain the failure at a relatively high altitude: burn-through on the non-shielded surface.

Again, hopefully there's enough telemetry for them to answer that question. I wonder if they put a "black box" on board that they might fish out of the ocean...

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

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