SpaceX's Starship Literally Melted! But It Kept Flying To A Miraculous Landing!
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 มิ.ย. 2024
- SpaceX's IFT4 Was expected to push the flight envelope out further, joining the dots between the orbital speeds and the flip and burn landings which had been demonstrated a few years ago.
There were a few changes to this flight profile, and in particular, intentionally discarding the hot staging ring appears to have freed up enough margin to make a soft landing of the booster possible.
But the real story of this flight was watching as the heat of atmospheric entry burned through at least one of the control flaps, but the spacecraft kept flying, remained in control and proceeded to a soft touchdown in the Indian ocean. The hardware was on show, but the software was performing the real miracles today.
Follow me on Twitter for more updates:
/ djsnm
I have a discord server where I regularly turn up:
/ discord
If you really like what I do you can support me directly through Patreon
/ scottmanley - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Lost an engine on the way up and compensated for it.
Lost a different Booster engine on the way down and compensated for it
Lost half a flap and compensated for it.
AWESOME ENGINEERING
more likely lost parts of all 4 flaps....
yeah, if the design and flaw was symetrical, I bet the two rear flaps or even the 4 flaps had the same issue and still all survive.
a daily reminder of how much technology advanced. this level of automatic compensation would have been just a dream a few decades ago.
Maybe the forward flaps, given the camera angles we had at least and one of the forward cameras presumably dying since it wasn't shown after sparks@@anone3842
The fact that they keep having hardware failures literally every single launch should be a point of concern, not of admiration.
"it is time"
"Was i a good flap?"
"Yes, you were the best flap"
"Not yet though, I still have a job to do."
_Landing burn and splashdown..._
"Ok... _Now_ I can go..."
I've never had such an emotional response to a flap
It was the bestest flap I've ever seen. I can tell people that I welled up over a flap. It was flapping glorious.
I would put that half charred thing in the middle of my yard to watch it everyday lol.
@@mincwell42 Good old flap . . .
"We lost half a control surface!"
"No. We have half a control surface remaining."
Hold my beer.........
The control surface was twice as big as it needed to be...
Software: ''We need to make the belly flop maneuver''
Half burned flap: ''it's not possible''
Software: ''No, it's necessary''
@@lkrnpk Seriously though, that Software Adapted impressively even with the state it's control surfaces were in.
Not to mention the engineering of the flap itself to keep working even while half od it is red hot and melting away.
Meanwhile Boeing seems to have thrusters failing and helium leaking left-right-and-Center on a much smaller Capsule that is frankly sounding more and more like a Deathtrap
What a raw fucking line
This is where the material properties of stainless steel really shine. If Starship was made of carbon fiber or aluminum it would have been game over as soon as the plasma got through the hinge.
I guess thats why its a good idea to POINT YOUR HEATSHIELD AT THE PLASMA
*Aluminium* - however... 😜
And what properties are that?
@gregorybolin4672 higher melting temp and stainless steel stays really strong at very very high temps. Aluminum gets weak very fast
@@Bradley_UA If this was done, then we would not have been able to witness the birth of SuperFlap.
Presenter: "It seems that we may not make it all the way down to the landing today"
The flap: "I didn't hear no f*ckin bell"
Dana White: C'mon, Flapper. You know you can do it.
It seems that we may not make it
All the way to landing today…
The flap: Hold my beer.
Yeah, even inorganic parts pledged unconditional support "until death do us part"
"The Flap" by unanimous decision !!!!! 😂
And I took that personally
I suspect flight 5's main goal will be "flaps that don't start melting".
They will change the hinge mechanism for sure
@@NotAnAlchemist_Ed Going to need some rework. I wonder since 32 is not fully fitted if they start modifying it.
The Melting Flaps sounds like Elon Musk's secret underground South African punk rock band
I think it was the gap between the flap and the body that was the problem, the plasma and heat somehow turned around and get under the gap and out the other side, they need to redesign that part to better redirect the flow.
During the Everyday Astronaut interview, they plan to move the actuators higher up, so they only get exposed to air flow when they extend out.
Remember they already got two more prototypes on the way.
In this case, the data really is the payload. It's a good thing to find out how they fail, even if it's not your final design.
NASA never got this experience, and that led directly to Colombia.
Always remember that SpaceX is two prototypes ahead of what they show you.
"Gave proof through the night, that our flap was still there"
*huge cheer*
The rocket was indeed glaring red, parts of it were bursting, and I believe I could even see some stars spangling during reentry. It was not over the 'land of the free', however, but over the middle of the Pacific. But otherwise pretty accurate and poetic 😄👍
Nobody wants to lose a flap in the night.
@@martinborm2871 Wasn't it the middle of the Indian ocean?
@@fatitankeris6327 You are right. Between Australia and Madagascar. That would be the Indian Ocean. 👍
This is the most Kerbal-landing in Spaceflight history.
On earth, maybe - I'd still place the upside-down JAXA moon lander first!
@@Zer0ji Or the Genesis solar wind collection reentry where the accelerometer to deploy the chutes was installed upside-down.
_"Oh my God! F5!"_
[You cannot quicksave when you are about to crash.]
😂
"tis nothing but a flesh wound"
- Starship Serial Number 29
"I can do this all day" - Captain Starship
"t'is but a scratch!"
"Your bloody fin's off!"
*looks down at the framework of burnt slag too hot to finish welding itself into place "No it isn't."
"That'll buff right out"
@@michaelmeier3445Flesh wound? Your arm’s off!😂
The flap really just said "It's not possible, it's necessary"
Haha best comment! 😂
What a determination all we admire!
Nice
"The flap has no heat shield"
"If something is important enough, you do it. Even if the odds are not in your favor."
Left flap:"what do we say to the lord of death?"
Right flap:"not today"
At this point, I treat launch updates like spoilers because I want them only from you.
Thanks for what you do and how you do it.
I just ate toilet paper in a vid 💪🔥🥃💯💥🆘🔥🔥
"We all hoped"
Nope 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Space X = X twitter = Tesla pump and dump = ENRON MUSK 😆😆😆😆
A Starship flight is not finished until Scott has analyzed it.
Scotty? 🤣🤣😂😂
The Supreme handle for the smooth sounding Scottie!
Frrr
I do love Scott as well.
I'm giving all she has got captain.
Seeing half that flap still work was absolutely insane.
I would love to see what compensation the other control surfaces/ thrusters were doing. It was incredible
Reminds me of the end of the second Terminator movie "I need a vacation"
Insane, and what a success!! Look at the problems Boeing had today. I'll take Starship any day. If they would let me, I'd go up tomorrow.
It bodes well for the safety of the vehicle. It can tank unexpected damage and still manage to correct itself and make a landing.
yes, agree, the only thing I can't stand are always this staged cheering "workers"! But Elon likes this shows. Otherwise a amazing performance!
Man this was a better emotional rollercoaster than most modern movies. This needs to get an oscar for the best documentary. I also wonder what will SpaceX do about the flaps on the prototypes that are already built. Like will they add an ablative rubber layer or sweatcooling or will they just wait for block 2 to fix them? Also you can actually see the hotstage ring at 6:05 roughly above the gridfin actuator. Anyway may the flap be with you and keep up the flype for flight 5🤣.
Emotional rollercoaster is righ!. I laughed, I cried, I yawned, I scratched my nuts, I lost interest, I left the room, I forgot all about it. Oh and re ablative rubbers. I think I have a box of those in my bedside table.draw.
Were u there ? Have u seen any special effects lately at the cinema?
The award for best flap
I think the fact that it worked so well even after one of the flaps was ripped to shreds is a very good sign. It's durable.
I wouldn't say durable, that would imply it didn't break at all. It's resilient, adaptable
To shreds you say? How are the wife and kids?
@@cmac3530Robust might be the word we want. Nearly the same meaning as resilient but with a stronger connotation of “being able to function even when some constituent parts fail”
I think our expectations are lowering with each flight. I am glad we have higher standards for things like nuclear reactors.
@@pyotrberia9741there is a reason they are testing this
Please someone recover this flap and put it in the Air and Space museum. It definitely earned it.
NO Put it in the Boardroom of BOEING. They need a constant reminder.
@ImNotPotus oh hell no they'll just slap in on something else.
James Cameron is probably getting investors together as we speak.
All I could think of during that melting was the shuttle Columbia, and what the crew could not see going on outside... I thought it was done for, but the tougher material made it survive.
Having video is also crazy... It all seems "fake" by how far technology has come to be able to see this in such detail.
@@volvo09same, if the Shuttle was a butterfly, Starship is a Vulture
whoever wrote that landing software needs a bonus. All 4 flaps were probably failing like that and the software compensated in real time and made the soft landing possible.
Starship's adaptive software: I'm the AI now
totally! man i wanted to see the other flaps after that
That would be Lars Blackmore, check him out
I wonder if its its machine learnt AI. like they created a simulated starship ran the software through lots of simulations, to adapt to different controlled environments. so the engineer would of just built very good teaching software, not the software itself.
@@busterdafydd3096 No. AI is not needed for that and would introduce unnecessary non-determinism into their algorithm.
Basically what I'm saying is that AI's tend to do very weird unexpected things sometimes and you do no want that for a time/safety critical operation.
Scott is head & shoulders the best flight analyst out there.
His commentary was spot on perfect. It was like watching the Superbowl of Space.
"head & sholders"..😅..was that a Rickyism?😅😅
18:40 nice! This is how you do software. Take notes, Boeing!
I definitely do not want Boeing to take notes from SpaceX.
The only note they're taking is your name.
@@thebrowns5337 What for? A surprise job interview!?
@@andresabourin2423SpaceX has yet to install software in their systems that deliberately plows their rockets into the ground...
That final 10 minutes were the best movie I've seen the past 5 years.
The tension, the excitement, the realism, the effects!
Rest in peace, little fin/flap/thingy, you made us all cheer in tears!
Wouldn't it be cool if we could nominate the little flap thingy for an Oscar? lol Truthfully the last thing I've watched from Hollyweird was either The Hobbit or Star Wars Ep 7, whichever was more recent. I literally wanted to get myself a drink when I saw an ad showing an image of Will Smith posing as "Popeye" for that upcoming movie. /groan
It really was. I would say "oh that's so unrealistic that would never land with at least on flap half burnt up"
@@athelwulfgalland Lifetime achievement special Oscar
Leading "Star" role
Amazing what a competent team with inspiring leadership can accomplish
That was the most real life Kerbal thing I have ever seen .
Any landing Jeb can walk (or swim) away from is a good landing!
@@bartolomeothesatyr Most of the spacecraft landed safely!
SpaceX basically is a real life Kerbel Space Program. And it is glorious.
@@KelnxIndeed
You mean the most Kerbal real life thing you have ever seen.
All I heard when it was landing was
"I'M STILL STANDING" and it was glorious
Makes me think back to Columbia when it broke up. Now we see the dynamics they were dealing with. 😢 RIP
Who ever designed the flap hinge deserves a raise. Flying trough hell and still working as designed.
Guarantee it wasn't "chief-engineer" Elon Musk.
@@wyattnoise He must be busy running at least 5 different companies or something
"as deshinged"
XDDDDDDDDDDD
@@nixie2462 ha ha ha ha ha lol
I have to say that at 13:22 the glowing gas near the flap is not plasma going through the hinge, it's a convergence of shock waves heating up even more.
Control fin: "She'll fly apart!"
Flight software: "Fly her apart then!"
Star Trek VI (1991).
Capt Sulu. --- USS Excelsior---- Undiscovered Country...
Love this comment
Ah, a man of culture! 🖖😀
Sulu at his best
It was indeed mind blowing.
Even Thunderf00t clapped when he saw the flap was responding after that ordeal, and that says a lot.
Indeed, but let's be fair to Thunder. His problem is not with starship. It is with Elon Musk.
And right now, he is right as is the CSS, starship is still a tin can with a rocket. A big one granted. But it is still a long way off from completion, and more importantly, SpaceX needs to keep bringing in enough money to keep building these.
@@Espeon1134
I'm gonna have to kind of say bullshit on tht though. Every launch vehicle is a 'tin can with a rocket' getting the thing into orbit is frankly VERY far along into making it a viable vehicle. The payload stuff is to be honest a smaller issue and a largely solved problem in many ways. The reusable launch vehicle itself is a much bigger and more important engineering challange for the system and the progress being made on that is obvious. So IMO he's very much underselling the degree to which the system is approaching operational status.
@@Tk3997 Up till test 3, there was no testing the payload, or how it would do anything.
Nor has anything even been added to the rocket to prove its supposed lifting abilities.
Added to this problem, there is nothing on the inside, or even designed as to what the inside will look like if you want to use crew.
Where as all other rockets, what was part of the design and testing phase.
So saying it is a tin can with a rocket is far more correct, than saying that about artemis, or the shuttle. Because those already have the design and set ups to carry what they were intended to carry first launch.
Who would watch thunderfoot anyway. The guy is jaded and far too prone to injecting emotional biases into this arguments, not to mention his cringy crusade against feminism.
@@logitech4873 That's exactly why I said "**even** Thunderf00t clapped" and also why I said "that says a lot".
Cuz he's the biggest naysayer on the planet and even he was impressed.
It was fantastic! No movie scene was as harrowing and realistic as what we saw, ladies and gentlemen!
The glass that protects the camera became blocked by ash, and was then cleaned in small sections with the collision of small debris, only to leave us in anguish, peering at what was possible to see through the little holes. And at the end of the video, the dirty, cracked and shaking glass allows us to see the flap almost falling off its hinges, but still doing its job.
It culminates with pieces of dirty glass falling loose, revealing in the light of the flames, for just a few frames, the charred and deformed body, before the darkness of the night covers everything.
This camera deserves an Oscar!
If this was a movie scene there would be a thousand aviation experts pointing out how utterly ridiculous it is. The same thousands of 'experts' that poo poo'd those two Ohio bicycle mechanics.
Elon: “The best part is no part.”
Flap: “Ok boss, understood!”
Elon: “No, wait!”
And the flap patiently waited and kept operating
turns out, the best part was indeed no part
Plasma: No part can defeat me!
Flap: I am no part!
Yeah.. flap said: I am a Spirit
Elon: Holy crap! It's a talking flap!
I like big rockets, I cannot lie.
So you told us you like *BIG* rockets sir?
Kinda, SUS.
Did you find this early in a playlist or something
What about B. F .R .?
How did you comment 15 minutes before the video is out
Autobutts
16:54 Holy heat wave! It’s literally STILL GLOWING in that shot. Amazing it stayed together despite the fact that stainless steel basically is not much stronger than actual plastic at that temperature.
That re-entry was flapping awesome
I gave that thing about 10 seconds after I saw the flap begin to melt before total destruction. Never have I been so happy to be proven so utterly wrong in my life.
I was sweating like crazy...
Same here. That thing’s an absolute UNIT.
Nobody watching the live-streams thought it would survive. One of the craziest things I've ever witnessed.
I thought we were going to see a Columbia-style loss of control and breakup.
Holy crap was I wrong.
@@vicroc4 That’s probably the happiest I’ve ever been to be so utterly wrong! I’ve no doubts now that in a couple more flights they’ll have this completely figured out and solved.
The little flap that could.
"Nemo fin"
I suspect the other flaps could and did as well!
@@jakequinn2968suspect?
😂😂😂
Ha.
First and only thing I’ve ever said on twitter, and I’m already seeing it pop up in the wild elsewhere.
Note, this only took them 4 tries... That may not sound impressive, but if you have ever built anything complex, it's impressive.
it takes me 4 tries to plug in a usb cable
@@alquinn8576 Especially if it is one of those stinking micro USBs lol.
Especially considering this is a history first, right? I don't think any upper stage landed and survived from orbital velocity, even at a much smaller size.
Unless you're on the Starship team, I don't think anyone has ever built something this complex, have they?
@@iamtherealzombie It's probably up there in the top 10 hardest things to build in history.
almost cried looking at the melted flap still doing it's job until the splashdown. That's the graphic definition of resilience
Bot
That Starship landing was like something out of a Sci-Fi action movie, "Cap'n she's breaking apart, she canna take no more!"
Nah, it more like when Obi wan Kenobi say "not to worry, we are still flying half a ship"
And "another happy landing".
Space captain sparrow pulling into port
Star Wars: "Don't worry, she'll hold together. (You hear me ship, HOLD TOGETHER!)"
Firefly: "I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar." (and the buffer panel didn't come off this time!)
Star Trek: "She'll fly apart, Captain!" "FLY HER APART THEN!"
The flap: "I am a leaf on the wind, watch how i soar." Edit: Firehawk beat me to it while i wrote this 😅
"Push the button, Scotty!"
that flap still operated whole way to landing, INSANE.
Molten flap: I DIDN'T HEAR NO BELL!
Literally too angry too die. LET'S GOOO!
Amazing. There are three hinge joints on the forward flap, looks like one was completely melted away. Pretty amazing...
As Scott pointed out, at least one of the rear flaps was probably disintegrating too.
It overheard Elon saying 'No part is the best part' and said 'Bet.' @@svenp6504
The fact that the thumbnail looks like Nakatomi Plaza exploding just makes it all cooler.
Hell of a job, Scott! So much insight, including how the Control software adapted to the deteriorating conditions.
I agree, thank you Scott for all you do for the rest of us with simpler minds.
Can we all just mention the booster landing for a minute? I absolutely thought it had lost control on descent again then, at the last minute, the clouds parted and it hovered over the water for a good few seconds before finally pitching over and splashing down. Man, I wish they had a drone out there in the Gulf to capture that shot externally!
The drone can fly out the side box 😊
To be fair, boosters aren't limited by human mortality in G-forces, those boys can eat some G's.
@@goldenhate6649and, in this case, eating as many Gs as possible limits gravity losses
It's highly likely there was an observation platform of some description out there for both vehicles.
My first programmable HP25 calculator came with a moon lander program. I got so good at suicide burns that I could launch it back up. I still have that calculator but a diode in the battery charging circuit is dead. I should fix it and sell it on ebay.
Dang, already? Scott, you must have scrambled to get this out.
Workin as hard as S29’s camera
@@t65bx25 and the flap...
Nah, he's just not that much of a production perfectionist as the other space YTubers 🪱 😅
Good enough. Let's gooo!
@@ElMoonLite He makes up for it by sheer brilliance and knowledgeability.
Scott always covers unusual important flights same day. This qualifies.
Wow SpaceX always innovating, came up with ablative flaps.
Hats off to the team!!!
A few days ago, I was talking to a young, recently graduated aerospace engineer who was looking for a job.
I asked if he had tried applying to SpaceX. He replied, "No, I heard it's a tough place to work." I told him, "You should form your own opinion by trying it yourself. If you don't like it, you can always leave, but at least you'd have experience from a respected company on your resume. Have you considered that maybe the people who complained about SpaceX were fired because they did everything except work?" His response was silence... and he's still unemployed.
Hard life? Hard work? Ask your grandparents how tough life was; their stories might help you see things differently....
Again congratulations to the smart and hardworking team! If it was easy, NASA would have accomplished it, despite the astronomical amount of taxpayer money they received.
Drinking the spiked coolaid? Another lemmings. Grow up.
That flap is now a symbol of resilience.
It would of been great to recover the flap and display it, museum etc.
It belongs in a museum!
Resilient Flap is my new favourite band name.
Not claiming the name, open to all, just if you use it, make the band resilient in an AI world.
Honestly this was the most kerbal thing ever. Some parts barely survived or maybe even fallen off but the ship still landed somehow.
Reminder that all 4 flaps were most likely in a similar state.
SpaceX engineers: "Looks like we're starting to burn a little"
Me: "A little ? You're being way too optimistic there buddy, that thing is toast. Goodbye starship, you were impressive but it looks like this is the end for you"
Me (a few minutes later): "I stand corrected, you magnificent beast"
'Predictable!' They knew it all.
Nah, it'll be fine.
Well, being big helps - takes a while to burn up if something is not optimal.
All of us to S29: I owe you an apology. I wasn't really familiar with your game.
Seriously though it was a major failure in structural integrity.
Whoever engineered those flaps did a seriously good job.
Whoever engineered the control mechanism did a seriously good job. Whoever engineered the heat management solution still needs to stare angrily at the screen. SpaceX's ultimate goal is for these to have a turnaround time of "precisely as long as it takes to refuel it", and I doubt replacing all the flaps fits in that time envelope.
@@andersjjensen Agreed. Have they said whether any of this had anything to do with the tiles they deliberately left off? It might be down to the slight gaps created when the flaps adjust, which would be a whole other headache for them to contend with (hard to make go away).
If MY flaps ever caught on fire, I'd sit in a bucket of water
This is just absolutely amazing. Thank you Scott!
I couldn't believe what I was watching. It was like a literal movie. Even the camera cleared up just in time to see the wing, half melted, still actuate for a successful flip maneuver
just put some people inside and this would become one of those epic scenes that we only see on fast & furious type of movies.
Funny thing is, in a movie we would dismiss it as "completely unreal, they could do better". Life is stranger than fiction sometimes...
@@angellestat2730 And put several cameras inside to record the chaos and panic as they're falling over after landing, and the airbags deploying to save everyone.
@@sysbofh I've come to the rationalization for movies like that. They wouldn't make a movie if it wasn't extraordinary
@@t_c5266 Then it wouldn't be a movie, but a documentary.
I think we should refer to S29 as the Black Knight Starship. That thing had at least half a forward flap burnt off and really just said: Tis but a scratch!
All right. We'll call it a draw.
That we know of. The other flaps also could've been wrecked
That would make the conspiracy theorists go wild lol. Hidden payload, you say?
@snakevenom4954
Fairly certain the ship was burning all the way down.
Literally the ship was missing tons of tiles, had melted and was on fire and decided to not care about it
@@snakevenom4954 I have no doubt that all 4 were the same; burnt and mangled to almost unusable.
great breakdown
speaking of breakdown: this felt like one of those robot wars episodes where more and more seems to be broken and all they're left with is improvising, figuring out how to use the wheels they are left with, maybe going backwards is faster at that point, using secondary weapons and so on. man, what a relief that it all worked out.
losing an engine, a booster engine and eventually half a flap and still managing to pull this off just shows how much room they are working with, so many failsafes, so much additional safety features most of us wouldnt even understand. congratz to the to date greatest private spacefaring company!
This is awesome! thanks for the recap because I couldn't be there for the live launch.
As soon as I saw the flap melting I started yelling at the tv, saying “Hold on, you can do it!” And when it got to 30m, me and my roommate were cheering and rooting for a successful flip maneuver. That was the most intense moment and will forever be remembered as the Little Flap that Could.
Glad you cheered it on. Probably wouldn't have made it if you hadn't.
You should be first to crew it then.
I think we all got something, like, WTF? History is written for sure.
@@Bluelagoonstudios how is this a historical event?
Watching this live online with thousands of people and everyone losing their mind on chat was an incredible experience.
That re-entry footage is legendary. Remembered for generations.
As something the US has been able to accomplish since the late 1960s (that is bringing back people, ahem, alive) but has now become a point of pride of some when they do not even accomplish that? Remember, this thing is supposed to be a people mover, and no one hypothetically on board survived that reentry. And isn't it supposed to be reusable? Why are we now going to have to pay for a 5th one for them to destroy?
@@LackofFaithifywho is we? Spacex isn't taxpayer funded bra
@@LackofFaithify Ye who have no faith in the engineering process. Time will hopefully prove you wrong. Just like it did with everyone who said the Falcon 9 would never work.
@@LackofFaithify its a private company dude... this is not NASA, you can go to the Starliner 4 years behind and still manages to have issues... for that we do pay!
@LackofFaithify every single space program has had "failed" tests, either crewed or uncrewed. I'd rather they do their due diligence and stress test these platforms in all possible regimes before unnecessarily crewing it. I think the space shuttle program had really hammered this point home. Two crewed launches that resulted in loss of life is unacceptable, let alone one. Why rush it? NASA's budget has been cut year after year, to the point of working with and supporting various third party providers. If you have a better suggestion that doesn't involve the refunding of a government space program, I'd be happy to hear it. Do you suggest we roll the Saturn V back out of the museums? Trying to launch the payload to orbit promised by Starship with any non reusable spacecraft is prohibitively expensive, and we damn well aren't bringing the Space Shuttle back. Besides, spacex has already proven they can recover their crafts with astounding reliability. I really don't see a better option.
The re-entry is way too impressive, every streamer I was watching had the same reaction😮😨😱🤣
Outstanding tweetage on the day Scott and outstanding commentary. Kudos! Subscribing!
onboard camera: " You're bleeding!"
Starship: "I ain't got time to bleed!"
Man that footage has to be the most useful piece of video from this whole event, they can literally see the failure happening live rather than relying on telemetry or external observation to guess at what happened. Now they know exactly when and how things started coming apart and where the design needs improving.
"Well, here's your problem!"
And there were potentially other cameras! Hopefully SpaceX will release their content later...
and not having to guess what's happening from an animation........
@@etbadaboum i think those show too much propritary information and could potentially fall under ITAR
@@linecraftman3907 Yeah they didn't after the previous launch. There's a limit to what they can show but still we need to appreciate what we got.
This is the 3rd time I've watched the reentry, and once again I am forced to pick my jaw up off of the floor.
What a video and commentary Mr Manley! Enjoyed every moment, thank you.
That re-entry footage is incredible 😮
Seeing it live is one of the most incredible experiences in my life.
Yes, plenty of spacecraft have reentered the atmosphere.
Yes, I have seen videos out of the space shuttle windows of reentry.
But watching live footage from a prototype, takeoff to splash down is mind blowing.
I don't mind if starship doesn't succeed in its main mission, going to Mars or the moon, but it certainly gets lots of people fired up.
Space Exploration Go!!!
@mkevilempire No no. We're paying Elon billions to land on the moon. I DO mind and it DOES matter.
@@imtired1696the moon 🌙, sure, that seems reasonable. The Mars thing? Completely insane in my opinion. In no universe do people establish a viable colony there, it’s just not feasible at all, ever. Loved this amazing footage however.
@hair2050 Crazy footage. 😅
That flap deserves a medal
At the end of the SpaceX livestream the hosts lit marshmallows with the Starship torch lighter. As it burned they continued talking then blew it out and ended the stream. It was pure class, what an incredible video and incredible technological achievement!
Ngl i kinda want that Starship lighter
Same @@foxyplays6546
@@foxyplays6546it is sold on SpaceX's website for $175
@@foxyplays6546 I've got one, it's awesome
Spacex be like
Starship with a half molten flap and still nailing the landing
Full live reentry coverage and seeing that flap melting in real time followed by it actually actuating and touching down smoothly was the coolest thing I have seen in my entire life, no exaggeration.
THE SEA BROKE BEFORE THE FLAP
these must be Made by Chuck
STARSHIP 29 STANDS!!
Machine spirit
I lost it when the flip and burn happened.
A starship loosing tiles left and right, with a burnt off flap, returning from "orbit" pulled off something we haven't seen since SN15.
Well done SpaceX teams: excitement guaranteed, excitement delivered.
I wouldn't exactly call that well done.... They had luck, lots of it...the thing already started losing stuff during the ascent..... Nothing what I have seen looks remotely rapid reusable and or confidence inspiring.....
Didn't just burn up a good chunk of the flap, but the flap kept moving in what seemed to be expected motions. I figured at best it would have been stuck (at worst just completely disintegrated, taking SS with it).
@@justacomment1657 If it lands, it works. That's confidence.
Agreed, I haven’t been that excited in a while, jumping up and down. What a surprise finish!
Losing*
Wow, what a great job you did recreating the excitement without even giving away the ending. I'm pretty unplugged from space news recently so I genuinely didn't know what would happen, and you maintained that suspense.
a great review of flight !!! much appreciated !!
Whoever designed the software needs a raise. As a software engineer I can’t imagine how you’d program it to still maintain attitude even with compromised flaps. I’m curious how many flaps were still operational during the flop.
Designing a software for spacecraft involves a lot of adaptive design... actually its similar to designing a software for many clients. Standardization is easy, adaptivity is the real deal. I have incorporated both in many programs that I have made just to minimize future expansion or last minute minor tweaks
It reminds me of the World War II B-17 bombers coming back from missions missing huge chunks of wings and tails.
If we had seen the flap do crazy maneuvering, I’d agree. It looks like a good, old PID doing it’s work
I think they were all operational just not all in one piece. Adaptive algorithms is a challenging subject for sure, based on what happened today there is no doubt SpaceX has the best in the industry working for them.
One hell of a PID and one hell of a factor of safety for the surviving hinge and actuator mechanism.
I guess the thing treated the loss of force from the flap as a constant perturbation and acted accordingly to realign to its setpoint. Of course, that's assuming it has enough available control range on the rest to compensate.
SpaceX: "We've lost something..."
SN29: "Not to worry, we're still flying with half a flap."
"So, you're _not_ declaring an emergency? 😒"
People who like the prequels are 70% more likely to be in the musk cult
@@DoggARithmHave you considered that people can still be invested in the advancement of spaceflight while not being a fervent admirer of Elon Musk? You don’t have to be in some kind of cult to be excited about the Starship tests.
@@DoggARithm Has any other company done anything like SpaceX?
Post links so I can check them out
Thanks for the fabulous play-by-play with great explanations. Your enthusasm is contagious!
Amazing commentary, thank you! Would have loved to hear it live.
And the rocket’s red glare
Heat tiles bursting in air
Gave proof through the night
That the flap was still there!
Note: Read the comment above with the voice of Richard Brautigan.
Oh say that the Starship lands
Safely in the sea
She sat on the bed,
And scratched her head.
Her name was Nelly
And her flaps were quite smelly
(Your turn)
I have to give you kudos; having worked on the STS program and functioned as an PIO for payloads on STS 2&5, Launch, your explanations of flight dynamics are near perfect.
I never had to do it in real-time. Your articulation and precise language coupled with enthusiasm offer genuine insights, better bringing the audience along to appreciate what they are seeing.
I couldn’t let this moment pass without sharing my appreciation of a job well done- awesome!
Bravo to all!🎉❤
I couldn’t agree more as a blind quote viewer quoteI find useful audio description very lacking on social media and Scott certainly has the gift
Cheers
No one can explain starship engineering like a Scot can!
Can't argue with that.
I stopped watching official streams and I just wait for scot ;)
I have to agree. But you put it better than I ever could. Scott-You have the best, most erudite commentary of all, and your delivery is very professional.
Great review w lots of observations.
That's amazing. This sort of on the fly adaptability to unforeseen issues to still allow a successful mission is so descriptive of how SpaceX is different.
Why Ill feel confident riding on starship.
"Dad the wings are burning off!".
"Is half the wing still there?"
"Yes Dad.".
"Oh, We're good.".
That’s gold you win🥇
"Dad why aren't we slowing down
Dad:💀
I'm sure you'll feel the same on a jet with half wing burned off.. You'd feel confident getting on it again. You wouldnt be in Absolute terror and vow never to get on it again
@@kenfryer2090 maybe. But if half the wing burns off a jet, and it still lands successfully.... Maybe not...
@@kenfryer2090I'd never be on an experimental jet which was made explicitly just to test exactly the systems that they have tested. And if their test prototype survived /this/, I'd be pretty confident getting onto a production model a few tests down the line, where the wings have stopped melting. Because I know, that *if* something goes wrong and it _does_ melt, the thing will still be able to survive.
Better than to test with "failure is not an option" like the space shuttle, and then have two crews croak later due to failure modes that have been normalized.
Normalizing failures can still happen with SpaceX, mind you. But given their track record with Falcons I'm pretty confident - they have a better success rate on *landing* than pretty much everyone else has on *launch*.
They need to recover this thing and put it in a museum as is. Don't try to restore it, I want to see that destroyed flap on it someday.
And speaking of the destroyed flap, it is both amazing and horrifying to see a massive chunk literally being burned away, and it seems that the flap seems to slightly wiggle on one middle hinge. All that structural support absolutely gone and yet the flap stayed on the ship. What a legend.
It’s at the bottom of the ocean now. You might be able to see it in a submersible though.
@@georgehenan853 If the fuel tanks are intact it will float easily.
they said they were going to open the valves to let seawater in to intentionally sink it
@@jm56585Who want's to go diving!
Can't let outsiders get their hands on it and steal our techs again, better gone for good.
A truly stunning experiment
WOW, this is the most insane launch i ever witnessed! Congrats to SpaceX and the team, this was an unforgettable spectacle!
Also Congratulations on getting on Trending Scott! (on Trending #6 as of writing this)
The fact they landed both booster and starship is incredible. Didn't feel very confident with the one engine out at launch usually not a good sign but was like it didn't even matter. Watching that flap melt live like that was nothing short of Incredible. Hats off to the whole SpaceX team so cool seeing them all loose their minds as stuff happens lol they deserve it!
The spacex team have been ordered to cheer at anything but their handlers or it's instant sacking by their dictator in chief
Watered.
You need to remember that one out of 33 engines is just 3%.
([this is wrong and only left here for context]: For 100% throttle you only need to overdrive every single of the other 32 engines by 0.09%)
its incredible, and should be a call to go back to the drawing board.
@@Veriflon88pretty sure you would need to add about 3 percent to every single one of the other engines to account for the loss of 1 whole engine. Not 0.09.
People watching:Oh no,the heat tiles are detaching,its gonna explode
Starship:Hold my flaps
... more like ... "Hold my molten metal flaps".. lol
more like "hold my tiles, I don't need them right now"
I think you mean "Hold my hot staging disc", since it actually let the booster hold it for it :P
In the last minute or so of flight (time kind of stopped being consistent for me), when the video dropped out, I though, "Oh no!", but then the telemetry was still going and the video came back! It was so amazing! As a fellow physics appreciator, the fact they can even get images at all through all of that plasma is INSANE! I know why, but still, it just goes to show, if you get the best minds in the world to work for you, you can achieve anything!
Just friggin AMAZING! Watched it live then 2 more times at least. Scott had the best analysis and best questions ( where did the light come from).
"What you watching?"
Oh just a skyscraper filled with explosives ascending into space at supersonic speeds.
And then nearly half of it coming back from orbit at mach 24 with parts of it melting down through the descent while it survives like the most metal thing i've ever seen
This is the hardest I've cheered for a robot since Wall-E.
Or Johnny-5
@@fredbloggs5902 or R2-D2
I cheered a lot harder for this robot than for the robot in that dumb "LOL fat prole" movie.
are you not cheering when you watch ukraine footage?
@@davidanalyst671 Leave the wars out of this one just for today man
That was totally awesome!
Great job Space X!
Drone photography really made space rocket films more dramatic.
Watching it live (via NSF) it was absolutely amazing watching the blowtorch of re-entry cutting through the fin hinge like that. I was sure it was game over at that point, that it somehow survived through that and still had (just about) enough control for a soft vertical splash down completely shocked me.
that lil control fin is the hero of this whole launch :)
@@Mak10z I think all 4 fins were in the same shape. They were all getting blasted through the crack and I think it probably burnt every one similarly. I am just amazed that the rest of the hinge and the actuator arm was enough to move it later as needed. I would love to see data on the actuator power usage as as a function of time. I have no doubt those actuators were maxed out towards the end of the flight.
Fr tho I was absolutely certain we were gonna get a full starship disintegration POV when it started to burn through
@@ericpaul4575 Less wind resistance means less power for moving the flap.
The software is the hero. It has to compensate for the lift surfaces difference between all four damaged flaps...
And them there is the Starlink dishes ...
What a feat...
@@pascalabessolo5350 but with broken hinges the actuator needed to force the flap into position. In some of the last shots of the bunt flap you can see it mostly just going full deflection, one side to the other, as the actuator had to apply full force to get any deflection.
The durability of steel over aluminum. If you watch closely at the end at the relight, you can see the edge of the flap, and almost all of its tiles are stripped off. Its astounding that flap was still intact, let alone attached, let alone functional. Just incredible.
Afik it's all 304 form core to skin.
And to think Peter Beck took a dig at SpaceX for building a stainless steel rocket instead of using carbon fiber (like their in-development Neutron)
@@stevenpugsley2542steel is heavy and changes it's characteristics drastically under heat. It's a very bad design choice. The trick here is not to let the metal heat up at all. That's the job of the heat shield which was being tested and failed spectacularly
@@kenfryer2090 And yet it landed.
@@stevenpugsley2542 Rightly so. Starship is over weight and will never deliver the payload originally claimed. And as a consequence of being too heavy, its engines are being pushed till their "busting their bolts" (lovely phrase from Beck). The other thing is going for a reusable second stage just adds complexity, risk and cost. It balloons the overall mass of the entire vehicle. Something else Peter Beck pointed out is that only a third of your launch costs are the vehicle itself. So designing a vehicle that be turned around quickly is vital to your economics. Starship may require a rethink regarding its thermal protection before it can fly reliably. SpaceX will have spent $10 billion by the end of this year on Starship development. We can clearly see it has a couple more years of development. And all that money has to be amortised.
O M G. thanks scott. Your enthusiasm matched mine. never ever ever expected to see what i just saw and i'm very glad it was 'with you'
That flight was truly amazing. And this analysis was crucial for my understanding of just how much.
Tim for the live feed.
Scott for the post launch analysis.
This is the way
Literally every time 👌👌👌😂
Tim's histrionics is are annoying. I'd rather watch the official feed than listen to his fanboying.
@@agitatorjr The official feed was only on X.
I watch some Tim in the runup, but come launch morning I’m an NSF guy.
Falcon 1 succeeded on its fourth flight. Starship belly flop hops took 4 flights to succeed. And now starship has took four flights to succeed. I guess 4 is their lucky number…
🚀🚀
so test flight number 8 for full catch and reusability figured out ?
"The Rule of Fours",.....
What does number 4 mean in Chinese?
Conversely, the number 4 is considered highly unlucky in Chinese culture, and it is often associated with death and misfortune. Here's why: Pronunciation: In Mandarin, the number 4 is pronounced as “si,” which sounds similar to the word for death, “死” (si).Sep 21, 2023
Musk has conquered death!
SN11 DEFINITELY didn’t succeed and it was the fourth flight lol
Without a doubt, Scott is the greatest flight analyst available.
GwiloViou is a bot. Copied comment, sus profile pic, sus channel.
What a show, thanks for the added info scott, you are awesome
The flap engineers need a raise
Musk, probably: "Why do you need safety gear? Why can't you just be more like the flap?"
Legend says the Flap still maintains Ship's attitude to this day.
It's still working on the ocean floor.
Thanks for the video Scotty. Your passion is wonderful. And without this, I may have missed this event’s occurrence, lol.
Thank you for that 'Blow By Blow' narration. Vastly superior to any news reporting!