this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2024
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I knew it was spinning, but not that much. Can't wait to hear the final report on what happened there.
Reaction control thrusters didn't work. Blame it all on the Everyday Astronaut.
Why would we blame that on him?
He suggested using hot gas thrusters on the ship which seem to have failed.
Yeah to me it looked like they didn't really have any sort of attitude control system (eg RCS thrusters) for while they were in space. As soon as the rocket stopped firing it was spinning, albeit very gently at first.
I'm more interested in knowing what happened with the booster after it's boost back burn, where some of the engines seemed to shut off on their own before the rest were cut. This issue is likely also responsible for the failed suicide burn. Also, why they didn't try the orbital relight of the Starship engines. If the orbital relight was skipped because of orientation issues, then shame on them for not remembering that you can stablise your craft in KSP with just a little bit of vectored rocket burn.
These are apparently still just flying grain silos, a long way away from the full finished product. However it does seem like they're at the cusp of having a viable satellite launch vehicle, even if the re-entry stuff is still bugged.
So apparently they can't use it to launch satellites into orbit until the reentry buggy stuff is solved.
If they can't bring it back into the atmosphere in a controlled manner, it's to big, and designed not to break up, to allow it to reenter anywhere from a failure.
No one wants raining starship parts over a populated area.
It won't matter if it's expendable, but they gotta be in control of reentry.
Yeah I still think that's within their grasp with only minor modifications. Obviously, not testing the engine relight is a big hurdle, but beyond that it's just about a little bit of attitude control and then they can de-orbit into the ocean as before.
Actually getting the craft to survive re-entry, and even land and be re-used is a much bigger task, but it wouldn't take too much to get Starship in the position where it can launch Starlink V2's.
I imagine the first truly orbital launch will have one or two v2 in it.
It's gonna be wild once they can start launching the satellites while testing the landing of both vehicles.
KSP doesn't simulate the fuel floating into a big blob in zero g. irl you need working RCS to create a little g force to push the fuel down to where the engine intakes are before you can try starting them.
That's a very good point and quite likely along the lines of what happened. Could be a challenging thing to fix, and may also have implications for orbital fuel transfers.
Official report: rocker went wee boom