No reason to flap! Two more incredible first-ever achievements for SpaceX’s Starship
Living through any Starship test flight is a rollercoaster. But this one - the fourth fully-integrated test flight - was something else! Did someone say “Excitement guaranteed!”?!?!
Credit: SpaceX
Credit: SpaceX
Starship took to the skies without any problems at 7.50am local time. Any launch is a spectacular sight, but the world’s biggest rocket is genuinely awesome. SpaceX’s coverage is unparalleled and, yet again, they didn’t disappoint. The pre-launch drone live footage set the scene in the best possible way.
One of the Super Heavy booster’s 33 Raptor engines failed to ignite, but this barely mattered. Lift-off and the ascent went smoothly. Hot-staging and stage separation again worked flawlessly. Ship 29’s engines propelled it further towards space.
Booster 11 really needed a successful landing burn and soft splash-down into the Gulf of Mexico to demonstrate what we all knew was possible - and this happened as smoothly as a baby’s bottom. This was an incredible first-ever achievement for Starship and one that absolutely had to happen sooner rather than later. Anything after this would be a bonus as the test flight was an undoubted success at this early point.
External pictures were lost for the middle part of the flight, but they were re-acquired just in time for re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere. This is where it had gone spectacularly wrong for Flight 3 back in March. Ship 29 had since been fitted with roll control thrusters and they did the job with a good trajectory being maintained throughout.
One of the Super Heavy booster’s 33 Raptor engines failed, but it didn’t matter Credit: SpaceX
Stage separation Credit: SpaceX
But the problem of withstanding the phenomenal heat of re-entry was still a massive hurdle to overcome. As in the previous test flight, we were treated with amazing views of Starship battling against the plasma field. Ship 29 successfully made it past the peak heating point, only to then encounter increased pressures as the atmosphere got thicker. The heat shields and seals of the flaps were being tested as never before, as Ship 29 went further than Ship 28 had reached before being lost. Again, the live pictures were awesome.
Credit: SpaceX
At 57 minutes into the flight, still 56km above the surface of the planet, the live feed showed one of the forward flaps starting to suffer damage as the intense heat burnt through it - just as the callout was heard: “External temperatures are starting to come down”. Debris started flying off and landing on the camera lens, gradually obscuring our phenomenal view of what was happening. Everyone was surely expecting the worst at these moments, as the seconds and bits of spacecraft flew by.
At 49km, the camera lens cracked, but live pictures still kept coming and, unbelievably, Ship 29 continued its descent, more or less as one big piece. As the flight was close to exactly one hour in duration, the picture was suddenly lost and everyone feared the end had finally come - but, no, a few seconds later we were back up again watching the drama unfold.
The speed drastically started to slow as the altitude lowered and another callout confirmed that the point of maximum aerodynamic pressure had safely passed. The live view cut out again, this time for longer than a few seconds, but it came back as if the hardware had been manufactured by a company called “Never Give Up”. More importantly, as the minutes went by, SpaceX were continuing to collect that all-important data necessary for continual improvement.
Usually, when something goes obviously wrong with a rocket, a dramatic end is imminent. But not on this occasion. Kate Tice, Senior Quality Engineering Manager - one of the commentators - excitedly announced: “Hoping that the Ship can hang on. It’s probably, potentially, hanging on by a couple of bolts and threads! But it’s still going - and that’s excellent news.”
The debris-covered, cracked camera lens then suddenly cleared a bit - to loud cheers from the SpaceX employees gathered at Hawthorne to watch - as Kate added: “This is a nail-biter!” Seconds later, you could make out that the damaged flap was somehow still working.
The heroic flap, moments before the heat got too much. Credit: SpaceX
Unbelievably, Ship 29 then performed the flip manoeuvre and initiated the landing burn to bring it down onto the water as planned. Whereas it would have been great to see this happen as a glorious, unobstructed picture, it didn’t matter at all! Starship had made it all the way back down to Earth after just over 1 hour and 6 minutes of flight time.
Dan Hout, commentating from Starbase, summed it up saying: “Wow! It was a little bit of use your imagination as we were going down, with what we could actually see…but we did get confirmation that the landing burn took place. Starship made it through re-entry! It did its first-ever landing burn! What a day! We lifted off just about an hour ago. It feels like a lifetime!”
A massive congratulations to the SpaceX team.
And Elon Musk has just announced that the next test flight will include an attempt to catch the booster! What a ride!!!
Written by Iain Scott, with assistance from Victoria de las Heras & Niki Whewell, 6th June 2024
Update: SpaceX have now uploaded a short “highlights” video of Flight 4 to YouTube - and here it is: