News Changes to the SpaceX BFR rocket.

Looks like the tower was to blame on no catch: "During this phase, automated health checks of critical hardware on the launch and catch tower triggered an abort of the catch attempt."

Comms and weather mast atop the tower had a rough one, unclear if it could cause the abort though, been lots of crews on the chopsticks since the road opened.
1732080305320.png
(Source: NSF)

Boss says one more in the drink and they'll try a ship catch:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1859036912348262787

Wouldn't be surprised if they do one more sub-orbital flight honestly, especially since the next ship is the first of the new design (smaller and more leeward forward flaps, one ring longer, revised heatshield). In any case, turnaround will probably be longer this time.
 
I mean, those boxes are very popular to pack up any kind of thing, especially when moving house. Are we sure there's bananas in there?
 
Bernd Leitenberger had done some calculations on the mass properties of Starship, which suggest that it became much heavier during the test flights.

www.bernd-leitenberger.de

Moppel-Starship

Ich habe lange Zeit überlegt, ob ich den heutigen Blog veröffentlichen soll. Das liegt daran, dass das Ergebnis selbst für mich so unglaublich ist, dass ich es selbst nicht kaum glauben konnte. Abe…
www.bernd-leitenberger.de www.bernd-leitenberger.de
 
Urwumpe said:
Bernd Leitenberger had done some calculations on the mass properties of Starship, which suggest that it became much heavier during the test flights.

www.bernd-leitenberger.de

Moppel-Starship

Ich habe lange Zeit überlegt, ob ich den heutigen Blog veröffentlichen soll. Das liegt daran, dass das Ergebnis selbst für mich so unglaublich ist, dass ich es selbst nicht kaum glauben konnte. Abe…
www.bernd-leitenberger.de www.bernd-leitenberger.de
Click to expand...
If I got that right, he's saying that starship might be twice as heavy as Musk wants us to believe. That would definitely cut into the payload...
 
Not much of a secret that dry mass ended up much higher than they'd like, on the headshield alone Musk said on EDA's latest tour that the mass increased so much it's now similar to what they estimated the cryo cooling to be. The fact the next ship version is stretched and rearranged for 300t more propellant, with further stretches in the future, speaks to it. The booster is also too heavy, which is why they're so keen to get rid of the engine shielding, and will possibly delete one gridfin.

On that note, Ringwatchers are putting out a comprehensive set of articles, five total, detailing the observable changes on the Block 2 ships down to the welds:

Article 1 - Starship's Upgraded Flaps & Nosecone

Article 2 - Starship’s Extended & Optimized Tanks

Article 3 - Starship's Upgraded Aft Section

Article 4 - Starship’s Upgraded Payload Deployment System

Article 5 - Starship’s Upgraded Heat Shield

Good anorak stuff, an addon maker's dream, for one.
 
Last edited:
Honestly, the entire hot staging thing always seemed to me a sort of desperate move in order to overcome, or at least mitigate, the growing weight and dwindling payload problem
 
K_Jameson said:
Honestly, the entire hot staging thing always seemed to me a sort of desperate move in order to overcome, or at least mitigate, the growing weight and dwindling payload problem
Click to expand...

Yeah, there are good reasons why hot staging isn't that popular in spaceflight and avoided if possible. But "cold" staging is more complicated, especially with cryogenic fuels.
 
I don't think that, if you're able to catch a 20-story building falling from the sky, you should be afraid of "cold" staging 😅
 
The seventh flight test of Starship is preparing to launch. NET January 10, same local afternoon schedule as Flight 6, so daylight reentry.

Some surprises on this one, among other details:

  • Deploying 10 Starlink simulators (into a suborbital trajectory still)
  • Booster is reflying one engine from Flight 5's caught booster
  • Further experiments with the headshield, like multiple metallic tiles including one with active cooling
  • Ship will include "non-structural versions" of catch hardware to see if it doesn't melt
Of note that recently S35 (for Flight 9) was the first seen with catch hardware, so far a similar design to the booster pins. Lots of speculation going around, but it's possible they may just be fixed (non-retractable) if they can survive reentry unprotected (though much like hot staging, wonder what the impact on longevity is). Guessing S33's will just be welded on to the sides without being tied into the internal framing just to simplify the install, hence non-structural. Entirely possible S34 (Flight 8) gets a more thorough retrofit, but for now I'm putting my money on ship catch NET Flight 9.

Think there's a decent chance they fish the ship out of the water on this one. Flight 6 had assets nearby prepared to tow it to Australia, and did recover some hardware. If they made improvements towards it not blowing up on splashdown, they certainly intend to bring it ashore.

NASA will also have a Gulfstream observing reentry, which is already en-route.
 
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