Single-track’s space, rockets and astronauts thread

You can watch live from 11.30 on space.com’s YouTube

About 30 mins to launch – just moved back by 10 mins.

About 50 minutes according to NASA. I switched from Elon’s shillfest.

“Don’t miss out on this chance to double your bitcoin investment.”

Comes across like a deep fake scam!

Don’t think I lasted 30s. Came across as a scam that even he wasn’t buying into – thought he was meant to have at least some charisma?

30 minutes – let’s gooooooooo………

Live coverage finally !

Looking like it’s going to go !

The scam sites are annoying.

I’m watching in the NASA spaceflight site. Seems to be legit.

It looks AI or special effects doesn’t it?!

Really impressive. Loving the booster falling back to earth at 4000km/h. 😳

Rapid unscheduled disassembly of the main rocket

I think the booster set might have returned to earth slightly quicker than planned…

Live pictures from the craft are great !

I thought they were crashing the booster anyway?

The engine relight didn’t do much as there wasn’t much fuel left? Should have stopped at the Tesla charging point at the apogee and refilled prior to reentry 😉

They were soft crashing it, but it self disassembled before it could touch down.

It’s epic stuff.

I’m watching through the SpaceX website.

I’m assuming the current live feed if from Starship’s hold, and they have the cargo doors open, hence the changing light patterns ?

Anyone else hearing the ‘lift-music’ while it whips along at 26,000kph! 🤣

It’s coming back !!

Incredible pictures of re-entry

Wow that plasma, incredible stuff!

Data gone – no telemetry – could be interference

First time I’ve managed to catch it live!

Somehow it’s that much more exciting (and I’m hyped up enough as it is!)

My wife watching me in mild amusement/bemusement haha. It’s kinda like that time we were out somewhere and a Spitfire overflew the car… I screech to a halt and leap out to watch in wild excitement while my wife wonders what all the fuss is about.

May have self disassembled. Lost telemetry and video at same time

AMAZING STUFF!!

Saves the sweeping up.

I had a meeting so had to stop watching just after signal was lost with starship At about T +12.30  did it RUD?  Or was it just a blip in signal?

Stabilised video showing the true extent of the rotation… 😲

Did a quick hack job on this to stabilize the rotation! pic.twitter.com/MFEIsRrd31

— ophello (@ophello) March 15, 2024

Ift4, wow!

OMG !

Seeing that flap melt and start to disintegrate, but still somehow managing to work, was incredible. Re entry and land both stages under control was totally amazing to watch.

Indeed! How did it still work and how did the ship do a perfect flip,  landing burn and soft splash with ‘toast flap’?!

Scott Manley has done another excellent analysis, worth watching.

I still can’t believe starship seemed to reenter, descend, and then ‘land’ perfectly with such damage to a flap.

Does anyone know if spacex are recovering the starship (and booster)?  I’m sure they’ve got lots and lots of data to go through even without it but I’d love to see photos of it’s final condition.   In particular did the otherside flap suffer any similar plasma cutting damage?  If it didn’t, would that point to a construction or material failure rather than a design failure?

As usual I can’t wait to see IFT5 now, I wonder when that might be?  I’d guess as soon as they’ve got a ship ready and they’ve crunched IFT4 data enough to construct test aims for 5. Wonder how quickly they may move to test catching the booster?  Although surely they don’t need an orbital flight to test that. I guess we will know more fairly soon.

There’s probably multiple redundancy in the flap hinges maybe? So it looked like the trailing edge area took a lot of damage, but there was enough strength in the rest of the hinges/actuators to maintain enough control – more details will forthcoming.

Will they risk a tower capture landing next time!!?

How did it still work and how did the ship do a perfect flip

Well there’s 4 flaps and maybe the damaged one had enough surface area left to make a difference.  You would have thought they’d like to see the condition of the others but there again they’re probably covered in sensors so maybe no need.

Amazing flight …. Starship looked really stable the whole time.

Can’t wait the next one!!

Will they risk a tower capture landing next time!!?

Presumably that might depend on how accurate the landing was this time – presuming it had a landing location specified.  If it was mine I’d like to see it come down at least one more time first before I risked it taking out the tower that took a fair bit of time to construct!

They have been working on the chopsticks,  upgrading the actuators, I believe in preparation for booster catch.   They don’t need to do a long flight of the booster to catch test,  and the booster has had its own flight test series…   if I were Chief twit I’d try a catch test on a short booster test flight but spacex are more ambitious and seem to go in fairly big steps so who knows what they will do!  Can’t wait to see it.

Musk has posted there will be a catch attempt for flight 5 🤯

Rip Bill Anders.  90, and still flying!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cw99wj5e5q8o

I’m looking forward to a catch attempt,  I hope it works!  I’ve not seen a date for IFT5 yet but doubt it’ll be far off,  August perhaps?

Elsewhere this isn’t so good.  NASA confirms space debris in North Carolina was from SpaceX Crew Dragon reentry https://www.space.com/nasa-confirms-debris-spacex-crew-dragon

How often does this kind of thing happen?

I’m looking forward to the catch. Hopefully successful.

I wonder when space X will use the oil rig that they bought a while back? I’ve not heard anything about it for a while.