SpaceX’s Starship rocket system reached several milestones in its second test flight before the rocket booster and spacecraft exploded over the Gulf of Mexico.
SpaceX’s Starship rocket system reached several milestones in its second test flight before the rocket booster and spacecraft exploded over the Gulf of Mexico.
Looked to me like the hot staging plus flip maneuver sent the 1st stage into a slow spin it couldn’t recover from using the ullage gas thrusters.
A user in another thread pointed out that during relight, not all engines lit, and the ones that did started going back out.
Scott Manley suggested the hot-stage combined with the fast flip maneuver may have caused fuel to slosh away from the intakes in the tank, leading to ingestion of gas bubbles in the fuel lines. Those would have damaged or destroyed engines as they worked their way into the turbo pumps, leading to the progressive engine-outs seen on the stream before the eventual catastrophic failure of the booster.
I’m guessing they wanted to show the FTS works really good now and terminates at the first sign of something wrong. Last time it was doing those flips for quite a while.
Maybe. I would think the best FTS is the one not used ¯_(ツ)_/¯
If i had a nickel for every time this happened to me in KBS…