Contrary to recent remarks by CEO Elon Musk, it looks like SpaceX wants to move forward at full speed in an effort to launch its next Starship ASAP.
The prototype, known as Starship Serial Number 10 (SN10), is the latest in a series of four ships that SpaceX has finally abandoned low-altitude development tests. Starship SN8 – the first functional prototype to reach its full height – debuts on December 8, 2020 and blows expectations out of the water with a failure a few seconds before the end of a flight test of more than six minutes. According to Musk, if a fuel tank had remained properly pressurized from start to finish, SN8 could quite possibly have landed the landing with the first attempt.
Two months later, after the better part of two weeks of licensing and static fire test delays, Starship SN9 tried to carry the torch forward, but suffered an unrelated failure slightly earlier than SN8s. One of the two Raptor engines could not ignite for high-risk rotational and landing combustion. It’s unclear why the disastrous Raptor could not catch fire, or why the engine that ignited shortly afterwards had a major failure, but propelling a rocket is extremely difficult – and Raptor is near – or at the end of the scale.
Although SpaceX obviously has not had a complicated problem with the propulsion of Starship for a few days, Musk has finally revealed his opinion that he, his engineers or a combination of both were ‘too stupid’ to do one of the obvious ways use to reduce the risk of engine failure during reversal and landing. That ‘obvious’ adaptation: let go of all three of Starship’s available landing engines, not just two.
In theory, with a fast enough response time, Starship can ignite all three birds of prey, perform a boot button from a belly-to-tailward orientation, and selectively turn off one of the engines based on the data of what is essentially an aviation. static fire. In the event that all three engines perform nominally, Starship will switch off the least useful engine (i.e. the Raptor with the least leverage) for a soft engine with two engines.
That said, the shipwreck has a clear solution. My biggest concern is achieving a good payload to a fast and fully reusable track, without which we will be forever confined to earth.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) 5 February 2021
Impressively, Musk said that SpaceX would implement the changes immediately and try the first three-engine reignition, all in Starship SN10’s launch debut. Already at the launch site when With the spacecraft SN9, SpaceX plans to launch SN10 as early as February 2021 at the end of the webcast of the test flight of SN9.
A few days before SN9’s fatal test flight, Musk also stated that Starship SN10 would perform a “cryo-proof” test and only then install its three Raptor engines. Instead of a clear change of plans, from 5 to 7 February, SpaceX installed Starship SN10’s Raptors – SN39, SN50 and an unknown third engine.
Local longtime Mary (also known as BocaChicaGal) received an official safety alert from SpaceX on Sunday that had already given an explosion of an explosive Starship test of some kind on Monday, February 8th. Historically, these warnings about pressure pressure were only spread when SpaceX was preparing for a Starship firefight. In other words, it is possible that the very first test of Starship SN10 could be a live wet dress rehearsal (WDR) with flammable liquid oxygen and methane propellant. If the WDR goes well, SpaceX can move directly into a one-, two-, or three-engine static fire.
Since the lengthy test period of SN9 has been introduced, Starship is of course still in the prototype stage and is far from being a mature system, which means it is always safer to expect delays than a timely action. To be clear, it is much more likely that SpaceX shall performs a known cryo-proof test with non-flammable liquid nitrogen – perhaps hoping to complete a cryo-proof and static fire in the same test window.
Either way, keep an eye out for updates and follow the excellent live coverage of NASASpaceflight in case SpaceX is really willing to statically launch Starship SN10 between 09:00 and 18:00 CST (UTC-6).