Given the results of test 10 (successful splash down of Starship), any ideas what test 11 will entail? Could we be looking at a chopstick catch of the Starship itself?

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potato3732842 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

They're probably gonna keep wasting ships until they've got the exact limits of their capability established.

I know it seems counterintuitive to everyone who grew up in the era of the space shuttle, but the ship is the cheap part, the giant booster is the expensive part.

The ship has a way longer cycle time so starship unit costs are going to dominate fleet construction cost despite being the cheaper unit so knowing exactly how hard you can run them is very valuable information it's worth gleaning by wasting some units early on.

	▲	senectus1 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		given one of the flight control wings was melting on the way back in I suspect you're right. I expect them to start catching the booster more often tho.

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NitpickLawyer 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They only have one more shipv2 right now. The next ones are shipv3. So my guess is that a ship catch doesn't make sense, since they're changing the architecture on the next ones. Would make sense to continue with limit finding (it's a disposable launch anyway, old gear) on things that carry over (i.e. thermal protection, ablative materials, crazy angles, etc)

One interesting point is if they actually go for orbit. It would take just a few more seconds to reach something like 200+km / 100km, a place where they could deploy some v3 Starlinks and gather data from the launch (i.e. vibrations, health, dinging on the door, etc). It would be a test where they get more data that's transferable to the new architecture, and relatively low risk of getting stuck in orbit. (low perigee would mean eventual re-entry anyway, hopefully over the ocean) The sats can probably raise themselves from there.

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Culonavirus 5 days ago | parent [-]

Like you said, flight 11 has the last V2 and since V3 is not compatible with the existing pad A (only the new pad B that is being finished atm), it would be a nice opportunity to try the ship catch because cratering the old pad A and/or its tower wouldn't be that much of a deal. The entire Pad A has to be replaced anyways.

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dmix 5 days ago | parent [-]

What did they change about the pad between 2 and 3?

	▲	Culonavirus 5 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The new pad (pad B and all pads going forward) is completely different than pad A. There's now a flame trench instead of just a steel plate, the square shaped pad structure has water cooled top, etc. but specifically "backwards incompatible" changes would I guess be the pad having two booster QDs instead of one, the tower being a bit higher, the chopsticks a lot shorter, ship QD is also higher (i think)?
	▲	sho_hn 5 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Not sure about the pad, but the V3 ship has the catch points on the fins for example.

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stetrain 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I wouldn't expect that on the next flight.

One option is they can run it again with the data gained from missing tiles etc. and see if there is an improvement.

They could also do a similar flight but with an actual orbital insertion and de-orbit if they are confident in the odds of success of the de-orbit burn.

Landing the ship at the launch site means overflying land and potentially populated areas, so I think they're going to want to demonstrate successful control, re-entry, and landing from orbit a few times before attempting that.

	▲	plqbfbv 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		That's not out of reach/plans according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starship_launches#Futu... But I agree with you, I'd rather have test flight 11 demonstrate at least another successful reentry with no issues (they had a non-fatal explosion on ship reentry in flight 10) before attempting to catch the booster AND landing the ship.

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baq 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The money is in Starlink, so maybe they'll want to make orbit having demonstrated successful relights and payload door operation?

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redox99 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Probably the same as 10, but with SHB catch.