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Comment by DarmokJalad1701 | Hacker News Reader

They can launch payloads that bring in revenue while working on that problem. There is a good chance they put a bunch of Starlinks on the next flight.

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Exactly, they’ve reached feature parity with large expendable launch systems so they can piggyback paying customers with a high risk threshold (starlink) on flights they’d be doing anyways. Given their cadence this phase won’t last long, they’ll likely achieve at least one successful landing next flight.

They have also been eager to launch version 2.0 starlink satellites, but they don't fit in the falcon fairing. The first couple batches of those would be test articles as well, so I'd be surprised if the next starship launch doesn't a few on board.

They've been launching a version of the v2 sats that do fit in the Falcon 9 fairing and supposedly have all the functionality of the larger versions. The issue is that F9 can only carry ~24 of those at a time, which slows down the pace of expansion a lot.

The new 'Pez dispenser' on the starship is designed for the full sized V2 sats, which are about 2x the mass of the V2 minis.

Yes this would all be true, if it were true. It is likely to become true at IFT-4 but they are very demonstrably not quite where you say they are.

This was still a suborbital flight and they cannot do much of anything that is commercially practical on suborbital flights (like launch satellites, even if they raise their apogee). They appear to have not had good control authority in coast and reentry. They did not do a relight/deorbit burn test that is likely an obstacle to tackle before they can make orbital flights. I assume we'll get some confirmation about these things soon enough, but please, you can be optimistic without being hasty.

> This was still a suborbital flight and they cannot do much of anything that is commercially practical on suborbital flights

If they had flown a slightly steeper ascent and burned for a little longer (possibly a minute if not less), they would have ended in a stable orbit. Not doing that was intentional.

They do not need engine relight capability to reach orbit - plenty of orbital rockets exist that cannot relight their final stage.

Yes, but the point was that they can't launch starlinks or just about any commercially meaningful payload until they are reliably in orbit, and they can't reliably get into orbit until they demonstrate at least one relight, because they need to reliably re-enter the atmosphere for the reusability tests.

So they are at least one more launch away from launching starlinks.

> commercially meaningful payload until they are reliably in orbit,

Which then can do without a relight.

> and they can't reliably get into orbit until they demonstrate at least one re-light

And part of testing deorbit/landing capability includes testing that they can relight the engine.

So they could launch the next one with Starlinks (possibly test articles of those as well since no full-size V2 satellites have been laucnhed yet). Get it into orbit and include a deorbit burn/re-entry as part of the flight plan. If the latter part somehow still does not work out ... they still got Starlinks into orbit. And they now have more data to fix it on the next flight. They already have several vehicles lined up for static fires and flight tests.

They won’t put starship into orbit until they can test relight. They won’t risk, nor would they be allowed to risk putting it up there without a demonstrated ability to bring it back down in a controlled manner.

> They won’t put starship into orbit until they can test relight.

Why can't they test relight? Also, they are already filing paperwork for IFT-4:

https://apps.fcc.gov/oetcf/els/reports/STA_Print.cfm?mode=cu...

"Application includes a sub-orbital first stage booster and an orbital second stage"

They can test relight, but my point was that they wouldn't do it with Starship in orbit, because if it doesn't work, then they have no idea where it's coming back down. But maybe that's not as much of a problem as I had assumed given what's stated in the FCC application.

> They do not need engine relight capability to reach orbit - plenty of orbital rockets exist that cannot relight their final stage.

I don't think SpaceX is interested in having uncontrolled Starship re-entries. It's large enough that (even without a heat shield) debris will very likely make it down to surface.

> They do not need engine relight capability to reach orbit - plenty of orbital rockets exist that cannot relight their final stage

I’m sure they will have this thing plez dispensing cybetrucks all the way to mars in short order. But I’m also pretty sure that the FAA and whoever SpaceX buys their insurance from are gonna need pretty good assurance that they can control where that thing comes down. Expendable orbital stages are designed and engineered for safe end of life operations and uncontrolled reentery. Starship is not.

They might do one to test deployment, but it'd be a throwaway. Their relight test was skipped (not said why), so they still don't have confirmation they can control where Starship re-eneters. Until that happens, it's very unlikely they'll target actual orbital velocity. The Starlink satellites do have thrusters, but they're ion engines, so not nearly enough thrust to get that last bit into orbit before they'd re-enter.

99% chance that they lost attitude control hence couldn't point the business end towards wherever they wanted to. we know they can relight the engine on the booster and we know they can relight for landing burns.

no surprise if the next launch has a couple pre-production big starlink birds.

On the contrary, they absolutely had attitude control. Otherwise reentry would have seen the ship tumbling out of control and quickly breaking up. Instead, SpaceX was able to begin a controlled reentry in the upright position, indicating nominal orientation performance.

they were tumbling, just slowly. they started reentering side first. that it broke at 65km was unsurprising - shuttle experienced peak heating about there.

I'm no so sure, it at least looked like it was tumbling before and throughout re-entry. If they had attitude control, I think they would have at least stopped the visible rotation at some point before re-entry?

I'm not sure why the ship not immediatly breaking up, but eventually breaking up is proof that they at attitude control - especially against what the live feed showed - rotation.

  > If they had attitude control, I think they would have at least stopped the visible rotation at some point before re-entry?

Maybe they thought the flaps would help stabilize once hitting some atmosphere. In fact, that seemed to happen though not before quite a bit of plasma cooked the unshielded side.

My bet on the re-entry failure is that they have really poor attitude control. They definitely had some, but you can also see at different points that the plasma was shifting directions. At T+46, it was doing a spin as the first plasma started to show. At T+47, it was going down on the edge of the heat shields. At T+47:40 it appears to be going down engine first.

Moreover, I'm guessing the reason they skipped the mock re-entry burn was due to not being able to settle the propellant. Though it's really hard to tell if the turning of the Starship was to rotate which side was getting heating from the sun, or if it was spinning out of (or with less than desired) control.

Tim Todd noticed that the gas thrusters were icing over and then releasing the ice. So it's a reasonable guess that this was part of the issue, but that's leaning even more into speculation territory.

I just noticed that I typed "Tim Todd" instead of "Tim Dodd". It's past the edit period so I shall forever live with this shame. In my defense, I was on 5 hours of sleep so I could watch the launch.

You are a contemporary yet timeless sort of gentleman. Well done.

I'd speculate one of main tank bulkheads breached and gas kept leaking from payload door which overpowered RCS. Then, during reentry, the vehicle briefly managed to regain attitude by aerodynamic forces on the flaps, but became north-northwest aligned and broke up.

> know they can relight the engine on the booster and we know they can relight for landing burns.

Do we know that? Booster crashed into the water at full speed; landing reignition failed.

They did demonstrate this during their Starship-only bellyflop/landing tests a couple of years ago. This wasn't in space, though, obviously, and wasn't after an extended coast period. So... we know they can relight them under at least some circumstances, but whether or not they can under _these_ circumstances is maybe unclear.

As long as it is profitable when thrown away, the math works. Remember, until Falcon 9, they were always thrown away (except for Shuttle). Even if not profitable in the short term, the delta between cost and breakeven is an R&D expense.

Payload able to be delivered to orbit safely and insurable? Ship it. The more you do, the faster you get better.

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