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Comment by world2vec | Hacker News Reader

Seeing the Starship's flap visibly burning in the reentry heat and still survive well enough to move around and get to a splashdown was just incredible. Amazing progress in just four test flights.

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That flap is already a legend, kept at it even mangled by hot plasma, crazy accelerations and pressures, spitting molten steel at the camera. What a role model, the little flap that could.

Someone on the Everyday Astronaut live stream named it "Flap Norris".

I wonder what the odds are that some deep sea salvage group is moving to collect that this very instant (or being contracted for such). If Starship lives up to even a fraction of its potential, that [not so] little guy is going to have some serious historicity.

What makes you think it sank? If the hull is intact it might be floating. Given the flap damage, it's probably leaking though.

It looked like the booster exploded when it submerged after soft splashdown. There was some fire and the stream cut off. Maybe that's what happened to the ship too.

IIRC the intent was to sink it using explosives (Flight Termination System) in case it stays afloat after landing.

I think they had a tug go out to drag it to deeper water and make sure it sunk - there was some ship (ocean) commentry I saw in a couple of places showing the tracking data.

They had a plane flying in the area shortly after landing, probably to drop some marker for a group to come around and recover the black box. I think they've stopped bothering with preserving the test articles though, in the process of test driven development, they're going to have so many "historic" test articles, that it's kind of pointless.

I'd be really surprised if they didn't have a GPS in the ship.

Which should mean they know where it "landed".

They still would've been in position to put down a marker, since they had to be prepared for that before they knew they'd be able to maintain telemetry down to the water, and if they're already in position, it doesn't hurt to place the marker anyway.

And the coordinates of where it "landed" are less important when it's drifting in the middle of the ocean.

According to ChatGPT, a Starship has 1000 cubic meters internal volume, and weighs 120 tons empty, which my manual math says is a density of 0.12, which means it should easily float in the ocean.

Not sure if I heard the commentary correctly, but I believe they said the video uplink was via starlink. If so, they should have the precise location.

The Russians and Chinese would probably love to examine those Raptors.

Not only the Russians and Chinese… Other countries and maybe some US companies too.

Absolutely genius! Go Chuck :)

Makes me want to play flappy bird.

And let's not forget about the other flap, toiling away away from publicity

Also lost an engine at startup and another engine during the landing burn on the booster. Judging by the debris maybe a third engine during landing burn shutdown (or maybe that was the second engine just exploding a bit more).

Still a successful test, still a lot of work to do before they can meet their promises for Artemis (which require >10 back to back launches for one lunar mission...)

True. Heard SpaceX commentator today saying they plan 4 launch towers in near term. Hopefully the major issues that lead to FAA investigations are resolved and the cadence can ramp up. Probably won't be long before Starship's launch as often as Falcon 9s today.

The FAA's license authorization for this flight mentioned that they wouldn't require a full mishap investigation unless someone got hurt, property got damaged, or debris fell outside the designated areas, so the turnaround for approving the next flight should be pretty quick. https://x.com/SciGuySpace/status/1798089390708687106 has the full text.

This says failure of Raptor during landing is excepted from investigation, doesn’t that imply that FAA will have to investigate the failure of Raptor during launch?

I think that makes sense. Failures on launch are potentially a risk to the surrounding area, whereas you're dropping massive chunks of metal on the target areas for touchdown anyway. What shape, size or how many pieces of metal at that end doesn't materially change the risk profile.

That's a good point, they probably will.

Saw a post TF4 interview with Musk where he said they will go for catch next flight unless there are some known issues during post flight analysis. He also said that the booster landed around 6km from its initial target landing coordinates. I hope that doesn't mean another ocean landing to stick the coordinates before trying chopsticks, but either way can't wait.

yeah the thing did a soft splashdown with a leaking flap, the fluid in question being molten stainless steel.

this was hard sci-fi, streamed live for everyone to see.

Was Starship empty or did it have a simulated payload?

saw that and wondered how do they go from there to reusable. is the shileding ablative and replaced on every flight?

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