Starbase TX : 6 March 2025 (23:30 UTC) (2025)

Re: Starship Flight 8 DISCUSSION : Starbase TX : 6 March 2025 (23:30 UTC)

« Reply #483 on: 03/11/2025 04:13 am »

My prediction:

1. There's no abandoning Texas for Florida: It's a non-starter, Florida is probably a year away from ready to launch, and it only mitigate the impact to aviation, which could be mitigated by other methods such as changing the launch time.

2. No abandoning V2 for V3: Nothing in V3 design would solve the issue, makes no sense to wait for V3 when it won't fix the problem.

3. No long stand-down, they'll try to keep the launch cadence: Many reasons for this, for example the factory will run up cost whether they launch or not, so why not launch to get more data? If they couldn't fix it in time, they'll just use workarounds. Even if they literally just dump upper stage into the ocean right after stage separation, they'll still get data for 1st stage reuse. And don't even get me started about PR concerns, it's an experimental program and they meant it (Falcon on the other hand may need some slowdown, but that's another topic).

So my bet is business as usual, Flight 9 in 2 months.

So, is that potentially suggesting suborbital full stack flights with a V2 starship at full weight, which dumps propellant at altitude, to deliberately short flight it so it does a boostback burn to begin tests for starship tower catches then? If the problem is isolated to the ground untestable edge of the performance envelope, then exploring the remaining testable envelope with the remaining V2 starships does make some sense...

Though that assumes V3 starship has some reasonable confidence in the fixes (starship itself and/or v3 raptor).

Re: Starship Flight 8 DISCUSSION : Starbase TX : 6 March 2025 (23:30 UTC)

« Reply #484 on: 03/11/2025 05:28 am »

Quote from: TheRadicalModerate on 03/10/2025 07:42 pm

Quote from: Vultur on 03/10/2025 07:34 pm

Why not just divert flights from the potential debris area *in advance*, so it can be planned for rather than done as an emergency measure?

It looked to me like ATC did indeed try to engineer a gap so that the DRA was clear or mostly clear at the time that it likely would have to be declared. The issue is how wide, in terms of time, that gap is. That's going to be a function of how long the DRA persists if it has to be declared.

15 minutes might be doable. 60 minutes probably isn't.

Once the candle is lit there's a ~8-12minute window of concern. But the launch window is an hour so it becomes 60min + 8-12 (68-72 min) minute window of concern. And if it scrubs, do it again.

Maybe ATC just stacks their traffic to leave a gap 8-12 minutes after the opening of the instantaneous launch window. If there is a hold, maybe SpaceX agrees to slot the attempts to restart the count, so ATC has room to slide some planes across the DRA in the no-go times.

Remember that Starship's subcooling is unhappy with long holds once the rocket starts fueling. So if there's gonna be an extensive hold, it has to be a long time before T+0.

The thing that can't be slotted is an actual debris event. For that, you need to know how long the event can last (see my guesses up-thread, but if it really was 70 minutes for Flight 7, that seems too long), and it involves orbiting or diverting traffic for the duration of the event.

Seems like a lot of the pre-launch windowing is something that can be handled in software. Hey, maybe Elon can get some DOGE interns to put it into the ATC code base while they're rewriting it. (I don't know of that last sentence needs a sarcasm marker or not.)

Re: Starship Flight 8 DISCUSSION : Starbase TX : 6 March 2025 (23:30 UTC)

« Reply #485 on: 03/11/2025 05:36 am »

My prediction:

1. There's no abandoning Texas for Florida: It's a non-starter, Florida is probably a year away from ready to launch, and it only mitigate the impact to aviation, which could be mitigated by other methods such as changing the launch time.

2. No abandoning V2 for V3: Nothing in V3 design would solve the issue, makes no sense to wait for V3 when it won't fix the problem.

3. No long stand-down, they'll try to keep the launch cadence: Many reasons for this, for example the factory will run up cost whether they launch or not, so why not launch to get more data? If they couldn't fix it in time, they'll just use workarounds. Even if they literally just dump upper stage into the ocean right after stage separation, they'll still get data for 1st stage reuse. And don't even get me started about PR concerns, it's an experimental program and they meant it (Falcon on the other hand may need some slowdown, but that's another topic).

So my bet is business as usual, Flight 9 in 2 months.

I'm shocked to find myself agreeing with you, mostly. I think the need to keep the factory logistics moving probably outweighs the PR hit if there's another failure.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a 3-month gap to increase the chances of getting it right next time. And I assume that the pipeline of FAA mishap approvals is now adequately greased so it's not the critical path. That may be where a PR hit causes problems, but they're not there yet. Let's just say that it would be really good to have a nominal insertion into suborbit on the next test.

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