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Spacex team’s Starship partially melts during renterty of test flight 4, makes soft splash down anyway. (youtu.be)

submitted 5 months ago by sonori@beehaw.org to c/space@beehaw.org

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Evidently the joints on the flaps still need a little work into not letting gases through, but it seemed to still have enough actuation to keep the spacecraft stable until the engines took over for the landing burn.

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[–] Zworf@beehaw.org 6 points 5 months ago (14 children)

It's not really 'reusable' like this though :) But this is how SpaceX iterate of course. I'm sure they'll learn from this and fix it for next time.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 1 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Well it was landing in the ocean so it was never going to be reusable.

[–] Zworf@beehaw.org 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

They do refurbish stuff that's dunking in the ocean though, like the fairings (which do also contain active parts).

Also the dragon spacecraft. It lands in the sea and gets reused.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Yeah but these ones were never designed to survive. I get what you're saying but no one wanted these to be long lasting there was no effort to make them survive

I don't actually think they do design this stuff to survive salt water. They don't really care, since they're prototypes. In the long run they'll design them to survive ocean impact, but these ones, no. They were never expected to survive.

[–] Lem453@lemmy.ca 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

These are prototype rockets. They iterate so fast the they already have new designs that make this one obsolete. It's purpose was to gather data on the various things including heat tile performance so they know what to upgrade next.

The next one that flies will also be obsolete with a newer one already partially completed.

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