Predictions for Starship IFT-4

[JohnsterSpaceProgram]

Hello again everyone! Now that it's been a few days since IFT-3 launched on March 14th, 2024, I thought I would start a predictions thread for IFT-4. Like the previous thread, you can either reply here with your predictions, or enter them on the IFT-4 predictions spreadsheet.

Also, my previous flight prediction threads can be found here...
IFT-3: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=60003.0 (The post flight success section of the sheet has been unlocked, so anyone who hasn't put in how successful IFT-3 was to them on the sheet, should do that before submitting an IFT-4 prediction)

And you can find the predictions sheet I've created for IFT-4 here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19QQfI8sOaSBU0T3dqUbIkMoQk2Yfr8KiO0KRz-UrUt4/edit?usp=sharing.

With those introductions out of the way, I would like to share my predictions for the fourth integrated test flight of Starship.

Vehicles: Booster 11/Ship 29 (B11-S29)

Launch Date: May 2024

Flight Success Chance: 85% Successful

What I Would Consider As A Success: The ship surviving re-entry down to 45 KM in altitude (before presumably being lost), the booster slowing down more than it did during it's landing burn attempt on IFT-3, and at least half of the in-space demos/tests (such as a raptor relight if one is planned) being performed without any failures.

So, what are your predictions for flight 4? Also, don't forget to check out the IFT-4 launch predictions poll (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=60544) by jongoff as well! 

[Metalskin]

This is a tough one. We have two elements:

1) Booster
 - I suspect that they will relight the booster engines for landing, but it will be a hard landing - too fast (though fingers crossed that I'm wrong)

2) Starship
 - successful vacuum relight of raptors in orbit, proving deorbit capability
 - fuel transfer - no idea
 - bay doors - incremental improvement but hard to call (I suspect a bit of engineering required here and may not happen for the next flight)
 - failure on reentry

I know I'm being pessimistic, I'm just wary as the booster landing is a lot harder than the falcon 9s, and the reentry is whole new territory and I think they have a lot to learn in this space, too many unknowns in my mind.

[meekGee]

Booster: all engines relight, hard impact but not at terminal velocity.

Ship: in-orbit tests successful, reentry, stable fall-down for a while, then failure during bellyflop.

Next day headlines: "SpaceX loses another rocket, how long can this chain of failures be allowed to continue".

[alugobi]

Next day headlines: "SpaceX loses another rocket, how long can this chain of failures be allowed to continue".

Close...

"Elon Musk's Spacex loses another rocket, how long can this chain of failures be allowed to continue".

[wannamoonbase]

I’ll get into the spreadsheet this week.

But I think:

Booster: Repests its successes to date and nails the engine relight landing burn, grid fins better performance.

Essentially booster looks completely successful.   Maybe not accuracy on the RTLS flight or landing position, but they’ll look good and complete each step.

Ship: I haven’t read this anywhere, but perhaps some full size Starlink satellite mass simulators.  Check out the dispenser but on a non orbital trajectory they don’t have to worry FCC so much. 

I think they will come up with solutions to proper control vehicle orientation.  Even if it’s a quick, heavy, inefficient fix.  Right now maintaining orientation and pointing that heat shield in the right direction throughout re-entry is the priority.  (Maybe this will be repurposing some F9 or Dragon V1 or V2 Draco’s and super Draco’s.). 

Ship will get further into re-entry and they will have control either till a landing, or breakup. 

S28’s shield looked good, from what we saw, but still plenty of things to learn and experience.  That has to be the Biggest want, more re-entry data, on IFT-4. 

[yg1968]

I expect that SpaceX will resolve the roll issue and will be able to re-light the engines on Starship on IFT-4. The booster should be able to land successfully in the water but I don't expect the ship to survive re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.

[InterestedEngineer]

if SpaceX puts obviously visible higher performance RCS system in place, I give Starship 50/50 of surviving re-entry.  0% otherwise.  They didn't get data past the oscillations on reentry and didn't get deep into the heating regime (they'd only lost about 1000km/hr or so before losing data), so there's still a ton to learn even with better control mechanisms.

Booster should make it back to gentle splashdown status, aka full mission success.  My guess is the problems on IFT-3 are easily solvable (wind sheer, control loop problems, and landing relight issues), mostly because they got good data the whole time, and those are all reasonably easy problems to solve.

[Star-Dust]

Spacex major problem is the heatshield, ship already landed succefully so this is not an issue.

Personnally the pace of launches is too slow we're going to be out of schedule.

[Yggdrasill]

My predictions for "IFT-4" (if that is what it will be designated) are:

1. Launch in the first half of June.
2. Booster performs a successful soft landing in the gulf.
3. Starship completes insertion into the target orbit. This may include a burn at apogee.
4. Payload bay door functions correctly. If Starlink satellites or satellite dummies are carried, they are successfully deployed.
5. If a propellant transfer test is performed, it is successful.
6. A deorbit burn (actual or test) is successfully performed.
7. Starship successfully makes it through entry. (60/40 chance)
8. Starship has a controlled decent into the ocean. (55/45 chance)

[wannamoonbase]

I expect that SpaceX will resolve the roll issue and will be able to re-light the engines on Starship on IFT-4. The booster should be able to land successfully in the water but I don't expect the ship to survive re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.

I agree with you completely and you used about 10% of the words I did.  (I will try to be better, Lol)


Edit: I would not be surprised if Spacex added a ship landing burn to the flight plan to maximize learning oppurtunities.

[daveglo]

Artemis and Starlink remain the near-term focus for Starship.  In that light, mission priorities should be:

1. Assuming the FT-3 propellant transfer created some issues, repeat this test with updated procedures.
2. Complete engine relight demonstration.  This is critical for future flights, as it enables orbital operations.
3. Assuming the FT-3 payload bay door test had issues (sure looked like it), repeat test (assumes pre-flight modifications are completed).  I doubt we see any Starlink mass simulators, but there are Starlink sats on hand if they want to expend one in testing.  My own opinion is that no sats fly until door is well-proven.

Secondary objectives include:
1. Improved booster landing performance (grid fin control and landing burn engine relight).
2. Improved Starship space flight controls (this might be a big ask, as I suspect ship thruster mods are necessary).
3. More Starship re-entry excitement (we're a long way from an intact water impact).

[wannamoonbase]

Artemis and Starlink remain the near-term focus for Starship.  In that light, mission priorities should be:

1. Assuming the FT-3 propellant transfer created some issues, repeat this test with updated procedures.
2. Complete engine relight demonstration.  This is critical for future flights, as it enables orbital operations.
3. Assuming the FT-3 payload bay door test had issues (sure looked like it), repeat test (assumes pre-flight modifications are completed).  I doubt we see any Starlink mass simulators, but there are Starlink sats on hand if they want to expend one in testing.  My own opinion is that no sats fly until door is well-proven.

Secondary objectives include:
1. Improved booster landing performance (grid fin control and landing burn engine relight).
2. Improved Starship space flight controls (this might be a big ask, as I suspect ship thruster mods are necessary).
3. More Starship re-entry excitement (we're a long way from an intact water impact).

100% agree, that more flight experience means better over all understanding on how to fly both vehicles.  Even as they learn to fly both they will learn how far they can push each and better learn how accurate they can be. 

They really need to get good at flying these accurately to make catch attempts.

[wannamoonbase]

Spacex major problem is the heatshield, ship already landed succefully so this is not an issue.

Personnally the pace of launches is too slow we're going to be out of schedule.

The pace will increase, once they can make some flights without having incidents that the FAA wants to review then the pacing element could be pad turn around and vehicle production times.

Then they will be hardware constrained, but in the second half of this year the starfactory will start spooling up.

The higher flight rate is coming but its a few flights out right now.

[SpaceTripper]

Next day headlines: "SpaceX loses another rocket, how long can this chain of failures be allowed to continue".

Close...

"Elon Musk's Spacex loses another rocket, how long can this chain of failures be allowed to continue".

Close...

Elon Musk's SpaceX loses another rocket, how much longer can we allow this monster to play with his deadly toys?

[DanClemmensen]

The pace will increase, once they can make some flights without having incidents that the FAA wants to review then the pacing element could be pad turn around and vehicle production times.

I saw no evidence that FAA paperwork delayed IFT-3 by even one day. SpaceX needed to analyze the  events that caused the formal word "mishap" to be used, and they would have needed that analysis even if FAA had not been involved at all. SpaceX needed to fix the issues that they found and would have needed to do so even if they were not formally required as formal "mitigations". They did a test flight, they observed problems, they analyzed the problems, they designed and implemented fixes. This is exactly why they do test flights.

IFT-2 was delayed by the required IFT-1 investigation, but that was because it triggered a mandatory environmental investigation. Even that extra delay was short relative to the time required to rebuild the pad. We can hope that will not happen again.

I'm not sure about the launch rate. I think we will see pad turnaround reduced to less than a week, so production becomes the rate limiter. Production rate appears to be increasing. We might even see a Depot and a Tanker launched in the same week toward the end of the year, while they are still testing and analyzing EDL for Starlink SS.

[Alberto-Girardi]

I will put the predictions later in the spreadsheet.

I might be a dissenting opinion, but I don't think that for now Ship reentering is the to priority. I think that demonstrating an in-flight relight and stable attitude are much more important. That is because SpaceX needs to start testing the refueling and also start deploying starlinks.

Even if the ship demonstrates a successful reentry, are the regulators going to allow them to try to land one on the second try overflying land? Where are the going to land it? The old landing pad is no more and all the currently built Ships have no legs. About tower catching, it has been years since we have heard something about that for the Ship. Also the ship has only 6 engines and is smaller than the booster, making losing one a lot less costly.



What IFT4 needs to demonstrate is the ability of Starship to be used to launch heavy payload, by showing that it can deorbit safely, thus allowing IFT5 to go into stable orbit, deploy starlink and maybe start to test refueling.
What I would look to about reentry is demonstrating that the Ship is aerodynamically stable at hypersonic speed. I don't think it would be uncontrollable (they made the Shuttle stable with 1970s technology so surely SpaceX would have been able to simulate this), but it would allow to tune the parameters for the next try.

Unfortunately booster recovery is far away (not a chance before late 2024) because of the risk to the tower, but making it work will drastically increase flight rate because soon flights will be limited by boosters. So demonstrating a soft and on target splashdown is IMO more important than a successful reentry.

Flight pairing: B11/S29 the 5th full stack couple

Timing:
Prelaunch ops: I would guess as fast if not faster than IFT3 for the booster, so I would expect a static fire ~1 month after launch, so April 15
I think S29 needs some work to its attitude control system, so I would guess for a static fire around the end of April.

From there I expect 1 week of checkouts, then stack for WDR on the second week of May and launch 1 week later.  I will give a symbolic date of May 20th, 1 year and 1 month after the first flight.

Expectation:

Flight path: same as IFT3 unless FAA gets really convinced it is safe to do a full orbit

Anything less than a perfect orbital insertion will be a big resounding failure. They have to show that at least it works as an expandable launcher.

I expect the booster to soft land. They seemed so close last time and they went from a failure to ignite the boostback burn on IFT2 to acing it. They are improving fast.

I expect S29 to mantain controll and to perform the in space burn. I think it will demonstrate a good entry initially. Problems will come with peak heating. I give it a 50/50. But if it fails, I think it is possible it would fail at peak deceleration because of damage to the structure done at peak heating.

What do you think about my predictions? Don't be afraid to critique, at the end we are just guessing.

[wannamoonbase]

The pace will increase, once they can make some flights without having incidents that the FAA wants to review then the pacing element could be pad turn around and vehicle production times.

I saw no evidence that FAA paperwork delayed IFT-3 by even one day. SpaceX needed to analyze the  events that caused the formal word "mishap" to be used, and they would have needed that analysis even if FAA had not been involved at all. SpaceX needed to fix the issues that they found and would have needed to do so even if they were not formally required as formal "mitigations". They did a test flight, they observed problems, they analyzed the problems, they designed and implemented fixes. This is exactly why they do test flights.

IFT-2 was delayed by the required IFT-1 investigation, but that was because it triggered a mandatory environmental investigation. Even that extra delay was short relative to the time required to rebuild the pad. We can hope that will not happen again.

I'm not sure about the launch rate. I think we will see pad turnaround reduced to less than a week, so production becomes the rate limiter. Production rate appears to be increasing. We might even see a Depot and a Tanker launched in the same week toward the end of the year, while they are still testing and analyzing EDL for Starlink SS.

I should have been more clear.  I wasn't blaming the FAA for delays, IFT-3 was clearly hardware limited until maybe the last week.  But when the vehicles fail, especially like in IFT-1 and 2 there are more extensive investigations needed, and also hardware changes.

The lessons and changes from IFT-3 to IFT-4 look like they should be shorter, maybe more software than hardware and likely some hardware changes already implemented between models. 

I could see there being a push toward a ship to ship propellant transfer by the end of this year.  Whether a proper tanker or just another ship to receive propellant, we will see.

I have been following space closely for more than 3 decades and this program since 2016, finally it's flying and getting exciting.  The pace only increases from here.

[yg1968]

I might be a dissenting opinion, but I don't think that for now Ship reentering is the to priority. I think that demonstrating an in-flight relight and stable attitude are much more important. That is because SpaceX needs to start testing the refueling and also start deploying starlinks.

I don't think that you are in the dissent on the importance of making Starship work at least as an expendable LV for now. Having said that, I think that SpaceX would also like like to test re-entry as quickly as possible in order to see if changes to Startship's heatshield are necessary.

[DanClemmensen]

I might be a dissenting opinion, but I don't think that for now Ship reentering is the to priority. I think that demonstrating an in-flight relight and stable attitude are much more important. That is because SpaceX needs to start testing the refueling and also start deploying starlinks.

I don't think that you are in the dissent on the importance of making Starship works at least as an expendable LV for now. Having said that, I think that SpaceX would also like like to test re-entry as quickly as possible in order to see if changes to Startship's heatshield are necessary.

It all goes together. It is critical to test and solve the attitude control problem. But to do that they must fly a test mission. If attitude control succeeds on that mission, then they can test in-flight relight. If relight succeeds on that mission, then they can test re-entry. If re-entry succeeds then can test controlled descent. If controlled descent works, then they can test (pseudo) landing. But the very first and most fundamental test is attitude control.

[Framryk]

I might be a dissenting opinion, but I don't think that for now Ship reentering is the to priority. I think that demonstrating an in-flight relight and stable attitude are much more important. That is because SpaceX needs to start testing the refueling and also start deploying starlinks.

I don't think that you are in the dissent on the importance of making Starship works at least as an expendable LV for now. Having said that, I think that SpaceX would also like like to test re-entry as quickly as possible in order to see if changes to Startship's heatshield are necessary.

It all goes together. It is critical to test and solve the attitude control problem. But to do that they must fly a test mission. If attitude control succeeds on that mission, then they can test in-flight relight. If relight succeeds on that mission, then they can test re-entry. If re-entry succeeds then can test controlled descent. If controlled descent works, then they can test (pseudo) landing. But the very first and most fundamental test is attitude control.

I'm really hoping for repetition / consistency from IFT-3 to IFT-4 with the Booster 33 engines, hot staging and Ship full set of engine Raptor performance. Consistency on doing the same thing well each time is important to build confidence at the launch phase.

I'm assuming that until they solve attitude control they can't solve Raptor relight, and without Raptor relight they are limited to quasi-orbital tests i.e. no full orbits and gainful deployment of Starlinks. So this has to be the major focus of IFT-4.

I've predicted better Booster performance with more relights but not enough for a soft splashdown; Ship performance is good and the Pez dispenser is tested with a mass simulator (with cameras please!) that will also burn up; attitude control lasts for a Raptor relight but then goes wonky and the re-entry suffers, so the Ship doesn't make a belly-flop water splashdown.

I predict trying to solve the attitude control issue will take the majority of the time to IFT-4, I'm being pessimistic with a stab at June 19th (but would love it to be early, ideally May the Fourth).

[Okie_Steve]

It will be called Flight-4

Good launch and hot staging

Improved control systems software/hardware allow booster to relight for landing burn and ship to perform propellant transfer while maintaining stability

No guarantee about booster landing

Ship will deploy something through payload door - maybe a wheel of cheese or a 2001 obelisk

Ship will peform inspace relight and then burn up later during reentry

Starlink video will be even more impressive

[uhuznaa]

I think IFT-4 will be basically a rinse-repeat of ITF-3, with (hopefully) an added first test with the dispenser and two or four dummy Starlink sats.

Reasons: They will want to launch and deploy Starlink as soon as possible with Starship and for that they need to demonstrate safe deorbiting of the second stage to not risk it being stranded in a randomly decaying orbit. They also need to test and debug the dispenser ASAP since it's a hideously complex thing with lots of moving parts, much more complex than the door (which didn't really work in IFT-3). So better start testing it now.

I guess they will be able to fix the RCS-problems, which again will give them the opportunity to try and relight the engines (or one engine). Which may or may not work. Same with reentry: With the ship in the correct orientation it should work better than last time... My guess is that when (almost) all tiles will still be there the odds of the ship coming through the hot phase of reentry should be quite good. Hypersonic control etc. may be an altogether different problem still. This is not pressing though, they will have ample opportunities to perfect this once they start to launch Starlink satellites with it and anyway there'll be a long and rocky road until they have all of this working reliably enough to go for a tower catch. For that they will need to overfly parts of the continental US and the FAA will not allow them to do this before they have demonstrated full and reliable control. I think this will be at least a dozen flights into the future.

Booster: Depending on the reasons for the loss of control and the engines not igniting getting it down in one piece may be easy or not so easy. They definitely will want to move forward here though since recovering the booster should be at least much more easy than with the ship and it's more expensive to begin with.

My prediction: The RCS will work, engine relighting will work, the dispenser test (if any) will not work, the booster will at least make it further (maybe with too few engines igniting to come to a soft landing), the Ship will make it through reentry, but then will be lost.

PS: I'm still not sure the PEZ dispenser idea will hold. It's basically the opposite of "best part is no part". It solves some structural/mass problems (due to it needing only a small door for deploying the satellites) but instead adds a myriad of things to go wrong, each of which can mean a failed mission (as far as satellite deployment is concerned). Lots of intricate moving parts, chains, rollers, pistons, pulleys... I hate it.

[Rossco]

I'd agree with the above - rinse and repeat.

I think (based on nothing but what we've seen so far): Booster: will make splashdown. Spaceship: No Payload. In-space Relight. Another Prop-Transfer Demo. Another door Demo. Break-up during re-entry having made it most of the way through.

[DanClemmensen]

Prediction based only on my possibly faulty reasoning:
   Ship: main focus will be on attitude control. It will be hard for us to know what SpaceX is doing in this regard prior to the actual flight unless they choose to tell us, although there may be some hints from the mitigation section of the mishap report. Should be obvious during the flight if it succeeds. Remainder of the flight goals same as  IFT-3, and given successful attitude control they may actually succeed.
   Booster: main focus will also be on attitude control and same comments apply. If it succeeds, landing burn may work this time.

The Starlink connection is unprecedented and underappreciated. That wealth of data multiplies the value of these test flights. We can hope that improved attitude control will improve link quality and reliability, especially during ship re-entry and descent but maybe also for booster descent and landing.

[StraumliBlight]

From today's conference:

Shotwell said the company hopes to conduct the next Starship test flight in about six weeks, though that likely won’t have satellites on board.

She specifically says:

We'll get back to flight, hopefully in about 6 weeks, Flight 4 hopefully, beginning part of May. And I don't think were going to deploy satellites on the next flight, things are still in trade but I think were really going to focus on getting re-entry right and making sure we can land these things where we want to land them, successfully.

[wannamoonbase]

From today's conference:

Shotwell said the company hopes to conduct the next Starship test flight in about six weeks, though that likely won’t have satellites on board.

It's almost like they want to get the V1's out of the way, and to get basic flying experience.  How the ship does on orbit and re-entry and collecting data on how superheavy performs in the atmosphere. 

Just fly best you can and collect data and clear out the old stock to make room for the new stuff.

I hope it is 6 weeks, but I'm expecting 8 or more.

[alugobi]

Tells me that they want to fly again, but won't have door revisions/redesigns finalized by then.

[jmsanman]

Vehicles: Booster 11 / Ship 29

Launch Date: 18th May 2024 (Note: this would be the same percentage improvement of IFT-2 to IFT-3 over IFT-1 to IFT-2)

Booster RUD Chance: 20% during landing burn

Ship RUD Chance: 50% chance of surviving the re-entry plasma phase.

Flight Success Chance: 80%

What Would I Consider As A Success: SpaceX a) has no repeat issues, b) demonstrates resolution of all IFT-3 issues and c) gets enough information from IFT-4 to fix newly discovered issues. For the Booster, this means successfully maintaining attitude through Raptor landing burn relight and getting much closer to a controlled splashdown. For the Starship, this means successful (sub-)orbital insertion, completion of all missed IFT-3 tests, and maintaining attitude from orbital insertion through most (if not all) of the plasma part of re-entry.

Bonus points: no FAA incident report needed.

Extra-special bonus points: quiet discussions within NASA about SLS vs. fully expendable SS/SH become less quiet. Yes, I know, ‘politics’. That’s why the points are extra-special.

[FinalFrontier]

Flight 4 in May.
Nominal performance to orbit insertion.
50% chance of booster landing burn ignition.
50/50 on controlled attitude for re-entry by starship.
I still have doubts about the design and capability of the RCS on starship in its current form. On flight three it would seem it never even got a chance to work, however, didn't seem it ever activated.
So we still need to actually see how that does when it properly activates.

[uhuznaa]

Tells me that they want to fly again, but won't have door revisions/redesigns finalized by then.

Depending on what exactly failed with the door they may not need a real redesign.

But the door problem just shows that having moving parts that need to work after all the vibrations and acceleration loads during launch and then in a vacuum isn't exactly easy. Lubrication isn't straight forward and no lubrication may lead to cold-welding in vacuum. And any play anywhere is a bad thing to have with the vibrations.

Or maybe the door was sealed too well against the residual pressure inside and opening it against this pressure bent or broke something. Would be easily solved with fully venting the payload bay though before opening the door.

But that they couldn't make such a comparatively dead-simple mechanism work at first try makes me wary about their PEZ dispenser contraption. I mean, look at that:

https://ringwatchers.com/article/ship-pez-dispenser

They really would need to test and debug this on the ground, with load and vibration tests, maybe even in a vacuum chamber, and it's not exactly a small thing to deal with. Most of it is bigger than the door and it has so many more moving parts, and it will have to carry dozens of tons of satellites amplified by the acceleration during launch without anything bending out of shape or seizing up or shaking loose. And it's full of motors, rollers, chains, long cables with pulleys, piston-driven latches... Easily two orders of magnitude more complex than that simple door.

If they don't have one dispenser ready to test with a few dummy satellites to push out for the next launch it will just mean that they're still working on it and don't even dare to launch and test what they have yet.

At first I thought the dispenser was a good idea since it meant they won't have to deal with huge payload bay doors but this thing is just so incredibly complex mechanically. Sometimes it's easier to deal with one or two big problems than with dozens of smaller ones, each one different and with it's own failure modes. Maybe two huge load-bearing doors with load-bearing hinges and latches and then just kicking the full satellite stack over the doorstep would be the better solution. This though would mean some serious redesign. But at least this also would open the door (lol) to deploy other things than just flatpack Starlink satellites. Sooner or later they will have to have this capability anyway.

Well, we will see.

[alugobi]

Tells me that they want to fly again, but won't have door revisions/redesigns finalized by then.

If they don't have one dispenser ready to test with a few dummy satellites to push out for the next launch it will just mean that they're still working on it and don't even dare to launch and test what they have yet.

Shotwell has already announced that they're not carrying a payload next launch.

Vid from flight 3 showed that door panel shaking and wobbling.  Not what you'd expect from a component in a system that is supposed to be designed for many and and frequent uses.  I'm leaning towards them redoing it with a different panel and/or mechanism.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

Re 6 weeks to flight 4:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1770173270366499013

That’s if everything goes right, but certainly possible

[mordroberon]

Oh boy, another one of these

Vehicles: Booster 11/Ship 29 (B11-S29)

Launch Date: First half June 2024 (Around 6/9 because its Elon)

What Will Happen:
- Successful launch, all booster engines light [100%]
- Successful hotstaging, all ship engines light, successful stage separation [100%]
- Nominal Boostback burn [90%]
- More successful landing burn than IFT-3 [75%]
- Hard splashdown in the ocean (no explosion before impact) [90%]
- Ship reaches target trajectory [100%]
- trajectory is same as IFT-3 [75%]
- Starship will complete engine relight and entry burn [90%]
- Starship will have a controlled reentry through the atmosphere [75%]
- Starship will either burn up in the atmosphere, or hard-land in the ocean [90%]

[wannamoonbase]

Bonus points: no FAA incident report needed.

Extra-special bonus points: quiet discussions within NASA about SLS vs. fully expendable SS/SH become less quiet. Yes, I know, ‘politics’. That’s why the points are extra-special.

No FAA incident report would help a lot.

Regarding replacing SLS, Starship just needs to keep going it's thing successfully.  When it's flying often and successfully the SLS discussion will solve it's self without much of a fight.

[uhuznaa]

Tells me that they want to fly again, but won't have door revisions/redesigns finalized by then.

If they don't have one dispenser ready to test with a few dummy satellites to push out for the next launch it will just mean that they're still working on it and don't even dare to launch and test what they have yet.

Shotwell has already announced that they're not carrying a payload next launch.

Vid from flight 3 showed that door panel shaking and wobbling.  Not what you'd expect from a component in a system that is supposed to be designed for many and and frequent uses.  I'm leaning towards them redoing it with a different panel and/or mechanism.

Well, technically she said that they won't deploy satellites and if they would deploy some dummies these wouldn't be satellites since they would follow the same trajectory as the ship and reenter with the ship, so they're not satellites ;-)

Well, and that wide, thin door panel shaking and wobbling when just hanging on a few (two?) hinges is just to be expected. Doesn't have to be a bad thing in itself. It may well be that there was just some fixture that shook loose during launch, or the motors opening the door inwards against the pressure inside bent or broke some lever. Could have been any small thing that failed and that can be easily fixed. I mean, that door is by far the smallest challenge with the PEZ dispenser method to get right and work reliably.

I hope they have some better insight into this than we have.

By the way, I'm really wondering how many engineering cams they have. I mean, they don't even need to stream them for such things that aren't really time-critical, just record from dozens of cameras and download only the recordings of things that didn't work right then. I would fully expect them to have a close-up wide-angle camera looking at the door mechanisms. There was ample time to download this then.

[DanClemmensen]

Well, technically she said that they won't deploy satellites and if they would deploy some dummies these wouldn't be satellites since they would follow the same trajectory as the ship and reenter with the ship, so they're not satellites ;-)

If it were my decision, I would not want satellites re-entering near the SS while the re-entry test is underway. Even if the risk of interference or collision is small, it's not zero.

[uhuznaa]

Well, technically she said that they won't deploy satellites and if they would deploy some dummies these wouldn't be satellites since they would follow the same trajectory as the ship and reenter with the ship, so they're not satellites ;-)

If it were my decision, I would not want satellites re-entering near the SS while the re-entry test is underway. Even if the risk of interference or collision is small, it's not zero.

They wouldn't be exactly "near" the ship when you push them out half an hour before entry. The risk of collision would be close enough to zero. Very different densities too, the satellite dummies would overtake the ship immediately at entry and never would come closer to it again.

And it would be a test anyway, if you can push out the satellites successfully them colliding with the ship later (which won't survive no matter what) would be meaningless. But knowing that the dispenser works would retire some massive risks for what the ship is actually there for thoroughly.

[uhuznaa]

Re 6 weeks to flight 4:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1770173270366499013

That’s if everything goes right, but certainly possible

Musk sounding cautious is almost frightening ;-)

[alugobi]

I mean, that door is by far the smallest challenge with the PEZ dispenser method to get right and work reliably.

I don't agree.  It moves, it seals, it requires self-alignment, and it has to do this repeatably.  What we saw in flight 3 was pretty flimsy.  Does not inspire confidence.

[uhuznaa]

I mean, that door is by far the smallest challenge with the PEZ dispenser method to get right and work reliably.

I don't agree.  It moves, it seals, it requires self-alignment, and it has to do this repeatably.  What we saw in flight 3 was pretty flimsy.  Does not inspire confidence.

Still comparatively dead-simple. Have you looked at the actual dispenser?

https://ringwatchers.com/article/ship-pez-dispenser

Read this article from top to bottom and then say again the door is hard to do. This door is the easiest thing of all this.

[alugobi]

The door is hard to do. 

So is the dispenser.

[Star-Dust]

Extra-special bonus points: quiet discussions within NASA about SLS vs. fully expendable SS/SH become less quiet. Yes, I know, ‘politics’. That’s why the points are extra-special.

Elon aimed for the moon he landed among the stars it's ok for me

[JamesH65]

I mean, that door is by far the smallest challenge with the PEZ dispenser method to get right and work reliably.

I don't agree.  It moves, it seals, it requires self-alignment, and it has to do this repeatably.  What we saw in flight 3 was pretty flimsy.  Does not inspire confidence.

Flimsy is probably no the right word, remember how big that door is, and how curved. To make it rigid would require a huge amount of reinforcement, some sort of spaceframe, and a lot of it. I suspect they can get away with some flex without causing issues. Might even be able to use cables in some places rather than rigid sections.

[yg1968]

Re 6 weeks to flight 4:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1770173270366499013

That’s if everything goes right, but certainly possible

Musk sounding cautious is almost frightening ;-)

Musk has been trying to be more cautious about his predictions. But ironically that has recently gotten him in trouble when he said that crewed lunar Starship would be going to the Moon within 5 years. Of course, 2026 (the projected date for Artemis III) is within 5 years but these kind of nuances are often lost when the (main-stream/non-space specialized) media (60 minutes in this case) reports it. 

[darthguili]

I think for IFT-4, we might get into a series of flights where the perceived improvements (outside those at SpaceX with the knowledge) will be less visible/obvious.
I think :
- stability during reentry will still fail
- booster will still fail to reach velocity target prior impact
- heatshield will still fail

Maybe some marginally visible improvements on the door operations (but I don't feel those are important).

And we would enter a series of flights and tests that could be pretty long until suddenly, boom, they fix stability, they fix heatshield etc. In my predictions, they will be able to fix booster landing first, it feels the more within reach. For the other two, there are still possibilities that this design doesn't work so I'm just crossing fingers at this point. If that's the case, starship ends up a "bigger F9", kind of, instead of a vehicule that brings us to Mars and I really don't want that.

[DanClemmensen]

I think for IFT-4, we might get into a series of flights where the perceived improvements (outside those at SpaceX with the knowledge) will be less visible/obvious.
I think :
- stability during reentry will still fail
- booster will still fail to reach velocity target prior impact
- heatshield will still fail

Maybe some marginally visible improvements on the door operations (but I don't feel those are important).

And we would enter a series of flights and tests that could be pretty long until suddenly, boom, they fix stability, they fix heatshield etc. In my predictions, they will be able to fix booster landing first, it feels the more within reach. For the other two, there are still possibilities that this design doesn't work so I'm just crossing fingers at this point. If that's the case, starship ends up a "bigger F9", kind of, instead of a vehicle that brings us to Mars and I really don't want that.

However, as soon as they achieve in-space stability, they can then achieve raptor relight, and on the next flight they can actually go to orbit. That will be very obvious. Ideally, raptor relight on IFT-4 and orbit on IFT-5.

[KilroySmith]

How many times during SpaceX development flights has the same thing failed twice? 

If nothing else, SpaceX is excellent at identifying problems, and fixing them - not with duct tape and baling wire, but good solid engineering.  So my admittedly pollyanna-ish view of Flight 4 is:
0. Mission plan - identical with IFT-3.
1. Booster - I expect it to launch, separate, and rotate as neatly as it did this time.  I expect the control issues it experienced to be gone now, and I expect it to be vertical and stable when it starts it's landing burn.  I don't expect the landing burn to be completely successful, so I expect another hard impact.  In Flight 5, I expect to see a hover near the surface of the water.
2. Ship.  I expect it to separate and leave the vicinity of the booster with great haste.  I expect an engine shutdown, and a propellant transfer demo if they still need one.  I expect the stability problems to be fixed, and the ship to do a successful relight and shutdown, hit entry interface in a stable, proper attitude, and make it through re-entry.  I don't expect it to be able to successfully rotate vertical and fire engines for the landing burn.  I expect a landing burn on Flight 5, and a successful hover at the ocean's surface on Flight 6.

So, perhaps July for Flight 5, which I expect to be successful enough for the FAA to loosen the ropes a bit and let them run with only normal oversight rather than R&D ("Oh my Lord, You wanna do WHAT?") oversight. 

[Oersted]

For IFT-4 I expect them to absolutely plaster the ship with cameras, given that the Starlink download behaved in such stellar fashion on the last flight. Well-placed cameras will really inform the team about the ship's behaviour during reentry. 

[wannamoonbase]

For IFT-4 I expect them to absolutely plaster the ship with cameras, given that the Starlink download behaved in such stellar fashion on the last flight. Well-placed cameras will really inform the team about the ship's behaviour during reentry. 

Just because we didn't see more views doesn't mean that SpaceX doesn't have many more video feeds.

We know they have plenty of cameras on F9 that the public doesn't see.

They have been showing us more with each flight.  I don't blame them for holding onto information and images, there are plenty of people and entities looking forward to jump on any oppurtunity to push negative stories.  So only show things that work.

[ETurner]

How many times during SpaceX development flights has the same thing failed twice? 

Hasn't tile attachment failed every time so far?

[uhuznaa]

I think for IFT-4, we might get into a series of flights where the perceived improvements (outside those at SpaceX with the knowledge) will be less visible/obvious.
I think :
- stability during reentry will still fail
- booster will still fail to reach velocity target prior impact
- heatshield will still fail

Maybe some marginally visible improvements on the door operations (but I don't feel those are important).

And we would enter a series of flights and tests that could be pretty long until suddenly, boom, they fix stability, they fix heatshield etc. In my predictions, they will be able to fix booster landing first, it feels the more within reach. For the other two, there are still possibilities that this design doesn't work so I'm just crossing fingers at this point. If that's the case, starship ends up a "bigger F9", kind of, instead of a vehicle that brings us to Mars and I really don't want that.

However, as soon as they achieve in-space stability, they can then achieve raptor relight, and on the next flight they can actually go to orbit. That will be very obvious. Ideally, raptor relight on IFT-4 and orbit on IFT-5.

I think if their RCS wouldn't have failed the outcome would have been very different. They would have at least have been able to try and relight the Raptors and reentry would have looked very different, and longer.

Nobody knows how it would have ended but it definitely would not have ended there and then. In fact I think the immediate reentry interface isn't the real problem at all, hypersonic control and keeping the ship on the planned trajectory until final descent is the problem that needs some more experimentation. And the sooner they get to this stage the better.

I think with the next launch they will solve the problems they faced this time and get to log and hopefully debug the problems they will run into after that. Step after step.

[uhuznaa]

How many times during SpaceX development flights has the same thing failed twice? 

Hasn't tile attachment failed every time so far?

Looked quite good this time. And I doubt it will get worse next time. This is small stuff being very conductive to small changes and mitigations. If 100 of your 18000 tiles detach you can try to look at what happened and make sure that next time more of those 100 keep stuck.

Mitigation is like magic once you prove that it works principally, it's just more of the same.

[KilroySmith]

How many times during SpaceX development flights has the same thing failed twice? 

Hasn't tile attachment failed every time so far?

Well, you got me on that one.  But I will argue that, so far, tiles falling off haven't endangered any missions.  Flight 4 will be interesting in that regard - can the ship make it through re-entry with missing tiles?  Inquiring minds want to know!

[JaimeZX]

I don't think anyone will know since even if it makes it through the ED part of EDL it's going to explode on impact with the Great Southern Ocean.

[Kspbutitscursed]

I don't think anyone will know since even if it makes it through the ED part of EDL it's going to explode on impact with the Great Southern Ocean.

You mean the Indian Ocean?

[KilroySmith]

I don't think anyone will know since even if it makes it through the ED part of EDL it's going to explode on impact with the Great Southern Ocean.

That seems a bit dismissive of SpaceX's communications platform.  Do you really believe that they won't be able to re-establish communications after re-entry but before the RSD (that would be a "Rapid Scheduled Disassembly")?

[litton4]

For me, the most important will not just be Raptor re-light in orbit, but RELIABLE Raptor re-light.
I'd expect them to have to demonstrate this more than once, or have a contingency system to provide a controlled re-entry.

Aside from that, I'd expect mods to the payload bay door (HAL), which clearly didn't work. (I wonder if they named the computer that controlled it?)
On the next flight, though they could include some dummy or disposable Starlinks, so if the door opens, they can test the dispenser.

Booster, get it under control and re-light engines for landing.
It looked like it was doing engine chill as it came down, but couldn't re-light in time for whatever reason.
I'm sure SpaceX will be closer to nailing this on IFT4

I would say that medium term goal MUST be to progress Booster landing/Recovery.
That's where the most cost is - 4/5ths of the engines for a start, so as in F9, most benefit.

[wannamoonbase]

For me, the most important will not just be Raptor re-light in orbit, but RELIABLE Raptor re-light.
I'd expect them to have to demonstrate this more than once, or have a contingency system to provide a controlled re-entry.

They have 6 opportunities to demonstrate Raptor relight on orbit.  I have assumed from the information given that it was a 1 engine relight. 

Doing all 6, just long enough to prove startup would give them 6 data points instead of one.

[DanClemmensen]

For me, the most important will not just be Raptor re-light in orbit, but RELIABLE Raptor re-light.
I'd expect them to have to demonstrate this more than once, or have a contingency system to provide a controlled re-entry.

My guess: a single successful re-light will suffice, IF the system is heavily instrumented and the data shows that the system worked as designed instead of working by coincidence. The redundancy happens because they only need one of the engines to work.

The risk is that a huge SS becomes derelict and stranded in orbit. If there are multiple opportunities to retry the de-orbit, then that risk is reduced.

[alugobi]

As long as they're flying a profile that will bring the ship down without an engine light, the priority should be fixing whatever didn't happen on the previous flight such that they had no thruster control.  They'll never get a landed vehicle if it's rolling and flipping until it breaks up.

[litton4]

For me, the most important will not just be Raptor re-light in orbit, but RELIABLE Raptor re-light.
I'd expect them to have to demonstrate this more than once, or have a contingency system to provide a controlled re-entry.

My guess: a single successful re-light will suffice, IF the system is heavily instrumented and the data shows that the system worked as designed instead of working by coincidence. The redundancy happens because they only need one of the engines to work.

The risk is that a huge SS becomes derelict and stranded in orbit. If there are multiple opportunities to retry the de-orbit, then that risk is reduced.

Hence the need to demonstrate reliable re-light as well as vehicle control during the burn.
It's not going to end well if starship ends up behaving like a balloon that's just been inflated and released.
Having said that, how long would a SL Raptor (for gimballing) need to burn to provide deorbit impulse?
I'm guessing a very few number of seconds......

[StraumliBlight]

On the next flight, though they could include some dummy or disposable Starlinks, so if the door opens, they can test the dispenser.

<snip>

Would a V3 Starlink satellite reenter the atmosphere earlier than Starship, or is there a chance of having an external HD video stream of Starship interacting with the plasma?

[xvel]

that is not happening it would require a special satellite that can actively steer itself with some very powerfull thrusters while reentering and also survive entry, then a small satellite will most likely not be able to stream data because it will be sorrounded by plasma unlike starship which is big enough that it makes a hole in the plasma behind it

[alang]

My prediction cherry picks what others have said:
A big focus on things that make money in the short term such as proving fuel transfer (I understand that releases money from NASA), payload bay doors, exercising the satellite dispenser and improving the attitude control that supports all of this.
Everything else will be secondary.

[baddux]

Launch day: 20th of June

Outcome: just by extrapolating from previous progress, I predict that both booster and ship landings are improved but probably still not picture perfect. Maybe slightly too hard landings and e.g. not all booster engines relight in the landing burn. Ship rolling issue is probably fixed.

[StraumliBlight]

May not be relevant to IFT-4 but WB-57 (JSC #927) has a foreign deployment from May 16, 2024 - Sunday, May 26, 2024.

Though the NASA project to observe Starship reentry over the Pacific has been set to 'completed' with no apparent follow on.

[AJW]

My prediction for IFT-4 is that with the knowledge and experience gained from the flight, the time required between IFT-4 & 5 will decrease by a full month compared to the gap between IFT-3 & 4.  This decrease will continue at the same rate until the gap approaches one month, landings of both the booster and Starship have proven reliable, and at that point SpaceX will drop the IFT designation.

[CorvusCorax]

My prediction is.

1. Succesful booster landing burn, but not stable enough to go straight to tower landing.

2. Stable reentry control of Starship through peak heating

I'm not so sure regarding peak decelleration and if it survives all the way to the ocean surface, but it'd be cool if it does. But lets be optimistic and predict a somewhat succesful bellyflop Just because I want it to happen

[redneck]

May not be relevant to IFT-4 but WB-57 (JSC #927) has a foreign deployment from May 16, 2024 - Sunday, May 26, 2024.

Though the NASA project to observe Starship reentry over the Pacific has been set to 'completed' with no apparent follow on.

How much data is obtained from the various  Earth observation satellites on these test flights?

[jd42jd]

My detailed prediction (so that it is more likely to be wrong ):

Ship: Like IFT3 but with perfect control until reentry and peak stress, surviving reentry, but then dropping in to the ocean without any control, as something essential was damaged while reentering the atmosphere. Successful test of payload door (only mentioned, not visible) and short relight of raptor, but no information about propellant transfer or other tests. Only the same boring view of the same camera will be visible all the way in space. At reentry the video goes orange somewhere and not much will be visible anymore, then no video signal but still telemetry until ocean.

Booster: Like IFT3 till reentry, then 10s earlier landing burn, successful deceleration to ~30m/s, but at a few hundreds meter height the fuel is empty and the booster drops in to the ocean.

Headline: SpaceX crashed the 4th Starship!

[pjm1]

My detailed prediction (so that it is more likely to be wrong ):

Ship: Like IFT3 but with perfect control until reentry and peak stress, surviving reentry, but then dropping in to the ocean without any control, as something essential was damaged while reentering the atmosphere. Successful test of payload door (only mentioned, not visible) and short relight of raptor, but no information about propellant transfer or other tests. Only the same boring view of the same camera will be visible all the way in space. At reentry the video goes orange somewhere and not much will be visible anymore, then no video signal but still telemetry until ocean.

Booster: Like IFT3 till reentry, then 10s earlier landing burn, successful deceleration to ~30m/s, but at a few hundreds meter height the fuel is empty and the booster drops in to the ocean.

Headline: SpaceX crashed the 4th Starship!

I like your headline, but feel it lacks enough clickbait.  How about: "Elon's Musk's latest rocket is now officially worse than his first (after Starship crashes for a fourth time, unlike Falcon 1, which had a successful fourth flight).  Has he bitten off more than he can chew?  Will he have to sell more Tesla stock to fund a fifth flight?  Will NASA allow him to continue this billionaire's folly?"

[Oersted]

"Twitter mogul's Spaceship crashes into Sea! No survivors."

[wannamoonbase]

Didn't know where else to put this, but is IFT-4 now in the phase where we are waiting for SpaceX to finish their incident report, then submit to the FAA and wait the few days for a license?

I am hopeful that IFT-4 will go mostly to plan and that IFT-5 will happen within 30-45 days afterwards.

[Kspbutitscursed]

my prediction for the link url for the IFT-4 mission page:
https://spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionid=starship-flight-4
I'm bored rn lol

[TomH]

I predict the booster will experience a nominal profile. I predict that the ship's profile will be nominal until maximum reentry heat and stress, but that at that point, tile loss will domino, the fuselage will RUD, and many chunks will impact in the ocean. I attribute this to the ship simply being a pressurized cylinder as opposed to having a rigid airframe like STS. Collected data will be most helpful, however. IFT-5 is supposed to have a new tile attachment method, and hopefully, that SS will survive intact to belly-flop impact.

[Malisk]

Didn't know where else to put this, but is IFT-4 now in the phase where we are waiting for SpaceX to finish their incident report, then submit to the FAA and wait the few days for a license?

I am hopeful that IFT-4 will go mostly to plan and that IFT-5 will happen within 30-45 days afterwards.

The mishap report and solutions should have already been delivered to the FAA, I'd be surprised if it wasnt but I guess we don't know.

Earlier today there was a notice to mariners for the 16th, this is likely the wet dress rehearsal and the last WDR was 10 days before launch which would put the launch on May 27th, which was what Elon previously said they were aiming for ("before end of May"). What makes it most likely is because that is the 1 week this year I will not be able to go down there so its for sure going to be that week..

[StraumliBlight]

The mishap report and solutions should have already been delivered to the FAA, I'd be surprised if it wasnt but I guess we don't know.

There was an Angry Astronaut update yesterday that stated the FAA has yet to receive a mishap report.

[mordroberon]

Oh boy, another one of these

Vehicles: Booster 11/Ship 29 (B11-S29)

Launch Date: First half June 2024 (Around 6/9 because its Elon)

What Will Happen:
- Successful launch, all booster engines light [100%]
- Successful hotstaging, all ship engines light, successful stage separation [100%]
- Nominal Boostback burn [90%]
- More successful landing burn than IFT-3 [75%]
- Hard splashdown in the ocean (no explosion before impact) [90%]
- Ship reaches target trajectory [100%]
- trajectory is same as IFT-3 [75%]
- Starship will complete engine relight and entry burn [90%]
- Starship will have a controlled reentry through the atmosphere [75%]
- Starship will either burn up in the atmosphere, or hard-land in the ocean [90%]

Love going back on these, lets review:

- Vehicles [YES]
- Date [YES]
- Successful launch, all booster engines light [NO, launch was successful, 32/33 engines lit]
- Hotstaging, all ship engines light [YES]
- Boostback burn [YES]
- More successful landing burn [YES]
- Hard landing [NO!!!!]
- Ship reaches target [YES]
- Trajectory the same [YES]
- Starship will complete engine relight and entry burn [No, not part of mission plan]
- controlled reentry through the atmosphere [YES!]
-  burn up in the atmosphere, or hard-land in the ocean [I'll say no, though there was a lot of burning up]

[darthguili]

I think for IFT-4, we might get into a series of flights where the perceived improvements (outside those at SpaceX with the knowledge) will be less visible/obvious.
I think :
- stability during reentry will still fail
- booster will still fail to reach velocity target prior impact
- heatshield will still fail

Maybe some marginally visible improvements on the door operations (but I don't feel those are important).

And we would enter a series of flights and tests that could be pretty long until suddenly, boom, they fix stability, they fix heatshield etc. In my predictions, they will be able to fix booster landing first, it feels the more within reach. For the other two, there are still possibilities that this design doesn't work so I'm just crossing fingers at this point. If that's the case, starship ends up a "bigger F9", kind of, instead of a vehicule that brings us to Mars and I really don't want that.

- stability during reentry will still fail <= I was wrong
- booster will still fail to reach velocity target prior impact <= I was wrong
- heatshield will still fail <= I was partially wrong. Even if some of the heatshield failed, the vehicule survived after all....

I love being that wrong.

[Perchlorate]

I (sheepishly) checked all 19, pressed the button, then wallowed in a stoichiometric mix of naivete and guilt about my naivete.

Not feeling all proud and vindicated...but very happy with the outcome.

[Edit...thought I was posting on the sister version of this which lives in the Polls section.]

[theinternetftw]

[Edit...thought I was posting on the sister version of this which lives in the Polls section.]

A link to that prediction poll thread for the interested:

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=60997.msg2597269#msg2597269

[Alberto-Girardi]

I will put the predictions later in the spreadsheet.

I might be a dissenting opinion, but I don't think that for now Ship reentering is the to priority. I think that demonstrating an in-flight relight and stable attitude are much more important. That is because SpaceX needs to start testing the refueling and also start deploying starlinks.

Even if the ship demonstrates a successful reentry, are the regulators going to allow them to try to land one on the second try overflying land? Where are the going to land it? The old landing pad is no more and all the currently built Ships have no legs. About tower catching, it has been years since we have heard something about that for the Ship. Also the ship has only 6 engines and is smaller than the booster, making losing one a lot less costly.



What IFT4 needs to demonstrate is the ability of Starship to be used to launch heavy payload, by showing that it can deorbit safely, thus allowing IFT5 to go into stable orbit, deploy starlink and maybe start to test refueling.
What I would look to about reentry is demonstrating that the Ship is aerodynamically stable at hypersonic speed. I don't think it would be uncontrollable (they made the Shuttle stable with 1970s technology so surely SpaceX would have been able to simulate this), but it would allow to tune the parameters for the next try.

Unfortunately booster recovery is far away (not a chance before late 2024) because of the risk to the tower, but making it work will drastically increase flight rate because soon flights will be limited by boosters. So demonstrating a soft and on target splashdown is IMO more important than a successful reentry.

Flight pairing: B11/S29 the 5th full stack couple

Timing:
Prelaunch ops: I would guess as fast if not faster than IFT3 for the booster, so I would expect a static fire ~1 month after launch, so April 15
I think S29 needs some work to its attitude control system, so I would guess for a static fire around the end of April.

From there I expect 1 week of checkouts, then stack for WDR on the second week of May and launch 1 week later.  I will give a symbolic date of May 20th, 1 year and 1 month after the first flight.

Expectation:

Flight path: same as IFT3 unless FAA gets really convinced it is safe to do a full orbit

Anything less than a perfect orbital insertion will be a big resounding failure. They have to show that at least it works as an expandable launcher.

I expect the booster to soft land. They seemed so close last time and they went from a failure to ignite the boostback burn on IFT2 to acing it. They are improving fast.

I expect S29 to mantain controll and to perform the in space burn. I think it will demonstrate a good entry initially. Problems will come with peak heating. I give it a 50/50. But if it fails, I think it is possible it would fail at peak deceleration because of damage to the structure done at peak heating.

What do you think about my predictions? Don't be afraid to critique, at the end we are just guessing.

Interesting to see how my predictions fared.

I was off by about 15 days in the launch date. But they static fired B11 10 days earlier than I though, and S29 1 month earlier. That is because most of the work on them was performed after the static fires and not before, as I predicted.

I didn't say it in the post but I was very sure there would not be an engine failure on ascent. I was surprised there was one. The orbit was achieved, and the booster splashed down. I was right on that. I perhaps was too pessimistic on the ship, because it splashed down at the end.