Total Members Voted: 69
Voting closed: 10/07/2023 10:12 am
So S25 not having engine failures is unthinkable?
Quote from: eriblo on 09/10/2023 01:48 amSo S25 not having engine failures is unthinkable?It's covered in the poll: obviously "no in-flight anomalies" covers also upper stage operation. One could argue there could be <6 booster engine failures (allowing to proceed with the rest of the flight) and no upper stage failures, but I left it out in the interest of brevity.
I voted optimistically for no engine failure on the second stage. But really the situation isn't all that dramatically different than the first test flight. To repeat what I said on the first flight: a bad day -- the stack explodes at the launch pada good day -- the starship stack makes it past Max-Q before breaking upa very good day -- Booster 7 successfully separates from Ship 24 before there is some failurean excellent day -- Ship 24 makes it to orbit or the closest thing to thatan awesome day -- Booster 7 does a simulated landing in the Gulf of Mexico and Ship 24 makes it to orbita really awesome day -- after a partial orbit Ship 24 makes it down to the troposphere before breaking upa really, really awesome day -- after a partial orbit Ship 24 makes a simulated landing in the ocean as does Booster 7It's four months later. There has been great progress, but this is still applies to Booster 8 and Ship 25.
So, for IFT2, I would expect the stack could easily reach nominal stage separation with 3 engines out if the others were throttled up to 100%. This is due to no payload. We don't know if the remaining raptors on IFT1 were ever at full throttle. I would then expect anything more than 3 out would lead to a sub-nominal stage separation which might still have SS reaching the planned suborbit if it performed perfectly due to no payload.
a really, really awesome day -- after a partial orbit Ship 24 makes a simulated landing in the ocean as does Booster 7
Quote from: mandrewa on 09/12/2023 05:07 pmI voted optimistically for no engine failure on the second stage. But really the situation isn't all that dramatically different than the first test flight. To repeat what I said on the first flight: a bad day -- the stack explodes at the launch pada good day -- the starship stack makes it past Max-Q before breaking upa very good day -- Booster 7 successfully separates from Ship 24 before there is some failurean excellent day -- Ship 24 makes it to orbit or the closest thing to thatan awesome day -- Booster 7 does a simulated landing in the Gulf of Mexico and Ship 24 makes it to orbita really awesome day -- after a partial orbit Ship 24 makes it down to the troposphere before breaking upa really, really awesome day -- after a partial orbit Ship 24 makes a simulated landing in the ocean as does Booster 7It's four months later. There has been great progress, but this is still applies to Booster 8 and Ship 25.That's a really, really low bar.