General_Martok wrote:This is my sole concern with the design, it's that flip to vertical at a pretty low height which then relies on the engines firing up correctly; even once they appear to have it nailed on I'd still be nervous. Musk has said that he wants there to be hundreds of Starship flights before people are allowed on board - that's great but even when it appears to be working perfectly there is still no room at all for error. There doesn't seem to be an easy way around it either because it's all down to saving weight on fuel - the belly flop descent is designed to increase drag and slow down the Starship (it's a lot heavier than the Falcon 9 so a vertical unpowered descent would be too fast), but then the Starship needs to flip to vertical at a height of about 1km for landing. If two out of three engines fail (two are needed for the flip) or there's an issue with the fuel supply then the Starship is toast. I believe that later iterations will eventually have hot gas thrusters to assist with the flip so hopefully that will make the manoeuvre more reliable too. |
#12862945, By RobAnybody Live Space Stuff Notification Thread
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RobAnybody 2,892 posts
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