Starship – IFT 2 was a Success

12 months ago

Complete SpaceX stream on Twitter:
Watch Starship’s second integrated flight test

Watch Starship’s second integrated flight test → https://t.co/bJFjLCiTbK https://t.co/cahoRQ72lm
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 18, 2023

Scott Manley: Starship & Superheavy Become The Biggest Rocket In Space.... Before Exploding

Super Heavy Booster

The test was very successful. All 33 Raptor engines were lit during the whole first phase of flight. Super Heavy Booster successfully burned to the end, survived hot-staging and started to perform a flip maneuver and reignited engines to eventually land in the Gulf of Mexico. It self-destructed shortly thereafter. It seems the booster termination happened because one by one, engines started to shut down.

So, if we can trust the telemetry from Starship’s flight, there was a significant negative g observed on the booster during staging. More force was transmitted to the booster than anticipated during hot staging, this would have generated a lot of propellent slosh that may have…
— Scott Manley (@DJSnM) November 18, 2023

Preferred theories why the booster eventually failed is [hydraulic shock/water hammer]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_hammer) destroying piping or sloshing of fuel introduced gas bubbles into engines.

Starship

Starship burned until terminal guidance, shortly before the the engines would have shut down. Signal was lost eventually. SpaceX team suspects that it also self-destructed.
A large chunk of the nose cone has been seen reentering near Puerto Rico.

@SpaceX @austinbarnard45 @WholeMarsBlog @SawyerMerritt @elonmusk

Starship Entry in Puerto Rico 🇵🇷 pic.twitter.com/L6H1YZbW3E
— Elias J. Sobrino Najul (@eliassob) November 18, 2023

Launch Pad

It looks like the rocket didn’t do much earth-works this time around as can be seen from RGV Aerial Photography’s remote cam:

Starship IFT2 as seen from our remote camera!

Cameras survived!! pic.twitter.com/XyrmkBsgYK
— RGV Aerial Photography (@RGVaerialphotos) November 18, 2023

Bolstering this assertion is a second flyover by RGV Aerial Photography after the launch. The pad seems to be intact. At least from a superficial standpoint. Nothing like the first attempt:

Starbase Weekly, Ep. 99 Post Launch Flyover

We still need to find out how well the launchpad fared during this launch. It obviously sustained the beating much better than the first go-around.

Comparing Trajectories

Comparing the most powerful Falcon Heavy configuration versus IFT 1 and IFT 2 during the booster phase of the flight until stage separation.

Speed comparison:

Altitude comparison:

Media Coverage

Media is doing its best to badmouth all over SpaceX’s test flight. AGAIN:

Ok y’all the headlines are gonna be terrible you know the drill pic.twitter.com/kTur5cI9DF
— Chris Combs (iterative design enjoyer) (@DrChrisCombs) November 18, 2023

This is the reason why SpaceX can run laps around the incumbents because they don’t bother with negative headlines like these.

Outlook

It looks like the third attempt is a lot closer than seven months. Limited damage to infrastructure and the environment will put the ball in SpaceX’ corner. Supervising agencies probably will have a lot less to say this time around. And they won’t need to fear a lot of backlash after this launch.