Business, Space, Technology and Society

IFT-5 Tomorrow? (Updated)

38 Comments

I just got this press release from SpaceX.

SpaceX is targeting Sunday, October 13 for the fifth integrated flight test of Starship from Starbase in Cameron County, Texas. The 30-minute test window opens at 7:00 a.m. CT.

Residents of Cameron County and those in the nearby area may hear loud noises resulting from the flight test.

At the time of launch, the rocket’s 33 Raptor engines may be audible while firing upon ignition and as the vehicle launches toward space. About eight to ten minutes after liftoff, the Super Heavy booster may attempt, if strict conditions are met, a return to launch site and tower catch on the pad at Starbase. Residents of Cameron County and those in the nearby area may hear one or more sonic booms during the return to launch site.

A sonic boom is a brief, thunder-like noise a person on the ground hears when an aircraft or other vehicle in the area flies faster than the speed of sound. The sonic boom does not present a health risk and what people experience will depend on weather and other conditions.

SpaceX’s live webcast will go live approximately 30 minutes before liftoff at spacex.com/launches. Live updates will also be available on X @SpaceX.

0700 CDT is 0500 PDT, so I’ll have to get up early.

[Sunday-morning update]

Well, that was pretty amazing. I’d call that a successful catch of the booster, albeit a little fiery. I’m assuming that wasn’t supposed to happen, but they’ll sort it out for the next flight.

Similarly, the explosion of the ship after the water landing probably wouldn’t have happened if it had landed upright on land, so that’s not necessarily an issue. I would think the next goal is to land it intact so they can inspect it to further improve the TPS.

[Update a few minutes later]

If they successfully test the doors on the next flight, this means that the vehicle could be operational for Starlink delivery very soon. I wonder why they didn’t do that test this time?

38 thoughts on “IFT-5 Tomorrow? (Updated)”

  1. That’s not early!
    It’s 0100 local time for me.

    All going well, this should be a very interesting and exciting flight indeed.
    In that case, it also makes one wonder what expansion they might make for flight-6, which I believe will be the final flight of Starship Block-1.
    Apparently there is already FAA authorization for flight-6 and it’s differences from flight-5, but what those are I do not know.

    1. I’m uncertain if they’re going to attempt a deorbit burn on Flight 5. They don’t need to do it for the mission, but demonstrating a deorbit burn seems like a requirement for going fully into orbit.

  2. Fingers crossed that the (overly?) ambitious scissors catch won’t total the launching tower on return…

  4. The critic now emerges. Lost a portion of a chine on the booster. Recovery maneuver needs works. If it were up to me (and it’s certainly not) I’d think they’d want to do the translation maneuver at a slightly higher altitude to stay above the tower and then come straight down for capture. But hey that’s just me. Starship came down very well. Able to be within camera shot of a buoy at the landing site. Seems like maybe some excessive heating at the flap hinge still. Need to focus on recovering these next. A lot of data to be gained.

    1. Also, should fire suppression equipment be added to the tower? Nothing worse than holding onto a flaming rocket you can’t do anything with. ?

    2. I didn’t see any missing chine parts. That small fire that persisted after the catch was coming from the quick-disconnect port. I think the methane inlet was leaking a bit. Something to add to the To Do list before IFT-6.

      1. OK could have been some bad info passed by the frat boys.
        Always things to work out. Wouldn’t be real otherwise.

        1. The frat boys were right. There was some damage to one chine just before the catch. I’ve had a chance to see a lot of additional video from different angles since making that post two days ago.

          The cause of the damage was unclear but it was definitely not due to striking any part of the tower. Looked more like some sort of relatively localized overpressure event. The chines cover a bunch of COPVs and associated plumbing so all the ingredients for a blowout were there. Perhaps SpaceX will offer an explanation at some point.

        1. Yes. The venting is apparently by design and the fire is just a non-injurious side-effect. The fact that SH12 was quickly put back onto the launch mount and the quick-disconnect was reattached with no human adjustment required suggests the fire caused no damage and can be regarded as SOP for future booster catches.

  5. As the Blessed Robert Anson Heinlein foretold, and that Chesley Bonestell foreshown.

    Suck on that, NASA, ROSCOSMOS, CSA

  6. A bit of quite minor roughness around the edges, but a very solid, and major, advance over IFT-4. The Booster catch, in particular, looked buttery smooth – much more so than I would have thought likely on a first try. No hesitations or notchiness at all.

    With the FAA seemingly no longer on the critical path, we will likely be seeing IFT-6 launching before year’s end and on-orbit propellant transfer testing in early 2025. 2025 bids fair to see enough additional Starship firsts to severely show up 2024. We might even see an unmanned test landing and subsequent lunar surface lift-off of an HLS Starship.

  7. Guys and gals, if you are working for another rocket company, get your resume in to SpaceX.
    That was AWESOME.

  8. Just amazed.

    Nothing of value was lost. The only thing that blew up is excuses for NASA and its budget.

    1. Don’t forget the FAA. Since everything seems to have gone right, their excuse to delay the next test will be highly creative and entertaining.

      Also, is it correct to assume that the hardware that allows catches like this weigh a lot less than landing legs and the associated hydraulics? I ask because I’ve never heard a good explanation for why a simple Falcon 9 -type landing isn’t good enough, but a significant weight reduction would be a good explanation for me.

      1. I think long term the desire is to build catch towers on Mars and Moon to reduce the amount of exhaust blast hitting the ground during the landing burn, but that may be either: a) no longer relevant, b) a fever dream that my brain concocted, or c) a little of both.

        There’s also the advantage to having the booster on the tower for immediate refueling and restacking rather than lift it on to a transporter, roll it from landing to launch site, lift it to the pad, etc.

        And a tower can be built, in theory, on an oil rig for aquatic launch sites, but, again, the goals have moved so many times over the years…

      2. Musk’s stated principles are “the best part is no part” and “anything that can be GSE should be GSE.” It should be obvious the two catch pegs on the booster are much lighter that the four landing legs on Falcon 9 (each the weight of a small car), much lest the bigger legs required for Super Heavy. A look: once it cooled off a bit, the chopstick set the booster right back down on the launch mount! One day soon: gas and go.

        1. To that end, the pegs are also stationary and require no additional mechanics to operate, unlike the legs (either Falcon-9 style or the flip-down legs of the early Ship test vehicles), so that’s even fewer parts.

  9. A lot of people laughed when Elon described the booster catch technique. The only people laughing now are us in awe and amazement. It was spectacular. My guess is Flight 6 will follow a similar mission profile but include a demonstration of propellant transfer and a deorbit burn. It will be the last of the Block 1 Starships, and closing out those milestones would be a fitting end for that series. It’s even possible they would test the cargo door like they did on Flight 3 but probably not.

    1. Prop transfer demonstration was also done (internally) on flight-3.
      Elon has also noted that a deorbit burn is not a concern – they have been practicing plenty of vacuum starts post-staging on both stages.

  10. I freely admit to being one of the people dubious of the “chopsticks” as an alternative to landing legs.

    I also thought that they could probably make it work eventually, but, like F9 landings, it would take a lot of failures first.

    But, they did it. First try.

    As for Starship itself, great landing. but, they again had burn-though at a flap hinge area, though not as bad as before. Sill bad, though. My take on that; the current design is pretty much unfixable in this regard. My guess is that a fix will require Starship 2.0, which has the flaps a little to leeward rather than on directly opposing sides. And, last I heard, Starship 2.0 will fly on flight 7 or flight 8 (I’ve heard it both ways).

    I do have a question though: Anyone happen to know how the aft body flap, and the ailerons, on the Shuttle was protected against this sort of hinge-area burn-through?

    1. Starship v.2 may be moved up to IFT-6 is the last I heard. I’d like to the see the last v.1 converted to the Starkicker (expendable) variant. How long would it take to build a Skylab-class space station out of spare parts?

      Not the one in the Smithsonian, I mean take a leftover Starship hull and build a hab inside it, with a few docking ports?

      1. I like the “starkicker” concept.

        One of the potential huge benefits of it, IMHO, is the ability to launch far more mass than currently possible to the required velocities for deep space probes. The Cassini mission was a case in point; had it been able to have a far higher fuel mass, it would have had a longer mission life.

        Also, I think it’s theoretically possible that Starkicker could achieve higher departure velocities, thus avoiding some of the need for grav-assist flybys that currently add years to some probe’s flight times.

        Could a V1 Starship be converted to Starckicker? Interesting! Hrmmm. Remove the flaps, heat shield, header tanks, and the non-vac engines, and you’ve shaved off a lot of mass. Replace the entire forward section with a lightweight jetisibable payload faring, and you’ve shaved off some more. It wouldn’t quite be Starckicker, because it would still have a far more robust structure than needed (thus superflous mass) but it’d still be vastly more capable than anything that’s ever existed before. Plenty, I think, to launch something like the Europa probe on a direct-to-Jupiter trajectory, thus shaving years of flight time off the mission.

    2. V2 Starships are already stacked, with the leeward forward flaps already installed. They are a bit longer than V1, and will fly with Raptor V3 engines.

  12. My son and I went down for the launch. It was epic! So amazing to see that booster flying down, getting larger and larger. At one point it looked like it was almost overhead and heading for us, but that was just an illusion. The landing sonic boom arrived just as the booster was settling into the catch arms and startled everyone! We were a bit preoccupied with the sci fi images before us.

    The launch is also amazing. Two things a video just can’t convey: how loud it is and how bright the flame is. We had seen a previous Starship launch but anticipation just added to the fun of seeing it again.

    The traffic jam over the causeway to head home was also epic! The island was chock full of people who came for the launch and all left at once. Think about the traffic leaving the stadium after the game, but then imagine there are only two lanes leaving the parking lot!

  13. Very exciting.

    As SpaceX moves through this liminal period many will wonder what the defining moment is. Was is this or that landing, solving this or that problem, or maybe it was this certain failure and the fixes for it. It could even be some event that hasn’t happened yet.

    Nothing is fated, so it makes sense to pick a milestone accomplishment as THE moment but the defining moment of SpaceX could be when Musk and Shotwell first shook hands.

  14. After this I think the Super Heavy booster deserves a real name.
    How about “Condor”? A really big version of a Falcon.

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