SpaceX’s Starship V3—still a work in progress—mostly successful on first flight

SpaceX has more to prove before flying Starship all the way to low-Earth orbit.

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[Jedakiah]

You can actually watch an engine RUD on the booster during the flip maneuver. The booster had flipped around enough for the ship's camera to catch it. It took out a significant number of its neighbors.

Unfortunately this means their removal of engine shielding might not be wise. V2 with its engine shields may have been able to survive such an engine RUD.


View: https://x.com/DJSnM/status/2058030864379129921

 

[Jedakiah]

The satellite view was very cool, but one thing I was a little confused about: they said on the broadcast that they were doing that to be able to inspect the heat shield. But the satellites are released from the top of the ship (the side without heat tiles). Was it supposed to do a flip maneuver after they released, or did they mean they wanted to inspect the few tiles they stuck on the top of the flaps?

On the live stream, Dan said that Starship was going to do a "pirouette" soon after the release. That would give them a 360 degree view.

If you watch the roll indicator after releasing those satellites, you can see the ship turn over. The background was pitch black when they did it. Night time over that part of Earth.

 

[Jedakiah]

Does anyone know why their warm gas RCS thrusters had a blue tinge? They had a fairly continuous vent of white out of the side, presumably boil off from the forward part of the methane tank. When the RCS thrusters would fire they were consistently a very different color. But shouldn't they be the same gas coming from the same tank? Is it just a difference in pressure causing this?

One example is visible in the timestamped video here.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRi55GyADv8&t=2903s