tater

I don't think it's simple, lol, I do think it's likely what they try.

He's an apostate.

I want that old SS hop video angle (that last buoy shot was close).

Nah, it's not the same as ascent. They can do a reentry burn placing the ship safely in the Gulf (even were it to blow up). After crossing land—high enough that there is a 0% chance of debris on land because of momentum, it initiates a "boostback" burn of short duration reshaping the trajectory close to the beach. Then it lands like the booster. Yes, this will take a lot more props than if they had a west coast pad. They bought 2 a few years ago, then abandoned doing that.

Yeah, I think they need to demonstrate an accurate reentry burn first—their suborbital trajectory, then EDL is clearly spot on, they landed next to a preplaced bouy.

Cool image: Crew launches are a long way off,IMO. As for a SS catch, a reentry with the terminal phase over land is required for the Gulf. This image looks like a tilt-shift image because the heat has blurred so much of the field of view. Awesome:

I'd prefer to simply talk about SpaceX stuff. It's important to notice derails exclusively come from one POV that feels the need to interject politics. Following the rules apparently means that the polite people just ignore political bombs dropped, never dropping any themselves (because we read and understood the rules). Then there will be a cleansing—the judge telling the jury to ignore what they already heard. Guess that's the playbook. ObSpaceX:

Funny, the same people here brought up the same problems BEFORE Musk had any connection at all to the President elect, and indeed while he was an enemy of the current President (who intentionally shunned/targeted his companies (EV tax credit was designed to not apply to tesla, they only got it by dropping prices since unlike their competitors, they don;t lose money on every car they sell and had the margin to do so)). An enemy for thinking people should not be unpersoned on twitter (I had my twitter locked for an unremarkable reply stating a self-evident truth back in the day that was considered wrongspeak). So these claims are BS. Not sure what any of that has to do with the FAA, the problem SpaceX—and other launch providers—currently has with the FAA is one of efficiency, not safety requirements. When it takes longer to get a 10 page ruling than it takes to build a complete Starship stack, there's clearly something wrong at the agency writing the document. What is wrong could simply be lack of staff commensurate with the current volume of launches, but regardless it needs to be addressed. That outfit whose name escapes me working on in space mfg cited the same problems with their reentry capsule. Clearly it needs regulation as they drop a capsule into the western desert in the US, but they are required to do an analysis of how the capsule might interact with buildings along the entry track should it fall short. That's a fine average calculation to do to ballpark safety margins, but the CEO said they have to redo it every flight looking at the typical houses under that particular track. So if it heads to Utah via San Diego, they need to do calcs for tile roofs, via Oregon maybe cedar shingles. Obviously they could just have been asked to do it once with calcs for a bunch of generic roof types and put the results in a table. If BO gets their act together, they need to jump from NG-1 to a current F9 flight rate if they want to get Kuiper up. FAA Space people were built up to deal with a total number of launches in a year that is exceeded in a month now. We get it, the X man has a different political POV than you, and that makes him very bad, and a unique risk. Regarding the hazard zone, I think they have an area defined where there is likely debris from a failure at the altitude aircraft operate within where they have a "keep out" for some length of time. Everywhere outside that along the flight path is ALSO a risk for ALL space launches, and always has been—and you use ATC to get aircraft out of the track should an anomaly occur. They don't make all aircraft avoid the ground track of uncontrolled Chinese boosters indefinitely—they might divert some aircraft once they know there is a decent chance of debris at <50,000ft.

Do you trust Boeing? Do you trust Lockheed Martin? Raytheon? Do you trust elderly, demented (in the clinical sense) people who have very large amounts of power? Sierra Space has said since "go" that they want a crewed Dream Chaser—we have a Sierra thread, odd that I never see concerns in that thread that one day in the future they might foist a crew version on people, and maybe someone might get hurt... I wonder if there is a pattern to what causes all the other entities to be ignored, and one to have focus?

I don't see them "declaring it safe" being a thing with few flights. I also don't see the incoming NASA Admin hopping aboard as a private citizen in the next 4 years—and he was presumably the volunteer, though not paid, he'd actually pay for the ride. So far the 2 SpaceX engineers that flew Dragon seemed pretty amped to do so, I doubt offering Dragon rides would require corporate pressure. The original Boeing astronaut bailed on CST-100 as I recall...

Love posts dropped that should not have been posted (because they break the rules in the way only 1 side of a multiside political system ever does here), but you can't reply to without violating the same rules that were violated in the first post that you really want to reply to. But I can reply to this post at least... What engine failure? The one on the SH boostback that failed to restart, then restarted just fine on landing? Nothing about either of those burns would be simulated in a static fire at all—a static fire is a sort of analog simulation, after all. We have no idea why it didn't restart for boostback, maybe more teething issues with slosh/ice? Clearly it didn't matter (they have loads of engines, and engine out capability is a good thing). I would assume this would be the case. Course the retroactive assessment of early Shuttle flights was that the LOC probability was 1:9, so if anyone is brave enough to take that sort of risk who am I to say no? Related to the part of my reply that is NOT a reply to you, what's with "will call them out on this BS"? This BS? Some current BS regarding crew safety? I'm confused, SpaceX is no where near launching crew on Starship (and the risks for lunar ops are different (better in some ways, worse in others I imagine).

Yeah, it's old man yelling at the sky nonsense you're dealing with. My own take would be that "industry standard" is meaningless. First principles, you'd want to test what you can test on the ground, simulate what can be simulated—and testing should be designed in part to calibrate simulations, then fly for what cannot be adequately tested on the ground. SpaceX famously tests things end to end on the ground. They built an entire F9 control package that they can test on the ground—the sort of thing that would have caught the clock issue with CST-100 on Atlas V. This allows them to swap in new elements, and test on a simulated flight. They do the same I am sure with SS/SH. A "full duration static fire" contains some substantial multiple of the risk of an actual launch, and gives real world data that mirrors flight for just the first few seconds. The rest of the fire would be effectively useless. No loads on the vehicle, no maneuvering (slosh, etc). Pointless—but dangerous! They don't do it because it's idiotic to do it.

That bogus N-1 comparison is still a thing? Yeesh. In the 60s their ability to simulate, well, anything, was near 0, so the choice was run ground tests they could, even if not really applicable to flight—because it was the tool they had—or fly. These days once the engine is steady state, real life data is there, and for flight, simulation is far better than a long, useless static fire. Note that all telemetry, including engine states feeds their simulation model for the engines. Each flight test lets them know how their model compares to actual flight characteristics—which allows the model to be refined.

This is true for every rocket incident. How would FAA possibly lead an investigation? Tap one of the many highest level rocket engineers they employ? Use their massive infrastructure to test rocket components? Good thing the very best and brightest aerospace engineers graduate and immediately apply to FAA, then SpaceX, BO, etc get the dregs.

Doesn't even look real:

It's important to note that the engine and fuel system failures after IFT-1 were in a way that no amount of static testing would ever have discovered. And some of the IFT-1 failures might have been FOD related—so doing the static fire might cause the failures. Also, IFT-1 had the least modern engines ever flown on SS, they are constantly improving them. I say "engine and fuel system" very intentionally—an engine failure means something entirely within the engine. The tricky bit has been operating them during extreme forces on the vehicle: g loads from negative to positive (negative removed via hot staging), sideways accelerations, supersonic airstreams into engine bells, etc. Static testing this vehicle would self-evidently be a stupid waste of time—a horse that has beaten long past it being dead.

That's the downcomer for S33 per Zack Golden, so my claim assumes he's correct on the vehicle ID.

We know for sure it involved new changes. The downcomer changed to 3 downcomers. So much of the nitty-gritty engine plumbing at the bottom changed completely with this vehicle I would expect.

Controlling the flight path of aircraft is their business (or whoever runs ATC), not SpaceX's. The reality is that for any new rocket, or just any experimental rocket (apparently Shuttle was experimental it's entire lifetime?) debris might rain down along the entire orbital path at any time, though certainly upon reentry (for something orbital, like Shuttle, & hopefully SS soon), but during launch until orbit is a certainty. Having a mechanism to warn/redirect aircraft in real time for such a threat makes sense. That's interesting if you think about it. Engine out situations, for example, where the burn to orbit is longer. That means that the hazard area for any launch should probably extend the distance to an entry/reentry (which word, when not orbital?) zone for a maximally long ascent with engine(s) out. SS engine cutoff was supposed to be at T+8:53. How many engines could be out and still make orbit by a longer burn? This presumably moves the hazard area East, and needs to include the reentry part, obviously. The question is if planes need to be rerouted around the entire hazard area (and for longer launch windows this might be troublesome), or if close to the pad it's a no go the whole time, then at some point where the warning time of a mishap is longer, they are in an area where they have to expect to be redirected at any moment (what seems to have happened). Wonder if launch sites could provide downrange radar to pipe into ATC systems? Maybe a radar picket ship such that precise hazard warning could be fed to ATC, and they know what is and is not harmless? Until space travel is airline level routine, I have to think of all rocket launches as "experimental" I guess. The chance of failure being orders of magnitude higher than that of aircraft—and more aircraft losses are pilot error, not mechanical failures.

That map I showed was some guy's guestimate of debris, SpaceX apparently has a different view: