sevenperforce

Hahaha! Great minds think alike. This was my version I quipped during the actual entry. Given how well it did even with the obvious disintegration of a lot of that flap, I think the concerns about lost tiles may have been overblown. Obviously it needs to keep its tiles for rapid reusability, but it's definitely not a lost cause. While the flap was starting to come apart, I found myself thinking hard about Columbia. We got to see something that no one has ever seen...except the astronauts on Columbia, maybe.

You got one of my few remaining upvotes for that Warthog reference. Clearly a good decision to go with four flaps instead of just the two of the original design.

That was absolutely breathtaking. Wow. I really really have no words. I can't believe that flap held.

HOLY FORKING STARK THOSE CRAZY PEOPLE DID IT

Okay, we've reached high-altitude hop regime! Subsonic!!!!! Relight? COME ONNNNNN

"And the plasma's red glare The tiles shredding in the air Gave proof through the dark That the ship was still there"

No visual signal but telemetry is still sending. Says that it is through re-entry MaxQ. If these engines light back up again I'm going to be SHOOK.

I'm guessing the other cameras are all completely kaput.

I think we just survived re-entry y'all

Loss of signal -- wait, no, it's still good!! I think we are through the plasma and still holding!!!!!

Down to under 3 km/s -- superheavy re-entry speeds!

Amazing view of this burn-through. Flap is just disintegrating but still holding!! That flap is FULL of flame and it's still holding rock-solid!

Loads of debris

Nothing like aurora. That's a combo of camera settings and chemical behaviors in the plasma -- oxygen and nitrogen. I'm seeing debris

ooooooh now some motion from the forward flaps! Adjusting attitude as it enters the thicker atmosphere. Still very well-controlled. He's explaining that they left a couple of tiles off of areas that aren't re-entry critical, with lots of instrumentation to see what the impact to the stainless is.

OMG, really really gorgeous plasma now that we are down in the slightly deeper atmosphere. Just absolutely rock-solid. I'm seeing some flashes and sparks though! Hypersonic body lift.

I am really, really impressed so far. I was expecting much more control movement through re-entry. Hate to jinx it but this is just picture-perfect so far. Let's hope the heat shield holds!

Seeing some more dynamic plasma flow in the close-up but it still looks painted-on in the wide shot. Truly impressive. Speed is dropping at 100 km/hr/sec.

Speed really starting to drop aggressively! Still rock-solid!

Impressed by how stable it is. I can barely see movement at all -- only the very slowest adjustments show me that it's not just a frozen video. Speed is starting to drop. Gorgeous plasma sheath. Keep in mind that the main camera is mounted on the forward flap, so the lack of movement means that it is very very stable.

Less movement on the flaps = good. Seems like it is rock solid so far.

We've got heating!! Beautiful cloud views.

Definitely better than the aternative! I'm keeping a close eye on speed. Altitude is dropping but speed is still increasing so there's no meaningful drag yet.

I can see it going over...something? Is that Madagascar?

The continued venting on the ship is interesting. I wonder if the short-term fix to the frozen RCS from IFT-3 was to just keep a slow vent through all gas thrusters during coast (similar to Centaur’s constant settling thrust) and thus avoid ice formation. Looks like Superheavy lost one perimeter engine on ascent and had one mid-ring engine relight failure during the landing burn. Notably that would have been the second relight for this engine; it turned off and restarted just fine during the boostback burn. Hard to speculate whether that might be physical damage from the overly aggressive re-entry (no entry burn makes it a lot hotter) or just general growing pains. Regardless, neither failure seemed to have any meaningful impact as both the ascent and the landing burn came off without a hitch. There did seem to be some debris coming up from the bottom during the landing burn though. Hard to know if that was impact or spalling off the water surface or overstressing of the structure. None of the engines showed problems so the debris might have been the strakes peeling off from a combination of aero forces and sudden acceleration. It looked like the booster actually executed a hover for a few moments there but it is hard to tell from that fisheye angle. Cautiously optimistic about survival of re-entry for Starship! Superheavy’s entry was obviously much more controlled this time around so if it was a thruster issue for IFT-3 then that should be better.