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Couldn’t it just have been leftover burning kerosene rather than engine parts? If it started eating parts of the engine at the end of the burn I suspect it would have had a much harder landing. When Raptors do that in flight, the Starship usually doesn't survive, and it was only cause a Raptor melted in a static fire that we saw dripping metal.

Edited by RyanRising
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22 minutes ago, tater said:

(new phone wallpaper)

Thanks!

Oh yeah, and HUZZAH! for number 10!

See, these F9 launches and landings all the time are starting to get routine and boring, which is a good thing, really. Which is why the Starship program is going, to keep things spicy. Hopefully, SS/SH ops will become routine and boring in five more years. But the spicy must flow, in the form of Mun, Duna, Moon, Mars, and asteroid ops.

Edited by StrandedonEarth
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20 hours ago, RCgothic said:

We think that in order to go from up to belly down in a controlled manner a kick from the raptors is required. Therefore they can't just coast to apogee, which means they have to keep the speed down so as not to exceed the altitude limit.

Now this makes some sense, yes they could restart at AP,  but if under trust they have more control, and yes I get why they don't want to go supersonic. 
 

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New NSF article: https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2021/05/sn15s-success-spacex-next-steps-orbital-goals/

"Numerous options are on the table, ranging from delaying SN16’s campaign until after SN15 reflies, through tasking SN16 with a higher altitude target of 20 km, through to simply not flying the vehicle per a potential acceleration of moving to the orbital-class vehicles.
Notably, SN16 was moved deeper into the High Bay on Saturday, likely to make room for the stacking operations of the next Super Heavy prototype that will be required for the orbital tests.

The latter option would also impact SN17, which currently has its sections prepared for stacking operations – with the SN17 mid-LOX section recently staged outside the Mid Bay after pre-stacking work."

Given that we recently heard similar things from nextspaceflight.com (also a reliable source of spacex info) and that the third option is the only one allowing for uninterrupted work on the orbital tower, it seems more than possible that SpaceX actually follows that direction, skipping 17 and maybe even 16 and going all for orbit, which is now NET june from the initial NET july

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They wouldn't be testing the same thing.

Flight data is not as good as teardown data. Being able to teardown SN15 may have made SN16 and 17 unnecessary.

Whereas they can learn new things from SN20/BN3's orbital flight. As testing and flying SN16 or SN17 will interrupt work at the launch site it may be better to not push ahead with 16 and 17.

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Just now, Pastapower said:

Does anyone know what will happen to SN15?

SpaceX likely doesn't know yet. They will want to go over all their telemetry, examine the engines, etc, then think about what data they actually need. As the NSF article linked to above mentions, they also have the issue of the orbital launch facility. They are moving rapidly on the integration tower segment, and they will need to stack those, get the pad ready, plus the GSE tanks, etc, to support a launch campaign. Musk mentioned July as a possible launch date, which is shocking soon.

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Just now, tater said:

SpaceX likely doesn't know yet. They will want to go over all their telemetry, examine the engines, etc, then think about what data they actually need. As the NSF article linked to above mentions, they also have the issue of the orbital launch facility. They are moving rapidly on the integration tower segment, and they will need to stack those, get the pad ready, plus the GSE tanks, etc, to support a launch campaign. Musk mentioned July as a possible launch date, which is shocking soon.

Ok. It would be cool if they could make a spacex museum and put all successful prototypes in there for the public to see

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Also, as the steamroller continues:

May 15 Falcon 9 • Starlink V1.0-L27
Launch time: 2258 GMT (6:58 p.m. EDT)
Launch site: LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida
Just now, Pastapower said:

Ok. It would be cool if they could make a spacex museum and put all successful prototypes in there for the public to see

Kinda ginormous to take up space with it. They probably keep the first one that survives a trip back from orbit, maybe?

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Just now, Pastapower said:

And does anyone know if there is a possible launch date for sn20?

SN20 is supposedly the first orbital flight article SS.

Musk said July 1 as an aspirational launch date (51 days from now, not 416 days from now, lol). Seems unlikely, but later in the summer?

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