Flight 10: A Wild Success
At the start of this year expectations were high for SpaceX's Starship. They weren’t being met. After incrementally improving from flights 1 through 6, flights 7, 8, and 9 seemed like big steps backward.
For most of this article I’ll be discussing the second stage of Starship, known as “Ship” most commonly. What most people fail to realize is the Block 2 version of Ship had many new hardware design changes; plumbing, tanks, electrical systems, flap placement, heat shield tiles, etc. It looked similar but was a very different vehicle. The public expected more success but, as they witnessed, this wasn't happening. SpaceX had to resolve all issues that plagued Block 2 before their next launch, and they did.
Flight 10 was the culmination of many months of effort, and despite earlier setbacks, a massive win. Lessons were learned, design changes made, and vehicles flown. As Block 2 made it further and further, it was clear the iterative test program was functioning as intended. Was it frustrating to watch? Definitely. But behind the scenes inside Starbase problems were analyzed, worked, and ultimately solved.
As Starship sat on the pad beneath golden afternoon skies above Texas the tension was palpable. Two scrubs in a row had built the anticipation to new levels, not to mention the previous failures that added to it. Finally the clock struck T-0, 33 Raptor engines ignited, clouds of steam billowed from beneath the launch mount and Starship lifted off. At every milestone the vehicle performed as planned; launch, stage separation, second engine cutoff, payload door opening, Starlink deployment tests, engine relight, vehicle reentry, flap control authority tests, and the flip maneuver to a powered touchdown in the Indian ocean. The precision with which they accomplished this is incredible.
Flying the largest manmade object halfway around the world, through space, and hitting a target a few meters wide while performing supersonic maneuvers demonstrates mind blowing levels of accuracy. The Ship survived, no explosions (unplanned anyway), no engine failures (just one on Booster but that's fine), no leaks (maybe), no loss of control (in fact an incredible display of control with the flap test), culminating in beautiful perfection. Touch down was smooth and Ship fell over, as expected, erupting into a fireball upon hard contact with the water. Applause erupted from the control room and it appeared that SpaceX was back on track. There will be many lessons learned from this flight as a result of the experiments and tests performed. The engineers finally have more flight data to pour over.
I would like to point out that Block 2 is currently following the same success path as Block 1; two failures, a partial success, and finally full success with Flight 10. So what’s next? The last Block 2 Ship has yet to fly, and then SpaceX moves on to Block 3, which is the next large upgrade for Booster and Ship. Hopefully these follow a more rapid success cadence than previous versions, for our nerve’s sake. As the program marches forward, the vision of making life multiplanetary becomes more real. Excitement is guaranteed. I'll be watching for sure.
