Flight 7 review - Starship has failed
Flight 7 of Starship lifted off at 4:37 pm CDT, but what should’ve been more than an hour of tests, demonstration, and excitement, quickly turned into an 8-minute mission, featuring a successful catch of Booster 14, and the loss of Ship 33 during SES-1.
Note: the picture in the cover was taken by John Kraus.
Pre-launch
Several operations need to occur before the launch, and we’ll walk through them here: the first thing is clearing of the pad, beach, and road, and the first sign of that was at T-6h55m, when the soft closure point started to be set at the start of Highway 4; however, cars were still leaving the pad, since it took about half an hour for all the cars to leave it. Subsequently, at T-5h57m, the chopsticks started to open and rise, reaching their catch position just 10 minutes later. About half an hour later, at T-5h18m, the landing rails heightened. The next and final step was the chilling of the tank farm and propellant lines, starting at T-4 h for the ground tanks, and then at T-1h20m for the propellant lines for the Booster (OLM) and the Ship (tower). This was followed by cryogenic propellant loading onto the vehicle, starting at T-45m54s for the Ship and T-41m24s for the Booster (you can see the precise timeline on our other article). SpaceX started the stream at T-30m, and we learned a few different things:
- SpaceX confirmed that R314, the pi/pie engine, will be the one to be reflown on Booster 14.
- SpaceX confirmed the flight profile of Flight 7.
- SpaceX also made a recap of the Block 2 upgrades
At T-19m40s, the engine chill procedure began: it involves running part of the cryogenic propellant through the turbomachinery of the Raptor engines to cool them down gradually and avoid thermal shocking at ignition; then, propellant load wrapped up at T-3m20s for the Ship and T-2m50s for the Booster, and with the final GO for launch from the Flight Director and the activation of the Water Deluge System, Starship Flight 7 was ready to go:
Launch!
Starship lifting off. Credit: Tyler Gray
At T-2s all 33 Raptor engines successfully ignited, marking the first time ever that a reflown engine (R314 on Booster 14, previously flown on Booster 12) flew for the second time! Just a few seconds later, the full stack lifted off from the launch pad, heading for the skies! This marked the start of the Block 2 era! The ascent was seemingly successful, but at T+36s, a piece of steel started to come off from the Ship’s body, above the forward dome; this started to concern some people, but the flight continued and reached Max-Q at T+1m20s. Then, at T+2m36s, Booster 14 cut off 30 out of its 33 Raptor engines, keeping the 3 central Raptor engines lit, and then Ship 33 ignited all its Raptor engines successfully, for the first time in flight in the Block 2 history. The 2 immediately separated and Booster 14 ignited only 12 out of 13 engines for the boostback burn; many thought that this was the end for a Booster catch, but SpaceX confirmed at T+3m29s that Booster 14 was GO for a return.
Booster descent
As soon as the boostback burn ended, the hot staging ring separated from the Booster, as it started descending toward the tower. Meanwhile, at T+4m40s, a camera pointing at a forward flap of the Ship showed a little bit of vibration, not seen previously. But going back to the Booster, it continued to descend, maneuvering itself with the grid fins as the plasma and heat of reentry accumulated in the engine bay; at T+06m30s, at a height of 1 km and a speed of 1247 km/h, all 13 inner engines ignited for the landing burn! They then switched to just the inner three engines 8 seconds later, and Booster 14 maneuvered itself into the chopsticks, becoming the second Booster to be caught successfully!
Booster 14 during the catch. Credit: Bocachicagal
Ship ascent and coast
Unfortunately, Ship 33 didn’t make it to SECO… other than the piece of steel flying away and the flap vibration, the first major problem was the cut off of one of the central Raptor engines of the Ship at T+7m40s, more than 1 minute before SECO. When SpaceX showed the flapcam, a fire was seen in the central hinge attachment point of one of the forward flaps, and this was followed by the cut off on one sea-level engine and one RVac engine at T+8m3s… a T+8m18s another RVac was shut off, leaving Ship 33 with just 2 engines; this number went down to 1 after the last sea-level engine was cut off at T+8m24s… lastly, telemetry of Ship 33 was lost at T+8m26s, at an altitude of 146 km and a speed of 21.317 km/h, about 30 seconds before SECO.
Ship 33 reentering the atmosphere after its breakup. Credit: Deal Olson
What happened? What’s next?
Unfortunately, Flight 7 is to be considered a failure. While Booster 14 performed pretty much nominally, showing engine out capabilities and performing the second catch of the Starship program, Ship 33 did not do so well. The primary mission was all revolved around getting the Ship to its suborbital trajectory and conducting the several demonstrations and experiments; this milestone was not reached, as Ship 33 experienced an RUD (Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly) just before SECO, reentering the Earth’s atmosphere under the eyes of many people and witnesses. This is a different trend, we could say, from our habit of seeing every Starship flight improve since Flight 1; but we need to remember, failures happen, especially with new vehicles (such as Block 2 Ship). Unfortunately, this is a setback for SpaceX, but they gathered some data on the performance of the vehicle, and will make improvements based on that same data. We have witnessed steel flying away, flap vibration followed by a fire, and the reasons could be a lot, so we will wait for additional SpaceX confirmation, and make a dedicated article later on. The FAA will most likely want an investigation, and this means that Starship may not be flying for a while… but don’t worry, it won’t be an awfully long while; we hope to see Starship back on the pad in a couple of months, when SpaceX will have learned from their data and fixed the problems. Because remember, there’s not success without failure!
