[ad_1]
Elon Musk occasionally posts clips from his video game on his social media platform The clipPublished on Friday, Captured by Reuters’ Joey Rowlett on XBut it’s not clear if the conversation between Musk and Starship engineers happened on the same day.
“I want to be really honest about the scary things that happened,” the unnamed engineer said as Musk played Diablo IV. He went on to explain that the misconfigured component did not have the “proper ramp-up time to increase rotational pressure” on the booster.
“We were one second away from this tripping and the missile was asked to stop and try to hit the ground next to the tower,” the engineer says.
“Cool,” Musk says in response. “Yes.”
The same engineer went on to say that just before starting the engine as the booster descended to the ground, a cover separated from the booster skin, apparently in a place where it had been spot welded. “We weren’t expecting exactly the right place, but that cover that was torn off was over a set of single-point failure valves that have to operate during landing burn. Fortunately, none of those or the belt were damaged, but we did tear that spine cover over some “Equipment that’s really important when the subsidence burn starts. We have a plan to address that.”
Musk was briefed on Starship’s fifth integrated test flight, referred to as IFT-5, which took place on October 13. SpaceX has set its most ambitious mission goals to date for this test, including returning the Super Heavy booster to the launch site and capturing it. With a pair of oversized “chopstick” arms protruding from the launch tower.
The company succeeded in doing so, and made history as a result. The full context of the conversation is unclear, as the clip posted on X is only about three minutes long, but it shows that even seemingly flawless rocket launches (and in this case, booster landings) can come perilously close to disaster. After each test, SpaceX is provided with “a significant amount,” in the engineer’s words, of post-flight data to guide future tests.
“We are trying to achieve a reasonable balance between speed and mitigating risks to the booster” before the next flight attempt, the engineer said. Engineers note that this will be the first Starship test flight for which the schedule has not been set by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). While SpaceX has typically outpaced the regulator in terms of launch readiness, against the FAA’s launch license approval schedule, the FAA has already given approval to IFT-5 and IFT-6 at the same time.
[ad_2]