SpaceX's Starship megarocket blasted off on its latest test flight, with President-elect Donald Trump joining Elon Musk to witness the spectacle firsthand in the latest sign of their ever-closer ties.
Are we talking about the same flight I watched today? It made it through re-entry and made a controlled, powered, soft splash down exactly where it was supposed to.
It was a suborbital flight. They never accelerated to the orbital speed, hence the apogee was ballistic and upon “reentry”, the vehicle only experienced negligible heatup.
A real atmospheric reentry from orbit is the biggest technological challenge in return vehicles, and they still have to do that with Starship
The hardest part of a real orbit is not burning up on re-entry. They skipped that part so far, for their most fragile rocket.
Are we talking about the same flight I watched today? It made it through re-entry and made a controlled, powered, soft splash down exactly where it was supposed to.
It was a suborbital flight. They never accelerated to the orbital speed, hence the apogee was ballistic and upon “reentry”, the vehicle only experienced negligible heatup. A real atmospheric reentry from orbit is the biggest technological challenge in return vehicles, and they still have to do that with Starship