SpaceX’s Starship rocket system reached several milestones in its second test flight before the rocket booster and spacecraft exploded over the Gulf of Mexico.
I wonder what the simulation showed was going to happen compared to the actual flight. Would give you a real metric of progress.
If the simulation showed a problem, they could have fixed it before launch. I’m guessing they don’t have a enough data to make a super high fidelity integrated model for all phases of fight, so they’d break down the sections individually. But integration always brings extra challenges.
So they don’t have a physicist on staff? Or several? We have known the math for rocket science for some time. What data is it they need? When even NASA in the sixties has simulators.
I’m sure they have tons. But we don’t know the full thermo areo dynamics at hypersonic speeds and complex geometries, especially their effect on unconventional control surfaces across huge temperature and speed ranges. Some military companies have even bought flights on electron to get high altitude hypersonic velocity data on how the air behaves in that regime.
So rocket science…the thing the world has been doing since the end of WWII. Weird how other rockets don’t have this problem…
You know of any other companies doing a belly flop maneuver? Or a reusable first stage with hot staging?
How reusable? NASA had recoverable boosters How does math and physics change based on goals?
NASA has never used hot staging.
eh… it looks like hot-staging still has some bugs to work out, but the 2nd stage worked just fine (and since that’s the part that matters, the end fate of the first stage is irrelevant)
good test all in all
