Starship Burns Up

Well, flight #3 of SpaceX's Starship did launch yesterday and did achieve orbital altitude & speed. Everything appeared to work perfectly this time. That, by itself, was a major achievement. 

Also, it did perform the three planned onboard engineering tests, although with mixed results. 

Unhappily, the normally reusable first-stage booster did not descend under its own power to the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. It did not slow its descent speed to zero and “pretend" to touch down at wave top altitude. Instead, it flew in a rather uncontrolled fashion and ended up crashing into the ocean at high speed.

Also, the upper-stage Starship did not achieve controlled flight back toward Earth. Thus the testing of the critical heat shield during the fiery reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere did not take place. This was a major disappointment. Scott’s post has video of all this.

Scott Manley’s post on this launch is attached. Please click patiently through a few advertisements at the beginning.

I look forward to the fourth flight of Starship in a few months.  SpaceX already has four assembled Starships and giant boosters in their factory that are awaiting launch.

Thanks for playing along with my rocket-ship-mania.

Dad, Paw, Bob, Robbie