Stuff that’s hard to do (Starship prototype SN10 flies)

Here’s Scott Manley’s really helpful post-mission analysis
(go full-screen)

Watch for brown puffs in the exhaust and the different-color exhausts (blue vs yellow) on ascent.
That’s all my uncalibrated eyeballs noticed until the flamey thing around the skirt during the landing burn.


And so ends the official Space-X live coverage,
tilted and still on fire

But wait, there’s more!
About 9-min after landing,
that curious flamey thing took over

Ain’t sayin’ Gidney did it
Then again, ain’t sayin’ he didn’t

(What? Nah, not Marvin. He’s been seen back on Mars. Wouldn’t put it past Ming, though)

Falcon-9 (Starlink-20) launched and landed successfully last night;
but the vids were limited and boring, so I didn’t include ‘em here

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7 Comments!

  1. Thunderbottom
    Posted March 3, 2021 at 7:58 pm |

    Wow! It almost sorta has the same smoky exhaust plumes as the rocket ships in the old “Flash Gordon” serials!

  2. dick, not quite dead white guy
    Posted March 3, 2021 at 9:36 pm |

    Methane. Must have been the cows’ fault.

  3. DougM (Browncoat)
    Posted March 4, 2021 at 12:02 am |

    Thunderbottom ^1
    See my speculation at the end of the update

  4. Henk Vandenbergh
    Posted March 4, 2021 at 5:47 am |

    This is what testing is all about.
    Kudos to Elon and his team.

  5. Thunderbottom
    Posted March 4, 2021 at 5:42 pm |

    I was rather irritated by one of the narrators laughing when the ship blew up. After it successfully went through the test flight and stuck the landing, it blew up on the pad a few minutes later and wound up a crumpled, charred mess. I’m sure that the SpaceX people in the control room were just devastated. At least he didn’t add “It blowed up real good!”

  6. DougM (Browncoat)
    Posted March 4, 2021 at 7:44 pm |

    TB ^
    These commentators have been at this almost 24/7 for weeks at a time going wayyy back to StarHopper.
    They were hyped-up by the event which was going so dang well up to that point.
    The flight was a no-kidding triumph, and their reaction was from a high, not a low.

    But, yep, on the cultural ref

  7. Bobo the Hobo, Senior Fellow at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies
    Posted March 5, 2021 at 5:26 am |

    Anyone who points and laughs at Space-X explosions would be well-advised to remember NASA’s early failures during the 50’s. Space-X is a private company funded by one man; NASA was funded entirely by the U.S. government

    Kudos to Elon.