Finally, after several postponements and even a scrub During the countdown, flight 12 of the SpaceX Starship has been able to take place. Elon Musk’s company has considered it a success, taking into account its complexity and everything that could have failed. However, it should be noted that it has been a partial success. The performance of the Starship S39 has been very good, but the Super Heavy B19 rocket has had some incidents. So many that they end up disintegrating upon re-entry into the atmosphere. Logically, this implies that there is a lot of work to do before the next flight.
Which went well. The launch occurred successfully at 22:30 UTC (00:30 Spanish peninsular time) on Friday, May 22. It was achieved reach a thrust of 8,240 tons, double that achieved by the SLS rocket that NASA is using in the Artemis program. Even the acceleration was greater than expected. The separation of stages occurred properly and the ship fulfilled what was expected, landing in the Indian Ocean as planned. The release of Starlink mockups traveling as payload on Starship was also properly carried out.
What went wrong. One of the biggest innovations of Starship Flight 12 was the introduction of version 3 of its Raptor engines. There were a lot of hopes for them, but some have not worked as well as could be expected. The first failure occurred 1 minute and 42 seconds after takeoff, when one of the outer ring engines of the Super Heavy rocket shut down. This consists of 3 central motors, an outer ring with 19 motors and an intermediate one with 11. The failure in the outer ring was already a relevant incident, but it was not the worst.
The separation of the two stages occurred at 2 minutes and 30 seconds and precisely there it was seen how the ship’s 6 engines partially burned the surface of the rocket. At that point, the Super Heavy’s engines began to turn on, but some did not activate. 8 seconds later, one of the engines in the intermediate ring exploded, affecting several of the engines surrounding it. With the entire engine system damaged, only 5 of the intermediate ring engines were ignited during the return burn, so the rocket was unable to brake properly during reentry, which occurred at 1,450 kilometers per hour. The rocket disintegrated and what was left of it impacted the ocean 300 kilometers from the place planned by SpaceX.
There were also failures on the ship. Although most of the failures occurred in the Super Heavy rocket, there was also an incident with the engines of the Starship ship. This consists of 3 vacuum engines in the center and 3 sea level engines around it. The difference between them is that those in the center are prepared to operate in conditions of spatial vacuum.
Since there is no atmospheric pressure, They can have larger nozzleswhich allow greater thrust with the same fuel. On Starship Flight 12, one of those 3 engines shut down early, so to compensate, it was necessary to keep the sea level engines on for longer than planned. At least it was a mistake that SpaceX engineers were able to correct.
Most of the failures were concentrated in the engines
And now what? As SpaceX has pointed out, this has been a partial success. There have been many points of the mission that have gone perfectly, but it is clear that there is a lot of room for improvement. To begin with, some questions should be asked, such as whether the shielding system that the engines previously had had prevented the explosion that caused the rocket to disintegrate.
In version 2, the external piping system It left the engine so exposed that each of them had individual shielding. In version 3 this shielding has been considered unnecessary when improving that space plumbing system. However, it is clear that it will be a point to review. On the other hand, it will be necessary to study step by step the on and off systems that have not worked properly.
Next challenges. On upcoming flights, SpaceX will have to meet several challenges. The first will be to demonstrate the possibility of doing an orbital ignition. It was planned to fire one of the engines individually in orbit, as it is a key step for orbital insertion and controlled returns to Earth. Unfortunately, given the problems that were occurring with the engines, the plan was finally cancelled.
On the other hand, it remains a challenge rocket recoverywithout disintegrating. And, finally, we will have to try to make these vehicles quickly reusable, as the Falcon 9 is now. In short, Starship flight 12 has been a success, but there is a lot of work ahead. SpaceX should not rest on its laurels if it wants to stay alive your lunar dream.
Image | SpaceX
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