Starship’s tenth test has been a resounding success. The highest rocket in history took up a lot of expectation after three failed pitches, but this time one by one fulfilled the objectives of the mission. What surprised many was the orange color that the ship had when it merited in the Indian Ocean, a tone that we had not seen so far.
Extreme suffering. After displaying Starlink Satellites simulators for the first time, Starship 37 lit an engine in the exorbitant space. It was then that Spacex tested the structure of the ship. An especially hard reentry angle, a series of aggressive maneuvers with the ailerons and a deliberately incomplete thermal shield made the ship suffer, but never disintegrated or stop maneuvering.
Unlike flights 7, 8 and 9, which did not have a controlled reentry, flight 10 has allowed Spacex to collect an incalculable amount of data to improve Starship’s most critical and green part: Your reusable thermal shield. And it is precisely the thermal shield in the rocket belly that seems to have acquired an orange color after 26,000 km/ha 12 km/h. But how did that rusty tone occur if the thermal tiles are ceramic?
A buoy and a mystery. Although Spacex has not yet pronounced on the subject, the images of the Ship 37 issued live from a buoy in the Indian Ocean called the attention of fans and aerospace experts equally. While the ship’s belly seems to have churruscado, the main theories do not point to The tiles fall Or they were burned, but for something deposited on them.
The location of the experimental metal tiles at the vertex of the orange cone
A refrigerant leak. The hypothesis that has gained the most force is the one that points to one of the key experiments of this flight: a metal tile with active cooling In the upper part of the thermal shield. Unlike the usual ceramic tiles, which are passive insulators, this experimental piece leaves circular cohete refrigerant to dissipate heat.
The theory, supported by Analysts like Scott Manleysuggests that the tile with active cooling could have suffered a leak. The refrigerant fluid (perhaps methane of the rocket itself), by escaping and coming into contact with the incandescent plasma of the reentry, would have been burned and deposited throughout the fuselage, creating that characteristic feature of orange -shaped cone color that is appreciated in the images. In fact, the location of the experimental tile It coincides perfectly with the vertex of the orange area.
Other possibilities. A non -exclusive theory is that experimental metal tiles (there were others on board without active refrigeration) They will simply oxidize Due to the extreme temperatures of the reentry, leaving that trail of oxide color.
What seems clear is that we are not seeing the result of a ablation. Starship silica tiles are reusable insulating, not ablative shields that disintegrate by design. If the tiles had worn up to the point of exposing the ablative material underneath, we would be talking about a catastrophic failure of the system.
A torture laboratory. This visual result, far from being a failure, is the direct consequence of Spacex experiments for this flight. The Starship 37 has gone through an authentic test bench for the thermal shield, which Elon Musk himself has pointed out as The main technological stumbling block of the program.
On this flight, Spacex withdrew tens of tiles in key areas to see how the lower structure endured. At the same time, he added metal tiles and with active cooling to look for more resistant alternatives in areas of maximum thermal stress. And softened the edges of some tiles to mitigate the hot points observed in previous flights. In summary, the orange color of the Starship does not seem to be a sign of a catastrophic failure, but the visible footprint of an experiment taken to the limit.
Images | Spacex
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