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Starship survives reentry during fourth test flight (spacenews.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If it's only the on-screen flap that had issues, hopefully that points to a minor fix instead of a major one. I wonder what sort of data they have on this. How many thermal tiles were lost on each flap? Where did the issues start? Are the other flaps alright? Hard things to track.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

I don't think loss of tiles was the problem, actually. There were vapor trails in various places which I thought at the time were something venting, but Scott Manley pointed out that they actually look like hot air seeping through the gaps in the hinges. That would have exposed unshielded metal to hot gas, bypassing the heat shield entirely