Thursday, June 6, 2024

Chris Combs can ...

[...insert humiliating ritual here] This morning the SuperHeavy launched the Starship into a successful orbit and landed again (on the water). The Starship followed.

Zim has a rundown, which must be supplemented with Stephen Green. An engine was lost on the SuperHeavy but that didn't hurt; then another one failed on the way down. Also hard stresses affected the Starship itself, especially an orientation-flap. The stresses resulted in more stresses, like a cracked lens. Still: both vessels might have been reusable, if SpaceX wanted to keep that generation of either (which it doesn't).

So far I doubt the FAA can call Miss Happ. Frankly they shouldn't have rung her up for the third test either, but at least some saner heads over there rated it insufficient to block this test.

Starliner had taken off yesterday; this time, trying to get to the ISS. And... it did! - having spouted hydrogen leaks. It barely made it. Thus putting them on parity with (checks) the Raptor and Dragon except that these don't leak. It's like Starliner put humans in a test vehicle. As for the Atlas 5 that put the Starliner up there, that worked as well as the SuperHeavy did; excepting that they don't even try to retrieve the Atlas 5.

Meanwhile Axiom is reporting that on the assumption of a working Starship into orbit, which SpaceX have, yesterday's Artemis III Integrated Test looked good too.

Given all that, I decree that Starliner is now a test shuttle, such that on its return to Earth nothing valuable and nothing human be stored on it. To get the astronauts home I am afraid that NASA will need to get a Dragon up there.

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