Why no catch? SpaceX reveals BIG secrets about Starship Flight 6!

That was incredible! Starship launched Flight 6, and it didn’t go quite perfectly. But  what does that mean?

Is SpaceX advancing, or was this a step back? How did the launch  go? Why did they try to break the ship, and why was a banana involved?

Here’s the complete  breakdown of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 6! Enjoy! My name is Felix.

Welcome to What About It! ? Let’s go for launch!

Starship Updates They actually managed to do it again! After  only a little over a month, SpaceX has once again shown why it is the space industry leader. Starship, the world's largest and most powerful rocket, has launched for a sixth time in a  record amount of time, beating the previous record turnaround time for a super heavy class  launch vehicle set by the Saturn V in 1969.

This is the first step towards  SpaceX's goal of rapid launch cadence for the world's largest rocket. SpaceX has put a lot of work into getting this far, and they didn't just get here overnight. Although some things were done practically overnight.

When we last left this  vehicle, it still had one more test to complete before it could launch. And SpaceX decided to Fast Track that test. The WDR, or wet dress rehearsal for Starship, had  yet to be completed, and with the days ticking down till launch this needed to get done fast!

For previous launches, it took about a week between a WDR and lift-off; however, with the  launch date set for the 18th, the flight was less than a week away by the time the ship was  finally stacked on top of the booster on the 14th. And it seemed SpaceX wasn't in a hurry to  get this wet-dress-rehearsal out of the way, as shortly after the ship was stacked,  we saw a road closure scheduled for the 17th specifically for non-flight testing. This meant SpaceX planned to test the vehicle and launch it within about 24 hours.

What? Or at least that was the case. The next day, an update to the SpaceX website revealed that the  launch had slipped by a day to the 19th, meaning teams now had around 48 hours to complete it.

Well, that's a lot of time. . No, it isn't.

This was more time; however, it was  still much less than on previous flights. While that doesn't seem super unusual, between  the test and the launch SpaceX also needs to destack the ship yet again, so that teams can  install and arm the flight termination system. However, it turns out SpaceX  had already done this.

It's hard to tell exactly when, but we were  able to catch some work on the ship shortly before stacking on the 14th, which is likely  when the flight termination system was armed. Doing this means SpaceX was able to save a bit  of time. However, it can be a bit more dangerous, as it means the vehicle has explosives loaded on  it while it's fueled for a wet dress rehearsal.

However, that wasn't a problem, and this  partial fill appears to have gone perfectly, as X post said that all systems  were ready for launch on the 19th! With the wet dress rehearsal out of the way,  everything was ready for launch. Fortunately for this one, the license had already been  pre-approved along with the Flight 5 license, meaning SpaceX could do it as fast as they  wanted and didn't need to wait at all.

So, we had a fully stacked and tested vehicle  with its Flight termination system installed, all licenses approved, and all  restrictions filed, meaning all that was left now was to wait for the weather. It's been just over a month since the last incredible Starship launch, and what a wild  ride it's been! We've had some unpredictable weather since then.

Especially with hurricane  Milton rolling through right before the launch. Thankfully we stayed prepared and on top of it all  thanks to Myradar. During Hurricane Milton I treed the storm in real time using Myradar, the app was  a lifesaver informing us about the storm's impact as it moved across the Space Coast.

Here's a quick  look back at Milton's trajectory. You can see how it passed right right over the Space Coast, just  before the Starship launch, right over our house. Myradar gave us advance warnings allowing us to  prepare and still make the launch stream happen while tracking the Starship at the same time. 

Myradar isn't just for hurricanes. We used it to track weather risks for our 247 cameras and  to keep the WAI team at Starbase safe. Leading up to the launch we monitored the weather  closely with Myradar, which helped us track the clear skies that followed.

It's incredible  how much planning goes into launching a Starship and handling severe weather back to back. With my  radar you can track storms, set up custom alerts, monitor wildfires and even follow orbital  objects, like Mars rovers which is easily my favorite feature. So whether you're gearing up  for rocket launch or staying ahead of the weather, Myradar has got you covered!

Click the link in  the description to download it for free and stay informed about what's coming your way. I'm so  done with this, ah so much for the weather. And on the 19th, at a reasonable  time for once, we were ready.

On the afternoon of the 19th,  at about 3 P. M. local time, fueling began on the ship just 50 minutes  before T-0, now set to 4 o'clock on the dot.

The countdown began, and we watched with  bated breath as the clock approached zero. Then, with just three minutes until launch,  the propellant load was finally completed, with the vehicle sporting a nice layer of  frost caused by moisture in the air freezing to the sides of the cryogenic tanks. This process went off without a hitch, showing just how far the Starship program has  come.

Despite the few repairs after flight 5, the ground support equipment did its job flawlessly,  which is an amazing sign for future development. We quickly approached the T-minus 40-second  mark, waiting to see if SpaceX would decide to hold at this point or go for it. The flight's launch window was short, only around 30 minutes, meaning any  issues risked a full day of delays.

But there were no problems, and the countdown  breezed past as the clock quickly reached its next Milestone at T minus 30 seconds. The flight  director said the three words every spaceflight fan wants to hear: "Go for launch! " It was go time!

Even though it’s only 30 seconds between the  final confirmation of launch and lift-off, it feels like an eternity with  all the anticipation. Eventually, we see a flood of water launched into the  air by the deluge system and then ignition! All 33 of the world's most advanced methane-fueled  full-flow staged combustion cycle Raptor engines light with incredible Force, shaking the ground  at Starbase as the engines spool up to full power.

Then, the hold-down clamps are released. And lift off, it is! Starship flies yet again as the rocket quickly  leaps off the pad, scorching everything beneath.

Fortunately, all 33 Raptor engines  successfully lit before the ascent, showing that the failed engine we saw  on flight 4 was just one small hiccup. We've seen Starship go through this  part of flight several times now, but it is still an incredible sight. Thanks to Readline helicopter tours, we could see this launch from the air  and possibly get the best views of it!

Starship quickly ascends into the air, eventually  reaching Max Q, when a rocket experiences the highest amount of aerodynamic stress during  lift-off at t plus 1 minute into flight. A minute and a half later, the booster's  job is done, and it’s time for the Starship upper stage to continue without it. So all but the center three booster engines cut off, and then, seven seconds later,  Starship lights its own Raptor engines while still atop the booster, sending it on its way to space.

Hot staging is still one of the most mesmerizing parts of a flight, as the hot exhaust  gases interact with the booster while it's thousands of feet in the air. But that wasn't all we were going to see from this booster. Super Heavy  isn't just any old rocket booster; now it’s time to show if it can live up to its  predecessor, booster 12.

It’s time for a landing! Immediately after hot staging, the boosters'  Hot Gas reaction control thrusters ignite, and the center 3 raptor engines, which are still  lit, adjust to flip the booster around before the middle ring of 10 Raptor engines relight  and send it straight back to the launch pad. This boost-back burn lasts nearly an entire minute  as the booster cancels out and reverses all of its horizontal velocity to ensure it can make it back  instead of Landing in the middle of the ocean.

Then, after its engines finally get a chance  to rest, the hot staging ring is jettisoned. It later splashes down just off the  coast of Starbase to be fished out. The booster slowly flips itself back  around to ensure that the engines, which are all shielded, face the heat of reentry.

During the last flight, the nozzles of some of the outer engines didn't hold up to the heat quite as  well as SpaceX had hoped. It appears likely that they changed the booster's trajectory during  reentry to spread the heat out over a longer period, reducing the heating on those engines. There are likely also a few other changes SpaceX has made, and hopefully, they all paid off.

You can clearly see just how hot this engine bay gets as the booster screams back into  the atmosphere, glowing red hot as it burns off as much velocity as possible. Despite the earlier boost backburn, there was still a chance that this booster would  land in the water. If mission control or the onboard computer determined anything was wrong  with the booster, it would automatically adjust its trajectory to land in the water instead.

Unfortunately, that appears to have been the case. While we were watching this  Beast begin its reentry phase of flight, we heard the commentators say that SpaceX  would not be attempting to catch this booster. This was unfortunate, but it's better to  be safe than sorry, especially as this is the only launch pad SpaceX has, and they've  already proven they can catch the booster.

While it's sad to see this booster go, catching  it was only a secondary goal for this flight, and SpaceX will have more than enough  chances to catch a booster in the future. And besides, just because SpaceX wasn't going to  catch it doesn't mean we weren't going to get a show, as this booster was still targeting just  off the shore of Starbase. Since SpaceX decided to abort the catch, you'd think that this booster  was just going to explode instantly or something when it tried to relight its engines, but  something interesting happened instead.

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Thank you so much! You Rock! Now, back to the Booster!

As  it plummeted towards the ocean, rapidly dropping its altitude, we held our breath  to see just how far this booster would make it. Everything appeared to go incredibly up to engine  ignition, with all four chines even being intact, meaning this booster was already in better shape  than booster 12 from flight 5 was at this point. And then we saw it: the middle 13  Raptor engines light up perfectly just a kilometer above the surface of the  water, rapidly slowing the booster down.

As it approaches the water, the middle ring  of 10 engines shuts down, leaving the entire gigantic rocket stage to be propelled  by just the center three Raptor engines. Looking at the booster during this point  in flight, we can also clearly see that everything is going perfectly. Despite being over the water, the booster can clearly be seen performing its  transitioning maneuver as though it was landing in the arms of the chopsticks.

When viewing this footage, imagine a tower sitting atop the water. See what I mean? Simulated landing surface!

You can see it slowly lowering  itself as if performing a trust fall. Unfortunately, though, no one was there to  catch it as it splashed into the Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX cuts away from those cameras during  the live stream right as we see the booster beginning to tip over.

Looking at this,  it shows that the booster did, in fact, explode when it tipped over. This is an incredible sight, but it’s unfortunate that the booster appears  to be in perfect health before it explodes. From what we can tell, this booster was in  even better shape than booster 12 during its landing.

We didn't even see a flamethrower  coming out of the quick disconnect, and, again, all four chines appear to be intact. The booster would have likely been almost entirely ready for reuse if they had caught it. Unfortunately, that was not the case with this booster.

So why wasn't that the case,  and why didn't SpaceX decide to catch it? It looks like Booster 13 was up for the  task, which means either a sensor was not reporting the right data at the right  time or the catch tower had a problem. It does appear the launch Tower took  a bit more of a beating this time than during previous flights.

The lightning rod on  top suffered damage and bent during liftoff. And sure enough, when SpaceX released  their statement about flight 6 they confirmed that the catch tower caused the abort. Another important thing is to note is that SpaceX spent a lot of time on the abort scenarios and  when it would be best to abort or attempt to catch, as revealed in a briefing that Musk  shared alongside some gameplay footage.

I want a game. Look at Falcon 9 for comparison and to give you an idea of whether SpaceX was lucky.  Directly after its first successful landing, Falcon 9 also had a failed Landing.

Many of its  early Landing attempts ended in failure. However, nowadays, if a landing attempt fails, it's  big news because of how reliable it's become. After all, this is still a prototype test  program, and SpaceX has likely learned a great deal even from this splashdown.

They now know  what needs to be improved for future flights. Despite what the headlines may say, this is  a complete success, especially since no other company is even close to attempting something  like this. It's clear that the booster had a pretty good chance of successfully landing.

While the booster was on its way to the water, the ship took a different Journey. Its  engines continued burning until about eight and a half minutes into flight. Once again, the ship successfully completed its roughly 6-minute burn to  place it on a near-orbital trajectory.

Keep in mind, this is the fourth time in a row  that SpaceX has achieved this, and any arguments that Starship is just a concept that will never  be achievable can be put to rest. Even if Starship stops development right here, it's already  reached roughly the same point as Falcon 9. You know, while being around 10 times as powerful.

However, Starship is still very much in development because SpaceX has  some big goals for this vehicle. That's why we were watching the ship so closely,  and this time, we got to watch a new treat, as SpaceX was finally able to perform  its in-space Raptor relight demo. This is a demo that had been planned  for all flights until flight 3 had a slight malfunction with the reaction control  system, forcing the maneuver to be aborted.

After that, this maneuver wasn't even planned on  flights four and five. However, Starship needs to be complete this for one important reason. If Starship can't reliably relight its engine in space, then SpaceX doesn't want to  place it into a full orbit, as it would not be able to bring itself down safely and  could risk crashing into inhabited areas.

It's the last thing Starship needs  to complete before it can enter a full orbit and deploy payloads. While waiting for this to happen, we got some incredible onboard views  of the ship, including some incredible scenes of it passing over a lightning storm. And we saw abanana.

Why did we see a banana? Precisely on time SpaceX switched to an onboard  camera inside the engine bay and relit one of the center 3 sea-level Raptor engines as predicted. While these are less efficient in vacuum, their placement near the center of mass  and gimballing capabilities mean they can light single engines without risking sending  the starship into an uncontrollable tumble.

This burn went flawlessly, which means Starship  is now ready to begin its full orbital launches, hopefully starting with flight 7 and ship 33! But this Starship wasn't in an orbit, and its altitude rapidly decreased, as it  began to hit some of the upper atmosphere. Despite the atmosphere density  up here being close to a vacuum, because of the speed Starship is traveling  at, even that is enough to cause heating.

Heating would be extremely important with this  flight, as SpaceX wanted to test Starship to its limits. They implemented numerous tests  to stress the vehicle as much as possible. The plan was to break it!

During the livestream, the commentators confirmed that this heat shield was still the  original version one. It was less advanced than the one used Flight 5 and only had upgrades  in specific areas, such as the flap hinges. SpaceX also decided to remove large sections of  tiles on the edges of the heat shield, with the commentators even stating during the re-entry that  they had removed over 2,100 tiles from the ship.

This will enable SpaceX to one day catch the  ship, as the area where these tiles were removed is where the Chopsticks will hit during a catch. Simply put, having a heat shield in these areas would require a redesign of the chopsticks. They also stated that they had changed the angle of attack for the ship during reentry to  be much steeper, which would stress the ship far beyond anything it had felt before and, in  some cases, even pass its design requirements.

They wanted to test the ship to its  breaking point and were doing their best to see how far they could push it. In other words, they were actively trying to create a catastrophe to  find the design's failure point. But the ship had other plans.

We watched as the ship slammed into the atmosphere, rapidly  heating up and glowing red hot. Sparks could be seen flying off from  all over the ship, which is not a good sign. This heat shield is supposed to  stay completely intact during reentry, and any Sparks that you see aren't exactly good.

In fact, at one point, you can even see what appears to be a whole tile flying off and  impacting the edge of one of the flap hinges. This was a spicy reentry. As hot as Thai  food!

As the ship got hotter and hotter, it looked like it was only a matter  of time before the signal cut out. Except, it didn't. Despite some warping in some areas, which mainly appeared to be  superficial, and some slight burn-through around the flaps, the ship was doing fantastic.

The flap hinges were doing better than ever, with almost no burn-through visible  anywhere, meaning the fixes they implemented around those hinges did very well. The ship kept descending through the atmosphere, rapidly bleeding off speed and altitude until,  eventually, the red-hot glow turned into the gentle blue of an afternoon sky. Ship did it!

it managed to survive! However, this wasn't over yet. Unlike on previous  flights, the ship reached its terminal velocity much higher in the atmosphere, at around 20 km.

This is because of the angle of attack that the ship took. It decelerated quicker and  transitioned into a skydiver-like fall high up in the atmosphere. This reminded me a lot of  the High Altitude flight test, tests that started with SN8.

SpaceX also wanted to run other tests to  stress the aerodynamic surfaces to their limits. Even now, they were still doing  everything possible to break this ship. Next were the flaps!

How much force  can the flaps take, you ask? All of it! They couldn't do it; the ship kept  blasting through the atmosphere as it quickly descended, passing through Cloud layers.

At some point, they even forced the ship's nose down to give the flaps as much stress as possible. To no effect. Ship didn’t care.

All three Raptor engines lit up for the final  Landing burn as it aggressively flipped around, before reducing to just two engines  and then approaching the ocean surface. This time, because it was a daytime Landing, we  could see it all perfectly clearly through the buoy and a possible helicopter or airplane camera  as the ship splashed down before tipping over. Unfortunately, the tipping over  and slamming into the water was a bit much for the ship's structure, as after  everything it had been through, it finally snapped in half upon contact with the ocean.

This time, there weren't any major visible fireballs, but rather just some buckling  around the payload bay, and there would appear to be cracks near the fuel tanks. This landing could not have gone better. SpaceX did everything possible to break  this ship, yet Ship made it look easy.

Considering how much SpaceX was testing and how  far they were pushing this ship, its survival is a testament to the design and shows that not only is  the ship a sound design, but it's also reliable. So far, every attempted re-entry where  the heat shield was used was a success. Despite melted flaps and chipped tiles, the  ships have managed to splash down every time.

It's clear that Starship is not  just some far-fetched dream but rather a not-too-distant reality that is  fast approaching with every passing day. Last but not least, I’d like to remember a  hero today. A hero for all plants and fruits out there.

All you vitamin-providing  fellows out there can be very proud. SpaceX sent a banana to space as a payload for  this flight. Even a dedicated banana cam was installed, showing this heroic fruit suspended  on cables in the middle of Ship 31’s payload bay during the flight.

We watched in awe. We  cheered for the fruit! It survived the launch, froze in space, was baked during  reentry, and made it back down.

An unknown and unnamed banana  was the quiet hero of Flight 6, inspiring fruits and plants everywhere to dream  of a life far beyond the produce aisle. All hail the space Chiquita. That’s it.

That’s all I got. That’s it for today! Remember to smash that like button.

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