Timeline for Why did Starship lose an engine on IFT-4?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
9 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jul 20 at 15:51 | comment | added | Steve Pemberton | @OrganicMarble - Thanks I somehow missed that discussion. | |
| Jul 19 at 21:24 | comment | added | Organic Marble | @StevePemberton space.stackexchange.com/q/61988/6944 | |
| Jul 19 at 4:32 | history | edited | Starship | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
clarify
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| Jul 16 at 2:02 | history | edited | Starship | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
lots of stuff
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| Jul 12 at 20:33 | comment | added | Steve Pemberton | It would be interesting to know if they would launch with one engine failing prior to liftoff, since apparenlty they can lose 1-3 engines depending on the mission and still reach planned orbit. I'm not saying that it wouldn't contradict normal sensibilities, but this is SpaceX after all. I can sort of imagine them launching with one engine failed on a test flight or Starlink flight, but probalby not a paid launch. Might depend on which engine it is also. Only way we'll probably know for sure is if an engine fails prior to liftoff to see if it will abort, which I don't think has happened yet. | |
| Jul 12 at 19:15 | comment | added | Darth Pseudonym | Frankly it could have been nearly anything. A breakdown in the plumbing itself, an ignition instability, overheating, a faulty sensor that thought there was a breakdown or instability or overheating... It's impossible to guess. The flight computer will kill any engines that don't seem to be behaving correctly, to avoid risking an explosion that might take out additional engines (or the whole ship), but it would require access to the engineering telemetry (and their books of error codes, most likely) to know precisely what issue led to the shutdown. | |
| Jul 12 at 11:36 | comment | added | Slarty | Yes nobody knows except SpaceX. My guess is that it was just a duff engine. With 33 engines the chance of a problem with one of them is still quite high at this stage, especially as Musk has set his sights on Raptor version 3 now, which is probably where all the development, testing and tweaking effort is going currently. The v2 engine is probably good enough until V3 comes online. | |
| Jul 12 at 4:37 | comment | added | Alan Birtles | You'll need to ask spacex, they've not published anything about this, nor are they likely to based on previous flights | |
| Jul 12 at 3:29 | history | asked | Starship | CC BY-SA 4.0 |