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The body flaps on Starship have the responsibilty of controlling attitude during atmospheric flight. They are also needed to deal with the large moments created by carrying payloads in the nose. Movab …

How is that possible? It's not like it lost velocity or gained altitude in that time period.

I'm trying to see how much capacity the Shuttle had for reducing reentry temperatures by adjusting trajectory. So far, I've only been told then the Shuttle banks up to 80° during reentry. … Shuttle reentry maximum G-force is 1.7. But I don't know when that is experienced. …

The flight tests were originally supposed to end in the Pacific, but was switched to a steeper trajectory that ended in the Indian Ocean for IFT-3. Assuming all had gone perfectly, how much harder wou …

IIRC, one of the arguments against Shuttle Columbia's hole being repaired was that the repair would not be smooth. Apparently, the heat shielding relied on a sensitive boundary layer. Even a small bum …

The Space Shuttle needed silica tiles and carbon-carbon panels to survive the sustained high temperatures of reentry. … A skip reentry involves bouncing off the atmosphere repeatedly. This reduces temperatures, and allows heat to be radiated away between bounces. …

Has there been any incident where a reentering spacecraft nearly collided with a meteor?

Starship had an empty weight of under 100 tons. Of this, less than 12 tons is accounted for by the engines. Starship is supposed to be able to make atmospheric entry with a 150 ton payload in the nose …

Here's something which occurred to me. If Starship uses a lifting entry - and it probably will - the temperatures will be higher near the nose of the ship. This will cause air molecules there to diss …

Does it need upgraded heat shields, communication gear, or anything else? Or can we just put it on a Falcon Heavy and do it now?

In the camera feed, we see occasional bright flashes well after the ship has ceased being hypersonic. Then at 700km/h the flashes suddenly increase to the point that it looks as if the ship has caught …

By watching the live feed of IFT-4, its pretty obvious that Starship does not actually re-enter in the "skydiver" position, but rather at an AoA of around 45°. There is no doubt that this is a lifting …

During IFT-4, it was noted that the flaps rarely moved. But I don't understand how Starship would be stable at that attitude. Stability requires the center of pressure to move rearward with increasing …

The first F9 booster landing attempts failed because the booster broke up. After that, they began lighting the engines in the upper atmosphere to slow the booster. It seems to me that their problem wa …

During reentry, the tank walls heat up, causing the ullage gas to heat up, causing pressure to rise. How will Starship prevent the tank from bursting due to pressure? …