Starship flight 3

[Legend]

Such a beautiful launch. Reusability failed for both parts and there may have been some funkyness during coast, but this could have deployed satellites if that was the intention.

We're in the age of starships yo.

[Legend]

Starship will take humanity to Mars pic.twitter.com/BMBNI2mMKF

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 14, 2024

Watch the super hot plasma field grow as Starship re-enters the atmosphere! pic.twitter.com/to4UOF2Kpd

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 14, 2024

[Legend]

My post flight analysis.

Raptor is great. Has now functioned perfectly 78 times in a row. I was a bit worried that the last flight was a fluke but no, it's a reliable engine at this point.

Not sure why the booster failed. Maybe raptors got melted on reentry but it looked a bit shaky before they even tried to relight.

Main ship had broken rcs and came in rolling. I assume that the side opposite of the camera got melted on that innitial roll so the ship never reached true stability. The plasma makes it easy to see which direction is down and the whole time it had a lean to the left.

[Legend]

Ship in space pic.twitter.com/ge5vJ0q9jW

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 16, 2024

Just so awesome to see such a view of plasma. Really shows how friction isn't the problem, it's compression.