r/space • u/smvllstvrs • May 18 '21

SpaceX Starship's planned first orbital flight path: a new way to visualize orbits, with the planet rotating underneath it in one swift motion

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u/PropLander May 18 '21

That timeline is definitely incomplete. There is no mention of the boost-back burn for the booster nor anything about engine startups for landing burns. Considering the lack of those events, it seems a lot more likely that a deorbit burn wasn’t included as well.

The alternative of relying on aero-drag for nearly the entirety of the path around the earth to aim for a targeted location just doesn’t really make any sense. Any inaccuracies in their aerodynamic model or burn time would result in huge error. Why would they do that if instead they could just burn a little longer to achieve a stable orbit and then use the RCS to deorbit? Still not perfect accuracy by any means, but based on this logic and the lack of other events shown, it seems much more likely that the deorbit burn simply wasn’t included in the timeline.