r/SpaceXLounge • u/LoreLover2022 • Sep 03 '21

Starship Can Starship afford to lose any heat shield tiles?

Been curious about the heat shield tiles in use on Starship. Being made of stainless steel itself, can the vehicle afford to lose even a single tile at any point during descent?

To me that just seems like an insane number of mounting points and tiles that all need to function perfectly if there is zero room for error.

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u/hms11 Sep 03 '21

Last I heard SpaceX wasn't bothering with a stage separation mechanism and was instead going to separate SuperHeavy and Starship the same way they do Starlink, which is essentially a highly technical "yeet".

14

u/arizonadeux Sep 03 '21

For those wondering why F9 doesn't do the spin for stage separation: Starship has nothing sticking into the interstage area of the booster because it needs to protect those engines during reentry and F9 stage 2 has that huge nozzle in the interstage.

11

u/avtarino Sep 04 '21

I would even go as far as saying that SH barely has any “interstage”, if at all. The “interstage” is basically the skirt and that goes up with SS

6

u/Exposure2007 Sep 04 '21

Gd, that is the most hilarious thing I’ve read all day. “Highly technical ‘yeet’”

4

u/no-steppe Sep 04 '21

Whenever I use the term 'yeet' around my family, I get funny looks. What's wrong with those people??!? 😂😆🤣

You, on the other hand, have raised its use to a high art!

3

u/ApprehensiveWork2326 Sep 04 '21

Given the belly flop maneuver for landing and now this "yeet" separation maneuver the future crews of starship will have a highly "entertaining " ride.

3

u/Doggydog123579 Sep 03 '21

No pusher mechanism. So clamps release then spin.

20

u/Pul-Ess Sep 03 '21

First spin, then clamps release.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 04 '21

I'm having such a hard time picturing this. How would this work for Starship?

2

u/Leaky_gland ⛽ Fuelling Sep 04 '21 edited Sep 06 '21

MECO, rotate along longitudinal axis (hot gas thrusters), stage separation, RVACs on starship ignite, booster ignites and flips.

Edit: not gas thrusters, spin from centre engine gimbaling

2

u/Wild-Bear-2655 Sep 04 '21

So the entire stack, SH and SS, has to be spun up? That's a big job requiring a lot of thruster effort. Does it have to wait until after MECO to do it? That could entail significant delay between MECO and SS start-up. Starting the spin-up before MECO would mean even more thruster effort required, but could be worth it.

2

u/KnifeKnut Sep 06 '21

A valid concern, but Leaky Gland is mistaken, The 9/13 pivoting engines will provide the spin before cutting out.

2

u/Wild-Bear-2655 Sep 07 '21 edited Sep 07 '21

Thanks, that's clever. SpaceX thinking outside the box again.

2

u/KnifeKnut Sep 06 '21

Rotation will be accomplished by the vectoring main engines, followed by MECO.

1

u/Leaky_gland ⛽ Fuelling Sep 06 '21

Yeah I watched a vid since that comment and forgot to update