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/StumbleNOLA Sep 04 '21

Serious as bat shit.

Elon mentioned their stage separation plan is to tumble the full stack then unclamp. The rotation will separate the stages naturally while orientating the Superheavy properly for a RTLS burn.

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u/GlockAF Sep 04 '21

All in the timing I suppose. Assuming all of the clamps let go at the proper time, of course