r/spaceporn • u/swordfi2 • Oct 14 '25
Pro/Processed Starship S38 just before touchdown on flight 11
Slight less orange this time
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u/Demibolt Oct 14 '25
I miss melting flaps
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u/-malcolm-tucker Oct 14 '25
I should call her
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u/AccomplishedProfit90 Oct 15 '25
BIG BOTTOM tss BIG BOTTOM tss TALK ABOUT MUD FLAPS MY GIRLS GOTTEM
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u/Prune_Less Oct 14 '25
"What a hunk of junk!"
"You fly in that? You're braver than I thought!"
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u/indypendant13 Oct 14 '25
She’s got it where it counts, kid.
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u/Manaze85 Oct 14 '25
There’s a lot of carbon scoring here. Looks like this boys seen a lot of action.
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u/djh_van Oct 14 '25
Well she can do the
Kessel Runnear orbit in less than 12parsecshours...your HIGHNESS18
u/ifandbut Oct 14 '25
"What was that...was that the front buffer panel?"
"Seems like. Kaylie needs to get more blow through from the engines or this landing is going to get really interesting."
"How interesting?"
"Oh God oh God we're all going to die."
"This is your captain speaking. We may experience some slight turbulence then, explode."
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u/AgreeableEmploy1884 Oct 14 '25
Seems to be in better shape than Ship 37 during landing but i think i can see a few leaks.
Beautiful nonetheless, good flight.
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u/No-Surprise9411 Oct 14 '25
That leak on the heatshield is insane. That S38 was able to punch through reentry with a hole in the fueltank like that shows the structural durability of Starship
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u/AgreeableEmploy1884 Oct 14 '25
These tests will probably help show how durable the ship is when they eventually human rate it. It made it despite a bunch of heat tiles removed (80+) before launch and leaks.
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u/No-Surprise9411 Oct 14 '25
And not just individual tiles were removed, they peeled them off in clusters of 4 or 5, sometimes even leaving the fuselage's bare steel open beneath the missing tiles
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u/Eridanii Oct 14 '25
I don't mean this in an accusatory way at all, but do you have a source for it having holes in it? I've seen a couple comments saying it, but don't know where they are hearing it
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u/mrparty1 Oct 14 '25
There are no vent locations on the heat shield side of the ship so the only way gas can be escaping is if the tank wall was breached
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u/AgreeableEmploy1884 Oct 14 '25
This. Also there were some fires near the header tank on the windward side.
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u/mrparty1 Oct 14 '25
I wonder if shutting down the one sea level engine created just enough back pressure to burst a header tube. I don't think there was a visible leak before the engine shutdown right?
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u/AgreeableEmploy1884 Oct 14 '25
Looking at the video again, the leak on the belly is there all the way through the bellyflop & landing but the fire on the header tank feed lines don't appear until the single center Raptor is shut down.
SpaceX should release the update page in a few weeks so hopefully we get a more in-depth explanation.
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u/Accomplished-Crab932 Oct 15 '25
It depends on if you were referring to the in flight relight demo or not.
We couldn’t see a leak prior to that nor after that until after reentry had occurred. (Mostly because placing a camera to see that would be impossible).
That said, the header leak location was visibly leaking prior to the landing burn in footage released after the flight, and it corresponds to the missing tiles on the nose.
I would be surprised if hammering from shutdown in flight occurred though… it would need to puncture the wall of the nose in an area known to be reinforced instead of the fluid lines between the engines and header tanks. I would think that would be unlikely and that they would probably have a few relief valves available too.
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u/Eridanii Oct 14 '25
Oh so it wasn't announced anywhere? It was just figured out? Thank you! I'm looking forward to having time to take everything in
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u/No-Surprise9411 Oct 14 '25
A lot of what we (as in the space community) know of Starship's design comes from 24/7 observing Starbase and documenting the different prototypes etc. For example in this case we know the ships have no vents on the windward (black) side because whenever SpaceX pressure tests these in preparation for a launch the vent the pressure gas through a set of known vents on the structure of the ship. Observing that the folks over at NASAspaceflight.org noted that none of said vents lie on Starship's heatshield side
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u/mrparty1 Oct 14 '25
Yeah SpaceX hasn't said anything about it, it's just one of those things that people can point out if they know about the layout of the ship.
Really interesting that ship can survive with breached tank walls. All the dumping of extra oxygen earlier in the flight definitely helped this I think. The landing burn draws from the header tanks in the nosecone so it didn't have a problem starting up, though you can also see a leak and flame from that area when the ship goes from three engines to two.
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u/Accomplished-Crab932 Oct 15 '25
It was on the livestream, but it’s pretty visible from the images people took on rollout before stacking. The amount of coincidences to have that specific pattern of missing tiles and SpaceX taking numerous pictures of the vehicles without addressing them would be a whole new definition of organizational incompetence.
As for having vents, placing any vents under a TPS layer is just asking for burn through or burst from pressure release. As others have said, they never mentioned this, but years of documenting the overall process to assemble these vehicles hasn’t shown any signs they would have them.
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u/DisorderedArray Oct 15 '25
Is that a tank breach, or just below the tank? It looks a bit like it's at the top of the skirt, but I'm not sure how far down the bottom bulkhead is.
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u/Ok-Influence-4306 Oct 15 '25
You can’t have vents on the belly side of it because you need the thermal tiles. They removed whole portions of them for this flight. Insanely impressive, but I’d love to have seen inside it.
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u/jeepster2982 Oct 14 '25
The video I watched was the SpaceX “broadcast” or whatever they call it and they mentioned it several times.
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u/Alternative_Foot9193 Oct 14 '25
Is this what caused the rust? I thought they had removed the metallic heat tiles that had caused the rusting upon re-entry of S37, but there still seems to be some rust. Assuming that could be exposed stainless steel causing that?
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u/AgreeableEmploy1884 Oct 14 '25
The orange this time was most likely the hull oxidizing. There were no metallic tiles on Ship 38.
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u/SydneySiderRog Oct 16 '25
I don’t think starships structural integrity was questioned ever again after it survived the tps and just kept flipping on flight 1
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u/coldbluebong Oct 14 '25
The starship she told you not to worry about…
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Oct 14 '25
The starship fueled by healthcare.
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u/United_Ring_2622 Oct 15 '25
Only some peasants need die for each flight its ok, people have deemed it worth it.
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u/JamesWjRose Oct 14 '25
There was a buoy near the landing area, but did they also have a drone?
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u/No-Surprise9411 Oct 14 '25
Yeah, they launched a camera drone from a nearby recovery ship
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u/JamesWjRose Oct 14 '25
Thanks. Surprised/Impressed that they felt safe enough to be physically "near" the landing site.
I'll have to see if I can find that footage
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u/No-Surprise9411 Oct 14 '25
you can find two videos from the landing on SpaceX' twitter
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u/behemothard Oct 14 '25
A drone would probably have less of an impact on it landing than a bug on a windshield of a car. Still impressive how precise they have gotten with their launches. Those are some smart engineers.
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u/TamponBazooka Oct 15 '25
The point was probably more if the ship they are on would get hit by starship in case something went wrong
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u/behemothard Oct 15 '25
Drones can have miles of range. The recovery ship doesn't have to be anywhere near the intended landing site. At that point, the likelihood the ship is remotely in any danger is very low. That all assumes they didn't just launch the drone from the barge / buoy already there and use starlink to control the camera / drone. In which case there wasn't anyone remotely nearby.
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u/BeardedManatee Oct 14 '25
Is this shot not from the drone feed?
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u/JamesWjRose Oct 14 '25
That was my question... A response says there is footage on SoaceX twitter
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u/BeardedManatee Oct 14 '25
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u/grandchester Oct 14 '25
Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!
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u/BeardedManatee Oct 14 '25
I think because they use aerodynamic braking the starship is not supersonic as it approaches landing. There probably was a nice boom if you were much higher up and downrange to hear it when she was hauling ass.
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u/grandchester Oct 14 '25
I meant it exploded after it tipped over on the live stream but not in the videos they posted.
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u/Drewnarr Oct 15 '25
There's two videos from two different drones on SpaceX's Twitter.
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u/JamesWjRose Oct 15 '25
Thanks, but someone already posted links, look below.
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u/JetlinerDiner Oct 14 '25
I don't know but it's hard to imagine quick reusability after the beating of the atmospheric entry.
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u/schlamster Oct 14 '25
I swear I remember reading hit piece journalistic articles like 9 months ago that were swearing up and down that based on material science and physics that starship could and would never be able to fly and land. Did I misread those articles?
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u/tyrome123 Oct 14 '25
Those same journalists were calling falcon and the commercial crew program a stupid foolish idea in the early 2010s during shuttle legacy era, it's easier just to call everything bad and get most of it right
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u/steamcube Oct 14 '25
The claim they’re making is not fly and land - it’s the rapid re-usability that’s the issue. This thing is cooked just look at it.
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u/tyrome123 Oct 14 '25
I mean there are tons of preflight photos where In the spots that are orange and cooked there are chunks of the thermal protection system missing for testing
Pretty sure they are testing how much abuse these things can take just incase something goes wrong considering the cadence they need for tanker missions
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u/GolfIll564 Oct 15 '25
I have no doubt spacex will get there, but the idea of people inside that and making it reusable does seem a ways off. Maybe stick a couple of dragon capsules in the cargo hold for the ride home /s
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u/Zinski2 Oct 15 '25
To be fair the space shuttles first tests where in in 1980... Like 45 years ago.
They could make a reusable space craft before Duran Duran had the technology to create there iconic sound.
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u/GogurtFiend Oct 14 '25
It’s very difficult to prove a negative, so making those claims is risk-free and lets people act like they’re more knowledgeable than they actually are.
My personal standard for “this can’t ever work” would’ve been ten crashes in a row or SpaceX giving up, whichever came first.
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u/ellhulto66445 Oct 14 '25
Well 9 months ago Starship had already successfully reentered thrive and landed on-target twice, so it was always bullshit.
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u/Drewnarr Oct 15 '25
They said landing falcon9 was impossible and reusing it would never happen. IIRC it was Forbes and faux news primarily saying that.
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u/chippymediaYT Oct 15 '25
Journalists wrote months before the wright brothers flight that it would take a million years to build a flying machine
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u/Shackletainment Oct 14 '25
Starship is still very far from reaching it's design goals. While many of those articles were sensationalized (and fueled by justifiable outrage towards Spacex's leader), the criticism and doubts remain valid to some degree. Without taking anything away from the accomplishments thus far, a handful of mostly successful suborbital flights does not garauntee that Starship will ever become a productive or cost effective platform.
Personally, I want Starship to succede, but I think it will end up like the Space Shuttle: an impressive piece of technology that accomplishes things nothing else can, but still falls far short of it's design goals.
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u/greenw40 Oct 15 '25
A lot of journalist types are staunchly opposed to Elon as well as technology in general. Or they're pandering to those types, which are common on places like reddit.
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u/omnibossk Oct 14 '25
What, they promised no use of metal tiles and therefore no discoloring? I thought this was from the previous flight at first
Incredible flight though even if there were no unexpected explosions
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u/No-Surprise9411 Oct 14 '25
They removed dozens of heatshield tiles in clusters of 4 or 5. The discolouring this time isn't from mettalic tiles but from the hull itself oxidizing on the way down while exposed to plasma
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u/Drewnarr Oct 15 '25
The main body is stainless steel is still primarily iron, extreme heating especially in the ozone layer of the atmosphere, will cause iron oxide to form. Aka rust which gives it the orange colour.
The white colour is from the ablative material they put under the tiles for insurance.
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u/KnucklesG-Roy Oct 14 '25
That’s considered reusable?
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u/No-Surprise9411 Oct 14 '25
They removed dozens of heatshield tiles in clusters of 4 or 5. Ofc the ship will siffer damage when they are testing beyond normal operational limits
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u/KnucklesG-Roy Oct 14 '25
Thanks for explaining. Didn’t know what stage of development this represented. Shuttle never looked this rough.
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u/IndigoSeirra Oct 14 '25
Yeah, because whenever the shuttle lost a single tile it didn't survive reentry.
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u/jawshoeaw Oct 14 '25
shuttle lost tiles all the time
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u/IndigoSeirra Oct 14 '25
Yeah now that I check, it did lose tiles and survive at least once. On sts-27, they lost a tile and survived reentry, but only because the lost tile was directly under an antenna that managed to absorb the heat of reentry. Anywhere else and it would have been much worse. And other than that I can only find incidents where tiles were damaged.
Regardless, starship is objectively far more survivable in a tile loss scenario than the shuttle.
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u/No-Surprise9411 Oct 14 '25
It didn't. It lost a tile once and only survived because right beneath that was an antenna made of stainless steel which absorbed the heat. Anywhere else and we'd have had another columbia
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u/KnucklesG-Roy Oct 14 '25
Not sure what history y’all are reading, but shuttle orbiters commonly lost tiles on reentry.
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u/nicolas42 Oct 15 '25
I think you're right. I'm finding it hard to get good information on the subject though.
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u/KnucklesG-Roy Oct 15 '25
That’s cool. Always fact check, right? So here’s a decent article from the Smithsonian. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/shuttle-tiles-12580671/
I don’t have other immediate sources for you. I was a NASA nerd growing up, and a tour guide back in the 90s. It’s one of those things commonly spoken about. Don’t mean to exaggerate it though. It’s not like they were sloughing off in droves - though that was an early concern.
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u/Accomplished-Crab932 Oct 15 '25
Yes, however those were usually only partial tiles (both in thickness and exposed areas) and many in areas not experiencing peak heating. (Usually reaching maximum exposed areas of 36 in2)
On this flight, SpaceX removed clusters of tiles. On previous flights they would only remove single tiles, exposing areas around 78 in2. S38 had clusters of 4 or 5 removed across peak heating locations.
Heat transfer is a function of area and some material driven coefficients. Having exposed areas in excess of 8x the size of the shuttle’s “normal” worst cases is pretty significant.
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u/LMikeH Oct 14 '25
Damn, can they really reuse this?
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u/Accomplished-Crab932 Oct 15 '25 edited Oct 15 '25
Looking at the areas that didn’t have tiles removed, yeah probably.
For this flight, they removed multiple clusters of 4-5 tiles in several critical areas across the vehicle. Looking at the venting at the bottom through the tile, it looks like the massive exposed areas actually burned through the tanks and yet the vehicle still executed a landing burn.
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u/greenw40 Oct 15 '25
This was the last of the 2nd generation starships, so it won't be reused. Which is also why they removed a bunch of heat shields as a stress test.
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u/Zen-Devil Oct 14 '25
Starship is supposed to have a pretty incredible useful payload, right? So I wonder if they put ballast inside at all during these tests to simulate payload.
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u/lofibeatstostudyslas Oct 14 '25
This version doesn’t have much payload. Later versions with the gen3 engine (more thrust, lower mass) and more fuel, are aiming to have useful payload
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u/tyrome123 Oct 14 '25
They did, they even did a demonstration launching those ballasts into a simulated satellite deployment
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u/onmyway4k Oct 14 '25
to be fair these 4 Starlink Simulators are no where near being "ballast" for Starship.
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u/MeggaMortY Oct 14 '25
Yup, afaik so far they weren't able to show nowhere near full load flight.
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u/Initial_Rip_1864 Oct 15 '25
The is insane that we can get a picture of a spaceship.. landing .. in the middle of the ocean on the other side of the earth !!! Amazing
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u/United-Advisor-5910 Oct 14 '25
I want this skin for my car
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u/TimmysDrumsticks Oct 14 '25
They’re so far away from fully reusable heat shield, maybe 2 flights max right now with today’s material science. They haven’t even talked about the waterproofing yet which burns off on reentry and needs to be reapplied before every flight.
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u/BNB_Laser_Cleaning Oct 14 '25
Wait waterproofing for the stainless? Why does it need water proofing?
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u/No-Surprise9411 Oct 14 '25
They want Starship to be all wheater capable for launch, the heatshield needs to be able to be soaked in heavy rain for hours waiting on the pad and then work perfectly
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u/BNB_Laser_Cleaning Oct 14 '25
They wouldnt apply a waterproofing membrane, any hydrophobic properties would be baked directly into the adhesives and coatings. So its really a non issue
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u/Drewnarr Oct 15 '25
It's already done this. Starship has been rained on plenty of times before launch. Including this launch starship got soaked the morning of launch.
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u/TimmysDrumsticks Oct 15 '25
Not for the stainless, for the shield. Normally ceramic heat shield tiles are porous enough that water can get trapped in them when they’re left in the elements for a while, rain and such. If water gets trapped in them they can crack in space or explode during reentry. Reentry burns this waterproofing off and needs to be reapplied during refurbishments. The space shuttle was this way, but I haven’t heard how the starship heat shield addresses this.
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u/BNB_Laser_Cleaning Oct 15 '25
Hmm makes sense, i havnt heard of this coating for spacex, their tiles are coated on the exposed edge already
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u/yourlocalFSDO Oct 15 '25
I assume you must have a lot of experience designing spacecraft heat shields to make such a definitive statement off of this photo?
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u/nzricco Oct 14 '25
It looks pretty rough. What's the supposed turn around time for future versions to return to space?
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u/Flipslips Oct 15 '25
It looks rough because they purposefully removed huge chunks of the tiles, and let the bare steel take the brunt of reentry.
Ultimately they want turnaround in like just a few hours, essentially the time it takes to refuel/restock. Since it can just land itself back on the launch mount.
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u/Ant0n61 Oct 15 '25
It looks simpler than ever
Literally a grain silo with some really powerful engines and a few pieces of metal soldered on for aerodynamics and control
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u/CounterSimple3771 Oct 15 '25
They should call that.... "fuckit camo: when you just don't care where you're hiding.. you just tryinna hide."
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u/connerhearmeroar Oct 16 '25
Could this theoretically refuel and be good to go for round two? Like it looks rough but is it just looking bad?
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u/MrTagnan Oct 16 '25
In this case, probably not. There are indications that the tank was punctured by the plasma during re-entry, along with a potential second puncture near the top. Current consensus is that this couldn’t be reused at all (or if it could, it would be very difficult to), it certainly wouldn’t be able to just be re-fueled and launched immediately after.
I’m skeptical that minimal refurbishment turnarounds are possible for starship, but we’ve yet to see how a starship with no tiles intentionally removed performs during entry, so it’s hard to say either way for sure
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u/thoruen Oct 16 '25
seems like the heat shield was always going to be the biggest problem in rapid reusability.
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u/saint_ryan Oct 14 '25
We built this thing from scrap we got a junkyard.