That flight was truly epic, we see great iteration testing but changes will need to be sorted up before next flight.
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- Thread starter bd popeye
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First of all, there is no wings but flaps. Secondly, how could "wing"/flap super structure being intact and at the same time being damaged?
The final image
It coresponds to this chunk of the flap. About one third of the flap was melt away.
Certainly not!
Exactly! They still have to get the heat shield to work properly and who even knows if that is possible with the current Starship design. I do wonder if they will eventually fall back on the booster and use a more traditional second stage. Certainly the booster stage would provide them with a viable base for lunar missions if Starship doesn't work out?
The heatshield is not a problem for the Starship HLS that is to be used by the Artemis program, as Starship HLS is only for landing on the moon and astronauts will return to Earth using Orion.
However, Starship HLS needs to be refueled while in LEO ~15 times using other Starship launches. Those ~15 refueling launches will only be economical / practical after Starship becomes fully reusable.
I think it will end up to be a lot more than 30 because of SpaceX's "agile" design and development philosophy. This workflow might work in less critical projects but when we are talking about carrying living payloads, how do they know at which iteration their machinery will be 99.99% assured to preserve human life. They will use up 15 launches for each failed attempt to land and lift off perfectly from the lunar surface with uninterrupted life support throughout.