So, this will be the first time Starship actually tries to lift anything other than an empty cargohold? Not actually into orbit though.
Technically not, as Flight 6 had a single banana in the payload bay. Flight 7 will be the first attempt to deploy a payload, though.
All the heat shield tests are really interesting. They’ve done the ablative layer and missing tile tests before, but the metallic and liquid cooled tiles are new. I know some of the tile pattern changes around the edges are for weight savings, but I’ll take it as a bad sign that they’re still testing entirely different tile types. Hopefully one of these is a winner.
Yeah, such a difficult set of problems to solve. Weight, cost, reusability, durability, thermal properties, and manufacturing ease have to be considered. I’m hoping that they are still exploring options because there are so many potential avenues for improvement, and not because their attempts so far have been unpromising.
is this finally the evaporative film cooling they promised with BFR?
it makes sense though that they’re pursuing better heat shield tech though, improvements in it directly affect the payload mass
It does sound like the old film cooling, but I haven’t seen any pictures of these new tiles, which is really surprising given how many cameras are stalking everything in Boca Chica.
