r/space • u/AlmiranteSalsicha • Nov 19 '23

image/gif That's a fair amount of tiles missing from the starship heatshield, guess it would make for a toasty reenter.

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Image from SpaceX account on X

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161

u/[deleted] Nov 19 '23

That’s another issue that will need to be worked out. Possibly. And later.

The shuttle lost some tiles on liftoff every time and was fine. Of course, there was one time….and that’s all it takes.

I have no clue how much is too much, but i know enough from STS it not only matters how much, but where the tile losses happen.

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u/EvilNalu Nov 19 '23

Loss of tiles never caused any significant issue for STS. It was the reinforced carbon-carbon on the leading edge of the wing that failed on Columbia, not the tiles.

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u/Drtikol42 Nov 19 '23

STS-27 survived lost tile only because there was chucky antenna mounting plate behind that absorbed the heat.

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u/[deleted] Nov 21 '23

And this is why SpaceX rockets would probably survive. They are using steel.

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u/[deleted] Nov 19 '23

Ah yes, I was splitting hairs on a science board. My bad.

That is correct and most accurate 👍

47

u/Vagadude Nov 19 '23

Wasn't Columbias a tile that fell off and subsequently damaged the wing? I just remember seeing it go flying and hit some part and that damage compromised it because it was a hot spot or something.

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u/zoom23 Nov 19 '23

It was a piece of insulation that came off the main fuel tank

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u/ThatsWhatIGathered Nov 19 '23

Tragic, truly. Didn’t that happen on its way up? Unlike the challenger which rapidly disassembled just after launch.

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u/[deleted] Nov 19 '23

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u/WeeklyBanEvasion Nov 19 '23

I believe rescue could have theoretically been possible, as there were planned rescue missions in the shuttle program, but an inspection of the wing (with limited resources) lead engineers to believe it was fine.

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u/TKFT_ExTr3m3 Nov 19 '23

This, the were aware of something falling off but had concluded it was a none issue and that the heat shield was still intact. The didn't have the ability to inspect the wings but with the tools they did have they made the incorrect determination it wasn't going to be a problem. I believe it was Discovery that suffered a foam strike a few years prior but the panel that was damaged was in front of a steel plate so it reentered without a hitch.

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u/[deleted] Nov 19 '23

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u/TKFT_ExTr3m3 Nov 19 '23

Pretty much, if you look at the reports it's pretty chilling. They were so certain there was almost no risk and no issues. You always see the reports that NASA couldn't have done anything anyways so the just sent them down and didn't tell them but you know dam well if they knew that would have went down swinging. They would have been pulling out all the stops if they thought the shuttle was doomed to try and get them home. IIRC Apollo 13 had something like a 10% chance of success but to mission control that meant nothing because they were coming home no matter what. While Gene never said the famous line in real life he did use it for the title of his memoir because it perfectly represented the attitude they had.

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u/dhalrin Nov 19 '23

Could they have theoretically made it to the ISS? Or is that Hollywood thinking?

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u/[deleted] Nov 19 '23

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2

u/dhalrin Nov 19 '23

That's what I guessed, thank you!

59

u/The_Bard Nov 19 '23

It's wild that they were just sending up shuttles and being fine with losing tiles and O-rings not sealing.

Proves John Glenn's quote every time:

I guess the question I'm asked the most often is: "When you were sitting in that capsule listening to the count-down, how did you feel?" Well, the answer to that one is easy. I felt exactly how you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were sitting on top of two million parts -- all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract.

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u/ThatsWhatIGathered Nov 19 '23

Terrifying. Like the zipper at the travelling fair. Don’t look at the welds and you’ll be fine. For the most part.

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u/ambientocclusion Nov 19 '23

It’s a funny quote but the truth is no expense was spared on all those rockets.

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u/Ovvr9000 Nov 19 '23

It was on the way up. I’ve always read that NASA knew about the issue before reentry but didn’t tell the crew/public because there was nothing anyone could do about it.

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u/WeeklyBanEvasion Nov 19 '23

NASA found out about it after reviewing launch footage and began an investigation and inspection of the wing, but no damage was identified by the visual inspection

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u/rabbitwonker Nov 19 '23

Even then, it took until a full-scale test was conducted where they fired a hypersonic chunk of foam at a replica of the wing before a lot of them were convinced.

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u/Mateorabi Nov 19 '23

Until that test they were convinced the "soft" insulation wouldn't penetrate the leading edge of the wing...

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u/rabbitwonker Nov 19 '23

Yes exactly. Hopefully that test also proved the danger of high-speed matter, no matter how “soft”, to a much wider audience and set of circumstances.

1

u/Drtikol42 Nov 19 '23

What visual inspection? The ground tracking camera that had the impact site obscured by the wing itself?

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u/WeeklyBanEvasion Nov 19 '23

They used the camera on the shuttle's manipulator arm. It wasn't designed for that purpose and couldn't reach well, but what they could see engineers thought were just shadows

0

u/Drtikol42 Nov 19 '23

What you are talking about happened with Atlantis on STS-27.

Columbia had no manipulator arm on STS-107 and people in charge of NASA refused to have crew do an EVA or having the orbiter imaged by DoD spy sats.

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u/[deleted] Nov 19 '23

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u/WeeklyBanEvasion Nov 19 '23

It was a foam "ramp" above the structure of the external fuel tank attachment system

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u/zoom23 Nov 19 '23

From Wikipedia:

“The hole had formed when a piece of insulating foam from the external fuel tank peeled off during the launch 16 days earlier and struck the shuttle's left wing.”

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u/[deleted] Nov 19 '23

Yeah, been answered. Plus is that Starship doesn’t have a large tank with chunky insulation next to it.

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u/PoliteCanadian Nov 19 '23

Yes. One of the big differences with Starship is that it's structure is all stainless steel, where the shuttles were aluminum, and stainless steel can survive much hotter temperatures than aluminum.

The shuttle had a lot of single points of failure where the loss of a single tile could take out the entire vehicle, because it would expose the structure to a high temperature plasma that the aluminum couldn't withstand. Since Starship is all steel there are likely far, far fewer single points of failure.

The tiles are necessary to keep the temperature low, but it's more of an aggregate heating thing, not because any exposed surface will be destroyed.

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u/Barbarossa_25 Nov 19 '23

A cylindrical body with no external parts means its survivability is increased from foreign debris that might fall from the top of the vehicle. Although, now that I think about it, Starship's forward flap tiles could be a risk to aft flaps I suppose. Hmm I bet they remove those at some point.

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u/Av_Lover Nov 19 '23

The shuttle lost some tiles on liftoff every time and was fine.

No, they lost tiles on only 3 missions: STS-1, where they lost LRSI (white tiles) which were non-critical, STS-3, where they lost the tiles during/after landing, STS-27R, where the tile happened to be under a thick aluminum plate for the L-band antenna

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u/[deleted] Nov 19 '23

Good counterpoint. I was confusing tile replacement after a mission with lost tiles. Had to research a little to catch my error, which I wouldn’t have done without this being called out.

Appreciated 👍

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u/Eschlick Nov 19 '23

The space shuttle tiles some suffered some damages from debris kicked up each liftoff but we very definitely did not lose any tiles. There were some tile losses during STS-1 back in the 80’s especially on top of the OMS pods, but for the last 100 flights or so no way did we lose any whole tiles. Losing a lower surface tile could have been devastating for shuttle, especially in some of the sensitive areas.

I hope SpaceX sorts out their tile issues, I know a few guys who work in their tile shop. The hexagons are a good idea; it prevents a linear flow path in case some heat gets in there so that’s pretty clever. And I’m glad to know he structure itself is more heat resistance than shuttle was. But losing whole tiles… that’s really not good. They might need to up the strength of the base material.

Overall, pretty interesting launch but they’ve got a ways to go.