The Starship Super Heavy booster came within one second of aborting the initial ‘capture’ landing

In the audio, an unidentified person described an issue with the Super Heavy landing, where a “misconfigured” parameter meant spin pressure, presumably in the Raptor engines in the booster, did not increase as expected.

“We were a second away from tripping and telling the rocket to abort and try to hit the ground next to the tower,” that person said. That scenario would “wrongly tell a healthy rocket not to attempt that catch.”

“We had a whole bunch of new abort and commit criteria that we tried to control very carefully, but I mean, I think our concern was in the right place, and one of them came very close to biting us,” the person continued .

The people in the audio noted that there had been discussions about delaying the launch of Flight 5 to allow additional time to check those parameters. “We were scared of the fact that we had 100 abortions that weren’t super trivial,” one person said.

In the audio, SpaceX officials said they had completed a review of Flight 5 data the day before, comparing it to aborted flights “and what we need to change about that.”

Another issue discussed in the audio while Musk played the video game was a cover on a spine, a vertical structure on the booster, that came loose when the vehicle went transonic during its descent. A SpaceX official said in the audio that the kink protection release was something they were concerned about before launch.

“We couldn’t have predicted the exact spot, but this torn lid was right on top of a set of single-point fail valves that were supposed to operate during landing,” that person said. “Fortunately none of these or the armor were damaged, but we did tear this kink protection over some very critical equipment right as the landing fire was starting to start. We have a plan to address that.”

The person also started discussing an engine plume issue during landing, but the video stops at that point.

The discussions appeared to concern planning for the next Starship test flight, Flight 6. SpaceX continues preparations for the flight and moves the next Super Heavy booster to the launch site for testing. “Flight 6 is coming!” He posted beginning October 25.

Unlike previous launches, where new or updated licenses from the Federal Aviation Administration came just before launch, SpaceX already has FAA approval for Flight 6 in the license update it received for Flight 5. “The FAA has approved the changes requested by SpaceX for Flight 6. are within the scope of what was previously analyzed,” the FAA stated when it issued the Flight 5 license, but did not disclose what those changes are.

The SpaceX officials in the audio said they are “trying to focus on reducing the risk of boosters versus expanding the ship envelope” for the next flight. They also tried to balance risk reduction and speed for the next flight without the schedule constraint of an FAA license.

“We don’t take as much time as we would ideally like to have to really study everything,” said one. “But given that this is the first launch in a long time – well, ever, actually – that we haven’t been directed by the FAA, we’re trying to find a reasonable balance between speed and risk mitigation, especially on the booster. ”

Musk is mostly quiet during the video, saying, “Wow!” when told the landing was almost aborted.

After posting the video to X, a user asked him if he knew he had shared audio from the Starship telecon. “Yes ,” Musk responded.

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