Image link from NSF forum.
Originally leaked on X (I think), then posted to the SpaceXLounge subreddit by u/mehelponow
Are we sure this is from flight 6, and not flight 4, where the ship barely survived?
this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2025
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It's hard to tell, but I don't think it's from IFT-6. The banana cam gave us a view inside the payload bay and the reinforcing structures look a little different.
I believe the truss that the banana is strapped to is the same as the one running along the lower edge of the OP image. But if you look at the reinforcements noseward, the OP shows a closer arrangement of three ribs with cross-braces in-between, whereas the IFT-6 image shows more regularly spaced ribs with no extra bracing. The ribs themselves look different, with a uniform line along the entire inner side in the OP, and a shallower middle segment on OFT-6. The OP's low resolution makes it difficult to tell, but I think it's also missing a lot of the lengthwise stringers that SpaceX added on the later ships.
EDIT: I may be talking out of my ass. Had a look at IFT-3 and the view towards the payload door shows the same reinforcing structures as IFT-6. So it's possible that the OP image is from farther up the payload bay, the ribs we're seeing are reinforcing the flap hinges, an area that's not visible in the banana cam. We didn't get a payload bay view for flights 4 and 5, so can't compare those.
EDIT 2: The OP image is definitely farther up the payload bay, looking at the hinge area that we didn't see in other bay views. There's no telling whether or not it's from the 6th flight, based on the publicly available images.
Well that isn't fully and rapidly reusable. Goddamn. I was starting to feel better about booster reuse soon. Maybe that's still the case, but, man, what the hell is this.
Wasn't this flight the one where SpaceX intentionally removed a bunch of heat shield tiles?
I think this is all coming from the flap hinges. The hotspots on the leeward part are sparks from the sides. They fall that direction since the re-entry is applying some drag.
The intentionally missing tiles were just on the engine skirt section IIRC. So this isn't necessarily a problem with the main heat shield. The V2 flap design might mitigate it completely. We can't really say much from just one (alleged) image.
Edit: The IFT7 stream stated SN33 has missing tiles spread over the entire heat shield this time.
Edit2: Not going to see anything from IFT7 re-entry.
Yes. Doesn't seem to working out if this picture is what OP claims. But if that's the case, I don't understand why they removed even more tiles on the Flight 7 ship.
Booster reuse vs ship reuse is a completely different beast. I am not sure it’s ever going to be viable to reuse the ship economically.
Yeah, the Spaceshuttle was a cautionary tale and the Ship doesn't seem to have a fundamentally different approach. But lets see how things will develop.
Shuttle was aluminium beneath the thermal tiles, so damage to the tiles was catastrophic. The expectation is Starship will be okay with a few tiles out, partly because steel is much more capable than aluminium, and partly because they have backup thermal protection
Sure, but there it a huge chasm between "catastrophic failure" and "looks good to go again next week", and even minor structural damage will prevent rapid resuse.
I'd much rather be on a spacecraft that wore out too soon than one that catastrophically failed
Sure, but the rare catastrophic failure issue is not why the Spaceshuttle is widely considered an engineering failure. The real issue with it was that the re-usability of it turned out to be a huge money sink. Spaceship might face a similar fate with those heat-tiles.
I don't think the shuttle is a good example at all.
The reusability was just marketing shtick so a large enough vehicle could be built to launch multiple Hubble-chassis Keyhole satellites for the NSA. (It's probably more accurate to say the Hubble is built on a Keyhole satellite chassis).
Yet the technology it used for the heat shield was very similar to what SpaceX is trying to do with the Ship.
I’ve heard whispers that they are trying a new transpirational heat shield design since the tiles aren’t working out so well.
That would be pretty cool indeed.
No banana for scale?
Is that plasma? That looks like...things burning up and turning to plasma....
Some of it probably is, most of the bright spots are probably flakes of hot tiles and molten stainless coming inside the bay from holes burnt between the flaps and fuselage (really bright patches on the sides)