RIP lol

Looks like it kinda made it. Lost a limb but still alive, maybe?

that was amazing to see that flap still moving after being half burned through

And to still accomplish the flip and a vertical landing!

Looks like it kinda made it. Lost a limb but still alive, maybe?

You just can't get experimental data like that from a ground test, about how a control surface like that would react and burn through on re-entry. I wonder if the other side's control surface did similar or if it was shielded by the body from the highest temps?

That was epic.

I don’t think the damage to the flap was due to normal heating. It looks like they lost a couple of heat shield tiles opposite to the side that we can see and it burned through. Once the structure started to vaporize more tiles detached and there was a cascade effect.

I am truly amazed that the flap didn’t detach, and it looked like it might have actually been actuating at times, but I think it was just being tossed around by vehicle motion.

In any case, they seem to have successfully landed both the booster and the ship.

SpaceX sure does know how to put on a show!

Reply from a friend that works for Space X when asked if there were any videos from the flip:

Unfortunately not, after both SUCCESSFULLY Launched, Flew, Re-orientated vertical, Hovered and Landed the ordinances were activated on both and the sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

On a note - we purposely removed two of its heat shield tiles to measure the effects of reentry on the ship's steel body using sensors.

Be the Flap!!!

Based on the telemetry on the live feed it looks like the ship hovered for a few moments. It appeared to reach 0 velocity and then accelerate to about 40 kmh again. That could be an anomaly in the data, and I never saw the ship engines fire on the telemetry on the feed.

Did they confirm it hovered vertically? If so, that is awesome!

I didn't see that either, Doug. If it happened it wasn't on the feed data.

I noticed the speed to Zero, then increase again.
Maybe that was just angular velocity as it topples over?

My friend’s company in Daytona manufactures the tooling used for making the heat shield tiles. A slurry is pressed with low pressure by a stainless perforated piston in the cylinder with the sight gauge pictured below. The white band is a felt type material that acts as a piston ring. The pressed tile is then dried and cured in a kiln. The 18,000 or so of them are held in place with extrusions. They are not glued or caulked in place like the shuttle and can be easily removed for replacement by shattering them with a ball peen hammer. It appears that this critical system is working.

Maybe Musk can come up with a little robot that travels over the outside of the rocket and replaces or repairs tiles while in space before re-entry.

it has to be a thought - to make them replaceable on Mars