Starship Flight 14: How a Team Chose to Reach Orbit Despite an Engine Shutdown

One speaker says the Raptor engine is among the most impressive engineering feats at SpaceX, and perhaps in the world.

The same speaker notes that the engine is a complex device, and that complexity brings many more ways for things to go wrong. Relying on this engine for the final 1% of a historic return-to-launch-site mission is described as scary.

The ascent began with 33 engines firing. At stage separation, the count was 31 engines. Engine 6 was then reported to have taken an OCU controller reset, which was identified as what drove its shutdown.

With engine 6 shut down, the team stated that it would not commit to orbit.

The speaker says the risks of the first orbital flight are largely centered on the demisability of the ship. Sustaining a healthy vehicle that can leave orbit during missions is also described as something the team has to get right.

A speaker explains that in the space world, vehicles are either rockets or spacecraft. Rockets are the transportation systems that lift payloads up, while spacecraft live in orbit for a long time. Starship is meant to be a rocket that can also act like a spacecraft.

The intended profile is a vehicle that stays in orbit for a long time and then relights its Raptor engines to come safely out of orbit and survive re-entry.

The video also shows one of two tiles removed from ship 40, with the goal of proving for the first time on a Starship vehicle that tiles can be reflown. A speaker says that if asked before the flight 40 launch whether the team would fly to Australia, remove tiles and refly them on 41, they would have bet a year's salary it would not happen.

The countdown moves through go/no-go checks from each team. One team reports it is go on its risk numbers first, and the countdown reaches T-minus 2 minutes with no issues.

A speaker describes the anticipation of the day, noting that the first big objective is delivering useful payloads to orbit. These payloads are functional Starlink satellites meant to serve the constellation, and the orbital test campaign had been building toward this flight.

Following the premature shutdown of engine 6, the team confirms a no-go for orbit.

A speaker says the team has stated many times that it will only go to orbit when it is extremely confident in the health of the vehicle.

In the discussion that follows, participants note that without a commitment to orbit the satellites would not be deployed and the show would end. The flight rule is stated as not proceeding.

Everything looked good until engine 6 went out. Before the flight, the team had decided on a conservative approach: if the vehicle is unhealthy, it should not commit to orbit, and it would instead dispose of the ship into the Indian Ocean.

A speaker says that from the moment the engine was lost, the team largely understood it was the end of the mission for the ship. Only 17 minutes were available in that first coast to take any action.

Participants describe considerable uncertainty. The team had planned not to proceed if anything went wrong. Elon Musk, according to the video, questioned the requirements and asked whether anything actually prohibited going forward, noting that a development program carries a very different risk concept from a production program.

A speaker explains that launch-day risks come from many areas, including the engine team, avionics, computers, propulsion, the plumbing on the rocket, the launchpad, the tower and the catch arms. The goal is to take risk in places where the team can learn the most, which the speaker describes as the calculus used every day.

Jake was the final go for the engine systems and recommended to Elon that the team keep going. Flight controllers then reported executive override and concurrence, and said they wanted to proceed to orbit with this condition and lift the hold.

A final go/no-go was set for 4 minutes before the orbital insertion burn. In the go/no-go poll for burn two, stage two and Raptor 2 both reported go for orbit.

Burn two started up and went through early coast before shutting down. At that point, there were no alerts or alarms on the board, and mission control confirmed the vehicle was in orbit.

Reactions from the team followed, including one speaker saying they had not slept much the night before and were excited to get the satellites into orbit.

Contact was reported with all satellites, and the Starlink team said all 26 satellites were connected to the network. The team thanked the Starship team and said the mission was more than a test: it was a real mission.

Starlink and Starship are described as two separate teams that partner closely. A speaker explains that the successful mission shows the rocket has a useful purpose, and that adding satellites to the constellation will improve the network and service.

The mission is described as basically spotless so far, with all 26 satellites deployed and climbing successfully afterward. The Starlink team also says it believes its technology can support on the order of half of all internet traffic on Earth today, and that the challenge is to deliver on that goal.

A Starlink speaker says that on a per-satellite basis, V3 vehicles are about 10 times the performance of V2 satellites. Swapping the entire V2 fleet for V3 satellites would produce a network that is 10 times as capable.

The speaker adds that once Starship reaches a monthly cadence, around 12 launches a year, that would essentially match Starlink's best year in network growth. The speaker describes this as a turning point from development mode into production mode, with every launch from then on generating real value.

A mission engineer says Starship's coast in orbit will be quite long for an orbital stage, and that it will be the longest any vehicle of its caliber and size has coasted before attempting to relight.

The engineer explains that cryogenic propellants are a particular challenge over long durations, because heat from the environment tends to boil them, much like water boiling on a stove. The team therefore has to keep the liquid at a stable temperature so that enough propellant remains for the orbit and landing burn.

A speaker agrees with the decision to go to early Hawaii and says they would not gate that decision on helium use in the header tanks alone, because the team is well mitigated for settling.

Another participant agrees, and the flight team then confirms it will commit to Hawaii. Given everything that had happened up to that point, the team had completed the Hawaii option.

The speaker adds that the team could complete 99% of a historic second-stage return to launch site, but would still need the Raptor engines to work, which is why so much time had gone into testing them.

The video shows testing at Raptor Stand Bravo, where two booster modules are at the test position. A slice of the aft end of the vehicle was installed in the bay just as it is on the vehicle, and tested the same way.

A speaker recalls that the team first tested Raptor engines on the very first 100-ton horizontal test because it did not want to build the flame trench and dig the flame diverter for something that might not work. The team had no idea full-flow stage combustion would work, ran many cold flows and spin primes trying to light the engine, and the engine was lit the evening Elon Musk came to town. Testing then progressed from the 100-ton version to V1, V2 and V3.

A speaker describes Raptor as a full-flow staged combustion engine. In this design, all of the propellant is burned, and work is extracted through a turbine on each side of the engine before the propellant enters the main combustion chamber and is burned again.

The speaker says one of the most striking features of the engine is the extreme temperature difference within it. In test-fire footage, especially from McGregor, the thrust chamber is clearly visible. The speaker notes that this is somewhat counterintuitive: the inside of the thrust chamber is extremely hot, roughly half the surface temperature of the sun, while the outside is ice cold. The speaker adds that this huge temperature difference is what gives the engine much of its performance, because it extracts as much energy from the propellants as possible.

On LVN2, the ship is committed to an early Hawaii contingency landing. The countdown reached T-minus 2 minutes until the de-orbit burn.

A speaker says the team had been building toward this moment for a long time. The circularization burn had been energizing because it worked and the vehicle was going to orbit, but none of that mattered if the vehicle could not be brought back.

Another speaker notes that the worst-case scenario is that the vehicle stays in orbit, since other vehicles are largely demisable and burn up in the atmosphere on re-entry. The speaker adds that Starship is meant to be a reusable launch vehicle that survives re-entry, so it is important not to leave the vehicle in orbit where it could re-enter over land or populated areas.

A speaker says that despite all the work, all the contingencies and everything prepared so the burn would work, there is always a thought of what happens if it does not.

The video then shows the vehicle entering de-orbit startup and the burn proceeding. The descent trajectory is described as nominal, and the team says 'We're coming home.' A speaker responds, 'We did it.'

A speaker says SpaceX as a whole has come down to a handful of unique decision points. When smart people use all available information to make educated risk calls where the choice is go for broke, those calls become defining moments for the company.

The speaker says this decision became the defining moment for flight 14 and for turning Starship into an orbital launch vehicle.

The video then shows a rehearsal poll for a Starship return-to-launch-site mission. Go would mean the vehicle continues to return to launch site had this been a real RTLS mission. Structures and the arrow reported go, and the speaker notes that if this had been an RTLS mission, the vehicle would have continued to return to the launch site.