How to simulate a Starship launch: SN9 Edition!

Starship SN9 followed in the footsteps of SN8 to SpaceX Prototype Heaven - but we learned plenty about it in the meantime! In this video, I analyse a bunch of media of the launch to try and determine the physical properties of Starship from the Raptor thrust to the drag coefficient to the landing burn. With all this new info, I use Flight Club's public simulation tools to simulate SN9 and then show you what the telemetry looked like during the entire launch!

This took a good week of trawling through different sources after the launch, but I finally arrived at a simulation that I'm really happy with! We still don't know if this is exactly what happened - but it matches every data point that I could deduce.

00:00​ - Intro
01:28​ - Thrust & Engines
02:23 - Propellant Dumping
04:54 - Flight Profile
07:12 - (Successful) Landing
09:08​ - Launch!

[MarcusHouse]

Awesome diagnosis Declan. Very interesting!

[JackABeyer]

YES. I crave detailed, data oriented, in depth analysis like this. Thank you!!

[GJames]

I've seen your posts and the progression of Flight Club for a looong time now, but hadn't found my way to the channel. Glad I finally have now, this is fantastic stuff.

[quaidbergo]

Some really cool stuff there, especially the logic behind the propellant dumps on ascent. That's awesome.

[nickaustin]

The FAA work in Imperial measurements, so permission is likely to have been given to fly to 35000 feet.

SpaceX work in metric, so 10.5km is just an approximation of the height limit. 35000 feet is 10668 metres.

[jjvallen]

Great job!! ... For all the people asking why the numbers doesn't look accurate at the end. Declan explained that at 8:35

[matty]

The propellant dumping was really interesting to hear about. Great video!

[EdouardFiess]

Incredible work! It's amazing what goes into translating a video into cold hard numbers ;)

[timhawker]

Glad to see you are making your own videos. Keep up great work!

[OLHZN]

Love this. Great work man. Can't wait to try this telemetry out again live for SN10 😃

[janedoe]

Brilliant, Declan! FlightClub is getting better and better.

[sonlyme]

I would like to thank you for making this fascinating video. Meticulous and yet without hubris. Kudos to you, you have a new subscriber.

[ferdinandoscala]

Big kudos for this analysis, very interesting! You are clarifying many of the incognite aspects for the non-specialist observers like me. Fuel dumping thing, especially, was sort of a dark area to me.

[Flowmaster]

Well done! Thank you for the in depth analysis and explanation!

[makemobile]

Looks accurate, great Cant wait for the landing and of course the heavy booster simulation

[bigk]

Really great video and analysis, nice job!

[Stabby]

Love this, you got my sub. Seems like Elon likes your analysis as well!

[petersmith]

Awesome analysis and reverse engineering Declan! Very interesting!
It's going to be quite a wild ride for a passenger. Free-fall to about 2000ft, then flip around about 120 degrees, then back 30 to vertical all while slowing down to 0m/s, in about 20 seconds! Perhaps some accelerometers and rotation rates would be useful to show on your overlay.

[xDCxLEGENDZz]

Great video, love all the details! It would be cool to see the TVC on the 3 engines as well.

[Morphior]

Amazing video! Thanks for all you do, Declan!