Why SpaceX Was Forced To Jettison The Hot Stage Ring On Flight 4!

In this Special Report we will examine why SpaceX is planning to Jettison the Interstage on the 4th Test Flight of Starship.

We will also investigate whether the Hot Stage Ring may have been ripped free during the landing burn on the previous flight test.

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CSI Starbase Production : Geoff Allan

Huge thanks to the following photographers and content creators who make all of this possible!

▶︎ Ryan Hansen Space - CSI 3D Forensics Agent

▶︎ The Space Engineer

Chameleon Circuit - CSI 3D Forensics Agent

Andi Ashtorak - Starbase Simulator Video Game:

📷Virtual Space 3D - Highbay & CSI Headquarters Renders

📷 Starship Gazer - Starbase Photographer

▶︎ NASASpaceflight

▶︎ RGVAerialPhotography - Starbase Weekly Livestreams

Cosmic Perspective w/Audio from Andrew Keating

Tim Dodd - The Everyday Astronaut

Music Credits

0:01 Emmanuel Jacob - The Heir - Licensed
2:10 Dear Gravity - Empyrean - Licensed
15:20 Raz Burg - Night Chase - Licensed
18:25 Tamuz Derek - Blue Beings - Licensed

Last but not least I want to give HUGE SHOUTOUT to the entire CSI Starbase team on discord. This dedicated team of 200+ agents with specialties ranging all across the board, has been crucial in getting the most accurate info for these episodes. Couldn't do it without yal!

[carcinogenyearsago]

Your deep dives are the best on YouTube.

[lorenbrown]

As a retired aerospace engineer, I appreciate your detail, thank you!

[dumpsterdiner]

I was gonna say it's because the best part to recover is no part to recover, but your explanation is a lot more thoughtful 😅

[Shadare]

Zach always has a scoop nobody else has. I had never heard someone talk about the interstage ring coming off in IFT-3. Totally makes sense now why the booster looked like it didnt understand it's own shape. I thought it was because they didn't reprogram it to account for the interstage.

[Starsoon]

Best Starship related channel, love your work Zack

[adriank]

As always, you absolutely nail the CSI Starbase name, this time more than ever. This was pure CSI! That never would have occurred to me about the hotstage ring and the shadow. I also love how you present your findings, explaining your reasoning step by step and showing us alternative conclusions. I really wish that more YouTubers were like you. YT would have been a much better place!

[ppaschka]

@3:54 The oxygen in the landing tank would settle due to drag on the booster, not rise. Drag is pushing the structure up, so the oxygen moves down relative to the booster. The same settling happens during an engine burn.

[Lost-In-Blank]

Zack, I'm so happy you're back making videos again !!! WAI and Marcus House are good, but you add so much extra technical detail, and I really really missed that. Thank you Zack and all your team and collaborators for your truly excellent videos.

[hymnodyhands]

Here is what I love about this channel... past all the noise around Elon Musk, you take us into the engineering of how whatever happened and can happen. I used to love watching CSI, but the violence depictions became too much... this channel gives me back what I love but aimed toward building and progress!

[harlycorner]

The water droplet sound was funny 🤣🤣🤣 22:42

[privateerburrows]

Confirmed yet again; this is the best Starship channel on YT by a long shot. The Sherlock Holmes of rocket engineering.

[ganjalogic]

I just discovered this channel and I want to say that I really appreciate how much effort you're putting into these videos. I'm learning more about Starship per minute than like any other video I've watched so far.

[taylortremblay]

I was not expecting this today, and I’m happy to be reminded of the depth your deep dives go too. Amazing!

[rcketplumber]

At 3:55 you are mistaken about the need for a completely full LOX landing tank- during aerodynamic freefall, the wind drag will push upward on the booster and cause the LOX to settle to the bottom of the tank just fine. The same thing already happens on Falcon 9 boosters, there's no way for gas to accumulate on the bottom of the tank absent a very high heat flux causing boiling.

[danheidel]

Another thing to consider is that the current hotstaging ring is quite non-optimal. It's replicating the top surface of the tank with a whole second structure and the vertical slats are going to be a lot heavier than the equivalent truss structure they are going with on v2+. My guess is that the improved hotstaging ring will be taller to increase the amount of space for the exhaust gasses, especially from the center engines, to escape and that the top of the stage 1 tank will have a sharper curvature close to a conical shape to stand up to the exhaust forces with less material. The existing ring is essentially redirecting the force of 3 raptors at nearly point blank range using a nearly flat diaphragm almost normal to the exhaust vector which is pretty much the worst way to have to deal with those loads.

The V2+ hotstage structure is probably going to be significantly lighter, reducing the need to discard it.

[kanukistani]

Remember that the current booster was NOT designed with hot staging in mind. It was supposed to be spun off of the starship in the same was the starlink satellites are deployed. When they decided to hot stage, they just manufactured this interstage and put it on top of the boosters they already had to test the concept. My personal theory is that Booster/Starship 2.0 will be designed from the get go with hot staging applied and this issue goes away at that point.

[ashtorak]

Yes, the hot stage ring can now be jettisoned in flight with the latest StarbaseSim update ;)
It's always a pleasure to contribute to these videos! :)

[kalkovonschpritzendorf]

I like how every time you suggest a theory, you humbly also suggest the possibility of you being wrong. This is the level of self-reflection that many youtubers lack.
Great content, I found your channel today and I'm looking forward to see more.

[ironspider]

Your starship videos are hands down the best on youtube.

[schrodingerscat]

Another tour de force of investigative journalism, easily the best presentation on this I have seen anywhere.