“Flight 2 actually almost made it to orbit,” he said. “If it had a payload, it would have made it to orbit because the reason that it actually didn’t quite make it to orbit was we vented the liquid oxygen, and the liquid oxygen ultimately led to a fire and an explosion.”
IFT-3 flight plan includes:
- An in-space engine burn from the header tank (to test deorbit capabilities)
- Propellant transfer from header tank to the main propellant tank (stepping stone to propellant transfer between ships)
- Test of the “Pez dispenser” payload door (to be used on later flights for Starlink satellite deployment)
They are also working on qualifying Falcon 9 boosters for up to 40 flights. It looks like 20 flights is not the limit!
Yeah. As much as I love every little bit of information we can get from inside SpaceX, it kinda feels weird coming from Elon now. Like can we even trust what he’s saying anymore? I mean I hope it’s just a trivial purging of LOX that was at fault, and that’s an easy fix, but is that the whole story? What about the booster?