Starship SN8 landing flip maneuver

[Bratva]

What is the purpose of flip maneuver? Why it was carried out when vertical descent can prove the point?

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

What is the purpose of flip maneuver? Why it was carried out when vertical descent can prove the point?

Unlike the Falcon 9 which comes back down at a ballistic type trajectory the Starship will be coming in at 17,000 mph. They need to slow it down as much as possible with the bellyflop maneuver or it will be going too fast to land. They then need to test if it can spin around after it slows down enough.

 

[Liaslia]

Billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX rocket for Mars explodes in fireball on landing

https://twitter.com/x/status/1337080806678831105

 

[siegecrossbow]

So what? Failure is the mother of all successes. This is a revolutionary form of space transport so there are bound to be problems during testing phase.

 

[CrazyZ]

The lizard people don't want their secret Mars base discovered.