Years ago, when I was in the back seat of an F-15D, the front-seater Lt Col Ted Hailes asked me if I had ever experienced a tail slide in an F-15. I had not. He said he would show me what it was like ... but then, better part of valor, he decided not to. He knew is would have scared the crap out of me. LOL. I hadn't thought about a tail slide in years.
Until now.
SpaceX tested another Starship prototype, SN10, to an altitude of 10 km in order to practice its daring belly flop to tail down landing maneuver. This time the flip was successful utilizing 3 raptor engines, then shutting two down for the final landing exactly as planned. Unfortunately 3 of the 6 landing legs didn't successfully deployed (as you can see in our footage), alongside a fairly high landing velocity, resulting in an explosion 8 minutes after touching down.
That's exactly what the F-15 tail slide encompasses:
- ascent
- cut the engines
- belly flop
- hands off all flight controls
- fast descent
- negate the stall
- recover -- without any pilot input.
Wow.
One can find videos of the F-15 tail slide.
What was the first thing I noticed about the Starship SN10?
Wow, it looks archaic. Russian rocket built in Afghanistan? Looks like something right out of Buck Rogers. And, yes, "Buck Rogers" airs on MeTV. But even if it looks archaic, the engineering was incredible. Absolutely incredible.
Everything went perfectly until it didn't. They say the rocket landed perfectly, but slow-motion shows the rocket was not perfectly vertical when it landed, even before the "legs" deployed.
The good news: there was an 8-minute gap between successful landing and blowing up.