Evidently the joints on the flaps still need a little work into not letting gases through, but it seemed to still have enough actuation to keep the spacecraft stable until the engines took over for the landing burn.
Evidently the joints on the flaps still need a little work into not letting gases through, but it seemed to still have enough actuation to keep the spacecraft stable until the engines took over for the landing burn.
Specifically for the flight 4 flap issue, it is almost impossible for us to simulate the reentry effects at hypersonic speeds like this. There are no wind tunnels in the world that even come close to these speeds or sizes and CFD struggles once you get into the multiple supersonic regime.
I actually was wondering if CFD would even apply for plasma. It kind of behaves weirdly and not like a liquid at all.
There’s also the fact that even if they could simulate all of that there’s no way they would be able to simulate it to a high enough resolution that the “plasma” would find its way into that hinge joint. So any data it came up with would be useless anyway.