Damn I can't wait for this. Its going to be great. Will be interesting to see how the grid fins go. I'm wondering if there could be any trouble from generating too much load from drag while they are in supersonic flow as opposed to high subsonic flow and hypersonic flow where they are known to work fine.
If i were to guess, I would imagine they are going to deploy the fins after or during the 2nd burn / the retro propulsion burn, so that they can only open them after the reach their target speed.
Course I'm probably wrong since I have no idea just where in the powered return flight plan they are supersonic, and they could actually be using the drag from the fins to 'slow down faster' and have engineered the fins to deal with the drag load. Which wouldn't surprise me, but will impress me if its the case.
There's been Russian military use of grid fins on supersonic rockets and missiles for many decades. It's my understanding that supersonic flow is not a problem, rather transonic (mercifully a relatively short period on either an accelerating or decelerating rocket) behavior is the problem.
If i were to guess, I would imagine they are going to deploy the fins after or during the 2nd burn / the retro propulsion burn, so that they can only open them after the reach their target speed.
Course I'm probably wrong since I have no idea just where in the powered return flight plan they are supersonic, and they could actually be using the drag from the fins to 'slow down faster' and have engineered the fins to deal with the drag load. Which wouldn't surprise me, but will impress me if its the case.