Why SpaceX's Starship Falls Sideways Before Flipping Upright To Land - BGR

It would be fair to say that design teams at SpaceX threw a lot of the rulebook out the window when they designed Starship, which is the most powerful rocket ever built. SpaceX's flagship rocket, which is still under developmental testing, was designed for missions that had never been attempted before. Starship is expected to carry payloads and crew to Mars at scale, and this required out-of-the-box thinking. It is for this reason that the Starship vehicle and Super Heavy booster had to be designed using a different approach. One of the most novel parts of any Starship flight is the landing, where the Starship vehicle glides on its belly through the upper parts of the atmosphere after reentry, then flips into an upright position for landing at the last possible moment. This is done to gradually slow it down, to manage reentry temperatures effectively, and to use a flip maneuver to get Starship into an upright position so it can land on the surface of Mars, or to be caught by SpaceX's Mechazilla launch tower arms back on Earth.

SpaceX designed this flight profile (and designed Starship around the concept) for a good reason, which was to shed speed passively during reentry and to