Spacex Launches Starship Megarocket on 11th Test Flight

Yes, as after it leaves the atmosphere and achieves that 98% of orbital speed, its trajectory wouldn't change much even if it exploded - its engines are turned off after ascent that takes ~9 minutes, then it free-falls for an hour to the other side of the Earth. They target a spot in the Indian Ocean near the west coast of Australia (it's coming from the west). In case of explosion debris would fall to the ocean sooner, farther to the west from Australia. More dangerous part of the flight is ascent (when it gains that speed), as its ground path is near some Caribbean islands, and it can cause problems like on flight 7:

> Around three minutes later, Ship 33 exploded over the Turks and Caicos Islands, causing debris to litter the Caribbean islands, Puerto Rico and the British Virgin Islands. While no injuries were reported, the debris caused minimal damage to infrastructure in Puerto Rico and the British Virgin Islands, and prompted airspace closures in the region for over an hour. The FAA ordered SpaceX to perform a mishap investigation into the breakup, grounding Starship until the inquiry was complete.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_flight_test_7#Mission...

I think it depends on which specific step fails. The farther into flight it happens, the narrower the area over which the debris is spread. But, I think being over the entire ocean is unlikely, since the trajectory intersects with the planet, and that intersection point would also have to be in the ocean.

Correction: the trajectory only intersects with the planet prior to engine relight testing. After that it's at ~50km [1] (though to be fair, if they make it safely through the relight, all testing so far shows they're likely to make it through most of reentry)

[1] https://x.com/planet4589/status/1977917833825730792

There’s a very short period of time where if it exploded debris would fall on the African continent which is an unavoidable risk of orbital flight out of the US. Other than that it’ll either fall in the Atlantic or Indian Ocean.

I think the tile loss rate will still be important to them before that. Even in such low orbits, any tiles lost would take some time to come down (and might even survive all the way down).

If they can make it so they only lose tiles when in a suborbital trajectory, they may be safe to begin deploying real Starlinks as soon as V3 has proven engine relight.

Where's SLS?

How much was spent on development of SLS, Shuttle and Apollo?

Why do you think the other competitors thought it would cost $10 billion for a HLS?

Did NASA have $10 billion for HLS?

Where are the suits?

Where did you get this nonsense about orbit? Is the vehicle incapable?

> Apollo for comparison took about 8 years from announcement to moon landing. Space shuttle took about 9 years from approval to first flight. Starship has been in development now about 9 years.

This comparison is very unfair. Nine years ago the big rocket was a dream, not even Starship at the time.

> During his presentation, Musk joked that his strategy for raising money might be to “steal underpants,” do a Kickstarter campaign … and profit.

Contra Saturn V, which had strong funding out the gate.

> Apollo for comparison took about 8 years from announcement to moon landing.

Apollo is not reusable.

It seems to me you compare apples to oranges. SpaceX solves a problem no one have ever solved before. Obviously they going to have set backs and missed deadlines.

> don't think the public understands how far behind they are

The public watches cropped launch videos and then scrolls on to the next issue. Most Americans probably couldn’t say what Starship is.

> it has been slower than both Apollo and Shuttle

For a fraction of the cost.

> It's making the 2027 Artimis III moon landing increasingly unrealistic

The entire Artemis programme has been a boondoggle. But while SpaceX is building a new launch vehicle and tackling propellant transfer, Lockheed can’t stop fucking up a legacy heat shield.

(I’m still like 4:1 on Orion, not HLS, being the reason Artemis 3 is delayed [1].)

> Keep in mind Starship hasn't even achieved orbit yet

It’s in development for reuse at a scale of rocketry we’ve never done before. It’s weird to hold a literal moonshot R&D project to consumer timelines like this.

After this (11) test, if Block 3 and Pad 2 validate (12), we could see an orbital attempt in Q1 ‘26 (13). I’d be shocked if orbital insertion is not succeeded in 2026; the big question is how much refurbishment will be required. (Given SpaceX is basically the only group in the world to have solved this problem, I wouldn’t hold my breath.)

Beyond Artemis, it looks more likely than not that Starship will be delivering cargo to LEO by the end of 2027. This not only represents a major leap in capacity and cost advantage, it obsoletes several rockets on the books in Europe and Asia through the late 2030s.

[1] https://www.space.com/space-exploration/artemis/nasa-delays-...

I'm pretty NASA signed the deal knowing full well that they were taking a big risk. The chances of Starship HLS being a Long Poll item for Artemis III were high. They chose Starship HLS knowing that it had a long and risky critical path.

And In fairness to NASA....and I may not have all of these details correct, but they didnt have many choices. the NASA Reauthorization Act required them to select two different landers for HLS, but the budget only funded one and under funded them at that. Starship was all that they could afford. Congress has since gone back and funded a second one.

> how far behind they are.

If anything, I would still count this one in the "refreshing" column.

SpaceX has been having difficulties with several launches and with permitting - and yet, construction continues; Launches continue at as high a pace as they can get away with; make do with their earlier rockets in the meantime (cranking out starlinks launches at an insane pace). They have been more cautious but there is still visible progress. As opposed to others which might have disappeared for a few years, or folded altogether.

Usually just hand something a header and a few rows and ask it to give me a command/code/whatever to import it. Usually it can give you decent enough code to do a streaming import. Haven’t had any model since like 2023 stumble on import glue code.

I don’t trust “agents” to do things on their own.

Starship can't do that.

Think more along the lines of communications satellites and humans on other planetary bodies.

Teapots.

I think it's pretty interesting.

Yep but ship is where this is very difficult and far from validated.

They demonstrated tiles withstand single landing - thats far from rapid re-use.

Somehow steel, high temps and ceramics reminds me apple crumble, not re-useable spaceship, but I wouldn’t bet against Elon here.

> The booster part is actually just demonstrated

For the second time.