Starship's Twelfth Flight Test (spacex.com)
65 points by pantalaimon 2 hours ago
GMoromisato 28 minutes ago
There is a lot riding on V3. SpaceX cannot afford to take too many launches to get V3 solid. If 2026 is another 2025 (3 V2 failures in a row followed by 2 V3 successes), then they can forget about landing on the moon before 2030.
My hope is that Flight 12 goes nearly flawlessly (at least gets to soft splashdown) and they can start testing in-space refueling in July/August.
If they can demonstrate in-space refueling by the end of 2026, then they have a shot at a lunar-landing demo in 2027 and a crewed-landing in 2028. But a lot has to go right for that to happen. Here's hoping it does.
NitpickLawyer 7 minutes ago
> then they can forget about landing on the moon before 2030.
A crewed Moon landing before 30 is really implausible. Everyone is late, but the latest NASA OIG report put the Axiom suits very late (somewhere ~2031 if everything holds, but it notes it might not hold).
john_minsk 22 minutes ago
question: what will happen if orbit refuelling goes wrong? Won't it destroy everything in orbit?
JumpCrisscross 20 minutes ago
> what will happen if orbit refuelling goes wrong? Won't it destroy everything in orbit?
No. What is the mechanism through which you suspected this could happen?
bragr 18 minutes ago
bediger4000 15 minutes ago
Liquid handling in microgravity has always been weird. Big gas bubbles in the fluid, surface tension effects causing liquid to float in balls in the ullage, stuff like that. Turbopumps break if they ingest a larger bubble.
There could be some odd failure modes I would think. Failure to pump the liquid, broken pumps, who really knows? My guess would be that a failure mode would be a big spill, a failure to pump, only partially refilling, or broken turbopumps before an explosion.
sfjailbird an hour ago
This is the first flight of the new engines. They look so much sleeker and simpler than the previous two generations:
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQGMtnP...
* And supposedly with a 20% power increase to boot!
MattDamonSpace an hour ago
Oh wow that photo is from years ago but you’re correct, this is the first flight of that design
chasd00 an hour ago
The stats are pretty out there. Iirc just the fuel pump, which you can probably pick up and put on your desk, generates 100k HP.
jvanderbot an hour ago
Well, it's powered by bleeding exhaust from a very big rocket.
TomatoCo 34 minutes ago
jasonwatkinspdx 29 minutes ago
cooper_ganglia an hour ago
These are always exciting, even if it's more of the same. I love that we live in a time where we can regularly watch huge rockets launch into space with intentional issues just to see what might go wrong and how best to monitor/solve them.
Congratulations, everyone, at being alive at the best point in human history so far!
olliepro an hour ago
With super high res onboard camera footage too.
valine an hour ago
> The two modified satellites will test hardware planned for Starlink V3 and will attempt to scan Starship’s heat shield and transmit imagery down to operators to test methods of analyzing Starship’s heat shield readiness for return to launch site on future missions
Hope we get to see those images. Would be awesome to see a 3rd person view of starship in space.
maccam94 an hour ago
Dang, they aren't catching the booster this time, but I guess V3 is practically a new vehicle and validating the next Starship launch is probably too critical to risk damage to the launch site for now.
amarant an hour ago
Oh hey, you're right! Somehow I read "water landing" and interpreted it as landing on one of the barges (ocisly or jrti) any clue why that isn't the case? Is super heavy just too big for the barges maybe?
ggreer an hour ago
They won't use barges because the booster has no landing legs (to save weight), and because the booster is massive compared to Falcon 9. Also Starship is meant for rapid reusability, and it can take days to return a barge to port and unload the booster. Getting barge landings to work would be a distraction from the goal of Starship, and SpaceX already has Falcon 9 for current payloads.
And they won't attempt a catch with the first V3 booster because it's not worth the risk. They can build a new booster every couple of months. It takes much longer to build the launch/catch tower, and they don't have any spare towers yet. A catastrophe during a booster/ship catch would set them back a year, so they'll only attempt a catch if they're confident it will succeed.
pixl97 an hour ago
Superheavy is 10x larger than the Falcon. Its thrust would sink the barge.
robocat an hour ago
wmf an hour ago
It doesn't have landing legs so it has to be caught by chopsticks. They're skipping the barges; either it lands back at the pad or it doesn't land.
dayyan an hour ago
Everyday Astronaut has posted a video on this launch https://x.com/Erdayastronaut/status/2057163096817332576?s=20
Diederich an hour ago
I'm watching it now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_ecCDqTSJs As always, Tim is doing a fantastic job.
pixl97 an hour ago
There is a 70% chance for storms in the area tomorrow so it's very likely going to be a scrub tomorrow.
Recurecur 6 minutes ago
AccuWeather has it at the infamous 51% probability level for thunderstorms at 5 CST, so there’s still a decent chance for success tomorrow.
Time will tell!
chasd00 an hour ago
Really looking forward to seeing raptor 3 fly. Those engines are insane.
lysace 11 minutes ago
They have really invested focus in creating mass market content lately - like, actually having someone spend some time creating the text on this page. Didn't really see that earlier.
And a number of long form videos (like "Test Like You Fly").
IPO time: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg4pe2953q1o and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48213933 (in the last few hours)
purpleidea 43 minutes ago
I don't know why they aren't doing more booster catches. Kind of a bit disappointed they keep skipping. Either they can land them or they can't. If it's not consistent then they're avoiding the possible failure so their stock price (launching soon) stays up, otherwise just prove it's solid and actually works.
ggreer 31 minutes ago
They can build new boosters pretty quickly. New launch/catch towers take a lot longer, and they don't have any redundancy yet. Also they weren't going to reuse their V2 boosters once V3 was ready, so they could learn more by testing things like intentionally disabling an engine during the landing burn or flying at a higher angle of attack.
GMoromisato 37 minutes ago
V3 booster has a lot of changes, including a brand new downcomer, an integrated hot-staging ring, and 3 instead of 4 grid fins. Chances of a RUD are not 0.
If Flight 12 blows up in space, they've already got Flight 13 almost assembled. It might delay them a month, maybe. But if a returning booster destroys the launch pad, it would delay them much longer--maybe a year.
With those stakes, it makes sense to not try a booster catch until they're sure it's going to work.
Nevermark an hour ago
I am watching Elon give a long speech about the launch, scarily delivered at high speed, without pause. Including a Bitcoin marathon promotional informercial complete with an on-screen scan code. "That QR code is your boarding pass." He just repeated several paragraphs verbatim from a few minutes ago.
He occasionally mentions the aspirational 100x reduction in launch costs.
AI slop. Yuck, Youtube. Surely Google could have AI moderators catching this crap.
sfjailbird an hour ago
That's a fake youtube channel that is somehow allowed to squat the SpaceX channel name. It's been going on for years, including the crypto scam. Baffling. Maybe a big middle finger from Google to Elon.
jiggawatts an hour ago
It probably is AI generated.
My very first exposure to "AI spam" was trying to watch one of the Starship test launches, the second one if I remember correctly.
That was around the time that Elon bought Twitter, so he removed all publicity video streams from third-party platforms like YouTube and moved them to Twitter's streaming service.
I wanted to watch this on my big TV, so I was hunting through YouTube for the stream. I found the most likely looking one and watched as Elon got up on a stage, started waffling on about how this is the "future of humanity" and then with 40 seconds to go before the launch the (entirely realistic) AI voice was dubbed over and started offering "double your Bitcoin if you transfer to this account", with the obligatory QR code in the corner.
I was actually impressed by the audacity!
The really frustrating thing was that YouTube then promptly blocked all content even vaguely related to the launch! It was impossible to keyword search for anything that said "starship", "spacex", etc.
It was a scary preview of instant corporate censorship.
I'm sure the person (or bot!) at YouTube "meant well", but sheesh... they just erased the online presence of dozens of legitimate space-fan channels like NASA Space Flight. And NASA. And SpaceX's official channel too!
Ironically this meant that the only remaining matches were 100% scams.
Nevermark an hour ago
> Ironically this meant that the only remaining matches were 100% scams.
I am wondering if some of this is unmarked paid advertising. I can't imagine any other incentive for Youtube to effectively align its brand with Ick.
Ads, as one of the prophets said, are the Devil.