Space and Science BS Thread

Starship flight 10 NET Aug 24 (Sunday evening). No booster recovery - will be doing flight envelope expansion offshore.

 

A bit more for tomorrow’s attempt:


STARSHIP'S TENTH FLIGHT TEST
The tenth flight test of Starship is preparing to launch as soon as Sunday, August 24. The launch window will open at 6:30 p.m. CT.

A live webcast of the flight test will begin about 30 minutes before liftoff, which you can watch on spacex.com and on X @SpaceX. You can also watch the webcast on the X TV app. As is the case with all developmental testing, the schedule is dynamic and likely to change, so be sure to stay tuned to our X account for updates.

After completing the investigations into the loss of Starship on its ninth flight test and the Ship 36 static fire anomaly, hardware and operational changes have been made to increase reliability. You can read the full technical summary of the investigations here.

The upcoming flight will continue to expand the operating envelope on the Super Heavy booster, with multiple landing burn tests planned. It will also target similar objectives as previous missions, including Starship’s first payload deployment and multiple reentry experiments geared towards returning the upper stage to the launch site for catch.

The booster on this flight test is attempting several flight experiments to gather real-world performance data on future flight profiles and off-nominal scenarios. The Super Heavy booster will attempt these experiments while on a trajectory to an offshore landing point in the Gulf of America and will not return to the launch site for catch.

Following stage separation, the booster will flip in a controlled direction before initiating its boostback burn. This maneuver was demonstrated for the first time on Flight 9 and requires less propellant to be held in reserve, enabling the use of more propellant during ascent to enable additional payload mass to orbit.

The primary test objectives for the booster will be focused on its landing burn and will use unique engine configurations. One of the three center engines used for the final phase of landing will be intentionally disabled to gather data on the ability for a backup engine from the middle ring to complete a landing burn. The booster will then transition to only two center engines for the end of the landing burn, entering a full hover while still above the ocean surface, followed by shutdown and drop into the Gulf of America.

The Starship upper stage will again target multiple in-space objectives, including the deployment of eight Starlink simulators, similar in size to next-generation Starlink satellites. The Starlink simulators will be on the same suborbital trajectory as Starship and are expected to demise upon entry. A relight of a single Raptor engine while in space is also planned.

The flight test includes several experiments focused on enabling Starship’s upper stage to return to the launch site. A significant number of tiles have been removed from Starship to stress-test vulnerable areas across the vehicle during reentry. Multiple metallic tile options, including one with active cooling, will test alternative materials for protecting Starship during reentry. On the sides of the vehicle, functional catch fittings are installed and will test the fittings’ thermal and structural performance, along with a section of the tile line receiving a smoothed and tapered edge to address hot spots observed during reentry on Starship’s sixth flight test. Starship’s reentry profile is designed to intentionally stress the structural limits of the upper stage’s rear flaps while at the point of maximum entry dynamic pressure.

Flight tests continue to provide valuable learnings to inform the design of the next generation Starship and Super Heavy vehicles. With production ramping up inside Starfactory at Starbase alongside new launch and test infrastructure actively being built in Texas and Florida, Starship is poised to continue iterating towards a rapidly and fully reusable launch system.

Go Starship! Go SpaceX!


Space Exploration Technologies

 

It’ll be interesting to see how much they’ve fixed in order to get back on track. In flight relight, getting the door open, eliminating leaks as commonplace occurrences, getting back to reentry to continue tile testing and control of the new version, etc.

 

Voyageur 2 on this day 36 years ago.

 

Wx scrub. Meh.

 

Darn missed the launch. About to do starlink simulator deployments.

 

So far, so good!

 

So, are they going to keep up a testing schedule with this version or move to a larger ship and possibly similar growing pains? Losing most of a year to growing pains might argue for continued testing on a flight proven model as the next iteration catches up but I’ve no idea what the internal dialogue consists of.

 

They're validating things that will go into the next version. So, like the future heat shields will be informed by this, but the next version will be raptor 3s, etc. The faster they have a working orbiting ship with a pez, the faster test flights become revenue generating flights.

 

Scrubs are better than anomalies. Once it’s more proven I’m sure the restrictions will ease somewhat though there should always be some hard limits.

 

Lol yeah, just disappointing on a personal 'watch the flight today' level. Absolutely necessary operationally.

 

Agreed, the question is what process gets them there.

 

The only one SpX is going to follow is the rapidly iterative approach. It's way too early for design stability. They've produced a limited batch of version 2 ships, with minor tweaks in proceedures and final fitout, and they're just about out of them at this point, having pivoted to at least the barebones of Block 3 ships in production. I highly doubt they're going to go back to the Block 2 design for new builds.

A quick check looks like they have one more block 2 (Ship 38) left with 39+ being Block 3s. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starship_vehicles .. so seeing that they've met all significant milestones prior to orbital flight, the next logical step is an orbital test with live (test) starlinks. (IMHO) Block 3 might revert to a suborbital for validation since SH is going to go to an integrated hot stage section AND raptor 3s they might be conservative in testing that plus any revisions to the pez system. But IMHO it doesn't appear that the block 3 design is finalized yet, and remember the minimal capable vehicle just needs to go into LEO enough to deploy starlinks. Everything else is bonus.

 

Flight 10 additional footage ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjEoAh_ciTw

Wow. Missed it's intended splash by 3m.

Also lots of cool imagery of the splashdown.

 

It would be a shame if block 3 had similar problems reaching orbit and more time/opportunity was lost for orbital testing. It doesn’t have to be one or the other when they’ll have 2 pads.

 

A little bit of talk about IFT-10/S37's tiles...

https://ringwatchers.com/article/s37-tps

 

https://www.reuters.com/science/nas...l-sign-ancient-life-martian-rocks-2025-09-10/