[blackrock]

How is Starship going? Are they still trying to “sweat” the fuel out of the skin, to give it an active cooling layer?

[TaylorAlexander]

Starship development continues apace. They’re planning to launch the latest starship vehicle to 50km altitude next week and then perform their difficult landing maneuver 15km from the launch site.

I believe the sweating skin idea has been dropped. See this one hour video for a detailed breakdown of the current state of the design:

https://youtu.be/-8p2JDTd13k

[_Microft]

It's being launched up to 15km, that's pretty close to 50000 feet, so you might have mixed up the units.

[TaylorAlexander]

Oooh I see. The tweet I read said 15km/50k ft altitude and I misread that as 15km translation and 50km altitude. Thanks for the correction!

[blackrock]

The “sweating” feature was the best idea for the spacecraft.

When I first heard of it, I was thinking, this must be a bad April Fool’s joke, or an incredibly great idea. Turns out, it was the former.

[d_theorist]

Next launch is 15km (not 50).

[1958325146]

The latest we have is that it will sweat only where the heat shield can't hold up on its own: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1107380559834046465 .