[gpm]

Speculation:

Putting a starship in low earth orbit right now would be a bit reckless, because if the engines fail to relight it's going to come down at some point in a completely random spot along the trajectory, and it's quite a large piece of debris that is designed to not burn up. By contrast this test (which involved the first 0g relight of a raptor) was designed so that if that failed the ship would still come down in a designated keep out zone in the ocean.

Even ignoring the safety risk, the value SpaceX gets from this flight is largely testing the re-entry (heatshield, flaps, etc) of starship. Putting it in an orbital trajectory risks a failed engine relight making it impossible to test that, because the ship will be dead (out of power) by the time it comes back down. Whatever low-cost payload you could put up there for "free" (the cost of risking the payload being destroyed if the test flight goes wrong too early) might not be sufficient to pay for the risk stopping in an orbital trajectory imposes on the test objectives.

Now that they've successfully lit a raptor in 0g, I imagine they're a fair bit more likely to make the subsequent flights orbital.

[pfundstein]

That's what the flight termination system is for, and thus it'll be exploded remotely instead.

[philipwhiuk]

An FTS does not prevent 100t of debris of which a significant amount is designed to survive re-entry from impacting the surface. If you blow up 100t you still have 100t of debris, just in lots of bits (and honestly, still big chunks - an FTS does not atomise or even close - it punches a hole and then the vehicle collapses structurally)

All it really does is remove the explosive potential of the fuel.

So no, it's not designed to do this.

Once in orbit the FTS system is usually deactivated (safed).

[mapt]

It's designed to survive re-entry in a very particular, and repeatedly adjusted, orientation. It's unclear how much would survive re-entry in an uncontrolled tumble. But better safe than sorry.

[chippiewill]

Yeah, you do not want the FTS activated on orbit. It's not something you want going off where it can leave 100t of hazardous debris in orbit.

[mapt]

Debris in orbits that nearly intersect the atmosphere are practically harmless. The issues arise when you have an orbit that will intersect other orbits a billion times before decay.

While the reality is very complicated, you can make a rough handwave model for orbital debris in a circular orbit: At 100km it lasts 1 orbit (90 minutes) at most, and every ~100km you add after that increases orbital lifespan by ~10x.

[simonh]

You want to turn a single dead 100t object in orbit into 100t of randomly blasted debris in orbit?

[PittleyDunkin]

> Putting a starship in low earth orbit right now would be a bit reckless, because if the engines fail to relight it's going to come down at some point in a completely random spot along the trajectory, and it's quite a large piece of debris that is designed to not burn up.

More relevantly—it's harder to make a marketing stunt out of a fallible mission.

[MarkusQ]

What exactly do you think they're marketing?

And don't say launch services, 'cause you're using "it's a marketing stunt" to explain why they aren't taking payloads. "It's R&D" makes a heck of a lot more sense.

[rogerrogerr]

Is it your position that flight 6, or the Starship program, or SpaceX is a marketing stunt?

[davidguetta]

As if Space X needed more marketing than being the cheapest and more consistent launch provider for the past 10 years

[GuB-42]

> More relevantly—it's harder to make a marketing stunt out of a fallible mission.

SpaceX is well known for making a marketing stunt out of their failures (see "How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket Booster"). In fact, Elon Musk is known to make marketing stunts out of anything.

But that's not it, they could have launched a dummy payload if they wanted to, they have already done it for other rockets, and yeah, they made it a marketing stunt. Famously, they launched Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster in the direction of Mars. But here, launching a payload at this stage of development is just not the best thing to do.

[odirf]

In fact, IFT-6 had some payload. They put a banana into the payload bay.