[modeless]

Successful Raptor on-orbit relight demo! That should clear the next flight to go to orbit and deploy operational satellites! Big milestone for the program.

And the ship landing was so soft it didn't even explode! That's never happened before. And it's still connected to Starlink too. The ship's cameras are still working underwater! I wonder if they will be able to recover it intact?

We're getting some great views of the heat shield post-reentry. That's great data for the heat shield team. The heat shield is the biggest remaining question mark in the whole program. Reflight without heat shield refurbishment will be required for the whole architecture to work, and it's never been done before. None of the heat shields so far looked reusable without refurbishment, including this one.

Edit: Spashdown video https://x.com/SpaceX/status/2080804682918764619

[agent86]

> That should clear the next flight to go to orbit and deploy operational satellites!

Mid-stream they said they were deploying 20 real V3 Starlink satellites.

At the end of the stream the said all 20 had checked out as well.

[FLHerne]

They were real satellites but deployed on the suborbital trajectory of this flight, so will have burned up over the Indian ocean about the time that the ship re-entered.

The goal was to get about 20 minutes of testing the new satellites in space, not for them to have any chance of becoming operational.

Starship hasn't been entering a full orbit so far because it would be really bad if the relight burn did fail - chunks of ship would rain down a few days/weeks later on some random area anywhere within 27° of the equator. On a much smaller scale this has been an internationally embarrassing problem for China's LM-5.

[throwaway2037]

I could not believe they sacrificed twenty sats. What do think was the cost?

[modeless]

I imagine they built these a long time ago (anticipating fewer test flight problems) and have probably improved the design since then making these obsolete. They are going to build thousands so they can't be too precious.

[fancy_pantser]

Based on v1 satellite cost estimates, under $5MM for 20. It was v3 sats, don't know the cost on those yet.

[throwaway2037]

From the official launch video from SpaceX: https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-13

Around 20 minutes into the flight, they deploy 20x v3 sats. Google search tells me those cost more than 1M USD each. Yikes... they burned up 20M USD for a "few tests". Damn, space is expensive! The official video says that SpaceX only had twenty minutes to test the deployed sats before they fall back to the atmosphere.

[fancy_pantser]

Worth it to prove the pez dispenser deployed them correctly? Small % of the total launch cost.

[everfrustrated]

They need to be in orbit to deploy the satellites into a useful orbit. These ones only lasted for 20 minutes before breaking up.

[a34729t]

They have a much biglier support vessel this time, almost 300ft long IIRC. So maybe they can recover it?

[stinkbeetle]

It might be possible. Allegedly they had previously asked the Australian government about towing the ship back to a port.

Marine recovery can be much more difficult than it might seem though. Towing this nearly 200ft structure weighing a decent fraction of the weight of the boat that is not designed to be seaworthy, potentially full of explosive gasses and that could rapidly start breaking up and taking on water, nearly 300 nautical miles back to shore, would be quite difficult and dangerous. I would be impressed if they ever do it.

[stinkbeetle]

Since I can't edit that message - it seems SpaceX is now intending to recover Starship. I am standing by to be wrong / impressed.

[chasd00]

yeah it's suppose to tip over, explode and sink. Not sure what they're going to do with it now. If some other country comes in and salvages intact Raptor3, flight computers, and all the other ITAR regulated tech SpaceX may have a big problem. SpaceX will probably ask the airforce to gift them a jdam delivery or something.

[aejm]

They can relatively easily sink it, and in fact are required to be able to in order to get their US FAA launch license. As part of the environmental assessment specifically, but I could be wrong on that. For those curious, they have recovery teams on sight who can essentially shoot it to further puncture the hull or attach explosives even. They have experience with their Starship boosters not sinking off the coast of Texas and floating into Mexican waters.

[throwaway2037]

    > Allegedly they had previously asked the Australian government about towing the ship back to a port.

Any sources? I cannot find any. What was their response?

[stinkbeetle]

> Any sources?

https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/spacex-talks-land-r...

> What was their response?

Not sure. As far as I know the US is very supportive of SpaceX for space supremacy and Australia would almost certainly go along with what the US administration asks. If it hasn't happened yet it's more likely because SpaceX didn't/couldn't do it than Australia denying the request.

[maxlin]

My brain refuses to resolve the effect of it as anything but CGI. Event though it isn't.

[cadamsdotcom]

I mean, folks who make CGI better watch these too or they're not doing their jobs.

[smallmancontrov]

I hope they watch some of these, because movies are full of disappointing rocket scenes that are so many orders of magnitude away from the real thing that it's like representing a skyscraper with a treehouse. There is considerable room for reality to inspire fiction a bit more on this front.

[ceejayoz]

I remain shocked at how lame the nuke in Oppenheimer looked.

[smallmancontrov]

Oof yeah. Compared to the eldritch horror of the real slow motion footage, the glitter was painfully lame.

[testing22321]

> None of the heat shields so far looked reusable without refurbishment, including this one.

What about this one looks not reusable without refurbishment?

To my eye it’s by far the best we’ve seen, no burn through on flaps, etc

[modeless]

Lots of missing tiles still. Best case is it's all infant mortality and replacing just those tiles will result in a durable heat shield for many more flights. Worst case is every flight loses that many tiles and the ablative underneath can't be reflown until replacement.

I wouldn't be surprised if we end up seeing a heat shield refurbishment attachment to the launch tower that allows technicians to access the side of the ship to patch up between flights without leaving the pad. They're going to need some kind of solution for the many back-to-back HLS refueling flights.

[ceejayoz]

They've intentionally flown a number of times with missing heat tiles in sensitive spots, and many of those don't have the ablative coating. One of the benefits of steel over aluminium.

[testing22321]

Musk tweet:

“We got all the heat shield data we needed and then some! ”

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2080812297694409014

[modeless]

Also they plan to catch the ship next time! Excitement guaranteed!