They seem to have reached near-orbit with one vacuum engine failing. Lets see if they decide to go all the way to orbit or if the failure causes an abort.
The live channel has some video of recovery of the last starship which is pretty cool - it remained floating so they crawled up and removed some of the tiles to see how they performed, and actually reinstalled a few of them for the upcoming flight. So this mission will actually see some of the tiles flying for a second time.
> During operational flights, SpaceX plans to bring both Super Heavy and Ship back to the launch pad, where they'll be caught by the tower's "chopstick" arms. The company has already done this three times with Super Heavy but has not yet attempted it with Ship.
Ship will also have to be outfitted with a life-support system ahead of crewed missions, which could be coming relatively soon. For example, NASA picked Ship to the be the first crewed lunar lander for its Artemis program, which aims to land people on the moon for the first time in 2028 on the Artemis IV mission.
Don't worry, there is absolutely no chance this will happen in 2028. There are many detailed takedowns of why the "Human Landing System" schedule is preposterous, but here's HN's idlewords:
There is (2 minutes before Flight 14, maybe it changes in 10 minutes) low chance, but not no chance.
> This would be an ambitious but achievable cadence for Starship, particularly if the tanker Starships didn’t have to be reusable, and could be made without a heat shield or control surfaces. Just how much time SpaceX has to reach this cadence is an interesting question, since right now NASA and SpaceX are locked in a game of chicken around who can commit to the least realistic timeline. But it probably has to get in gear by early 2027.
This is good evaluation. A launch every week in 2027 is ambitious, but not impossible.
It certainly is, but my mind is more boggled by the Saturn V that did it 60 years ago. Space launch technology feels like it had a 30 year gap, as in, nothing significant happened between the Space Shuttle and the Falcon 9. And now, we are just catching up. Not just SpaceX, there is also Blue Origin, Rocketlab,... and everything that's happening in China.
An by the way, the whole point of Starship is not just doing it, it is doing it cheaply (by space standards). The whole reusability thing is part of it, and so is the "assembly line" approach that lets SpaceX treat their experimental rockets like fireworks. If the goal was just to lift a lot of mass off the ground, it is not even a great design, reusability in particular is costly in terms of payload capacity.
Yes. The Starship program is pushing the limits of engineering, if it fails today it doesn't make it unimpressive
I'd also consider the attempts at fusion energy to be very impressive engineering projects even though none have them have yielded a stable source of fusion energy
Does someone know where to watch the official livestream? The internet is so swarmed with all the recasters I cannot find the official stream anymore...
My experience however is that NASASpaceflight provides an overall better coverage than the official stream, only recasting when they don't have camera angles themselves (Such as when the ship is in space or during reentry)
Yeah but it's just a white-labelled version of the X stream with all its warts.
ETA: Sorry this was ambiguous, I'm complaining that the stream on spacex.com uses x.com, whereas there used to be a much better stream through youtube.com
That's the opposite of the criticism that was levelled at him, during earlier launches, when he was preferring his own cameras even though they only caught fog.
I use to watch the nasaspaceflight and everyday astronaut streams but the official one is best for the actual launch. The other two are good for the commentary because if you ask a question in the chat they’ll sometimes answer it.
Not a fan of Elon Musk at all, but SpaceX is damn impressive. Watching these key launches always makes me emotional for our species and what we can accomplish together.
Same with data centres in space, "Noooooo it cant work, heating in space, blah blah" same people, will never achieve anything in life as they only see limits.
Limits are security. Dont have to do this, don't have to risk that, no need for uncertainty, anxiety won't kill the weak confused mind...you can't fail if you never try (big brain!). That's the type. It is called cowards ;)
planned 6 orbits, 10hr's in space
the load of satelites will deploy 10x the banwidth of a single falcon launch making the economics of this venture rather startling for any 'competition'.
if they nail the deploy, relights, and soft landings, it will time for everybody to rethink everything *
* keep in mind they are already tinkering with on orbit fuel tranfer technology, which will lead to routine bunkering *
other things, like doing visual condition inspections of every ship in orbit means there experience base grows at a rate that other companys litteraly cant imagine.
Inspiring to watch, really.
Launch window is 8:15 AM to 9:30 AM eastern time.
Superheavy will land 7min after launch. Starship lands 9hrs post launch.
Edit: Both will be splashdowns (originally said they'll be caught)
https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1qxvvenMPMQxB
https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-14
SpaceX's flight profile says both are splashdowns?
F9 fits how many?
Don't worry, there is absolutely no chance this will happen in 2028. There are many detailed takedowns of why the "Human Landing System" schedule is preposterous, but here's HN's idlewords:
https://mceglowski.substack.com/p/how-should-we-think-about-...
> This would be an ambitious but achievable cadence for Starship, particularly if the tanker Starships didn’t have to be reusable, and could be made without a heat shield or control surfaces. Just how much time SpaceX has to reach this cadence is an interesting question, since right now NASA and SpaceX are locked in a game of chicken around who can commit to the least realistic timeline. But it probably has to get in gear by early 2027.
This is good evaluation. A launch every week in 2027 is ambitious, but not impossible.
His lordship announced this to the world at the UN.
An by the way, the whole point of Starship is not just doing it, it is doing it cheaply (by space standards). The whole reusability thing is part of it, and so is the "assembly line" approach that lets SpaceX treat their experimental rockets like fireworks. If the goal was just to lift a lot of mass off the ground, it is not even a great design, reusability in particular is costly in terms of payload capacity.
Would HN describe a huge program that didn't do the thing it was designed to do a "feat of engineering"?
I'd also consider the attempts at fusion energy to be very impressive engineering projects even though none have them have yielded a stable source of fusion energy
Edit: https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-14
My experience however is that NASASpaceflight provides an overall better coverage than the official stream, only recasting when they don't have camera angles themselves (Such as when the ship is in space or during reentry)
Also can recommend the restream of everyday astronaut Tim Dodd
ETA: Sorry this was ambiguous, I'm complaining that the stream on spacex.com uses x.com, whereas there used to be a much better stream through youtube.com
They are already live and have a lot of background discussion, unlike the official SpaceX stream.
And it's SpaceX, not ESA, sadly.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=fmkHjDeECps
Also hosted directly on SpaceX website:
https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-14
works beautifully
I am so looking forward to a successfully launch today.
For datacenters in space to work, they have to solve a bunch of unsolved problems and be more economical than datacenters in earth.