Starship Flight 7
First Shuttle orbited astronauts and successfully recovered all intended components. Every Saturn 5 was successful, the 3rd flight sent a crew to lunar orbit, and the 6th put a crew on the moon.
To date a Starship has yet to be recovered after flight - and those launched are effectively boilerplate as they have carried no cargo (other than a banana) and have none of the systems in place to support a crew.
Some people are really fetishizing iterative failure - but just because you are wandering in the desert does not mean there is a promised land.
That "landing" (is it still considered a landing if it's chopsticked a few meters before it touches the ground?) is so unnatural it almost looks fake. So big and unimaginable that it feels like watching fx on a movie!
The close-up camera right after was interesting, I thought it captured on the grid fins, but it looks like there are two small purpose-built knobs for that.
The times we live in!
View of previous catch (flight 5) from a very distant vantage point was even more incredible for me. You can see the scale of things right there
https://x.com/shaunmmaguire/status/1845444890764644694
Anyone has similar view of this landing?
Edit: distant view of flight 7 by the same person
Oh no they lost the ship after the booster landed! Seems like they lost an engine, then I saw fire around the rear flap hinges in the last images before they cut out, and then the telemetry showed more engines shutting down until it froze.
During ascent I also noticed a panel near the front fins that seemed to be loose and flapping. Probably not related but who knows.
Edit: Here's a video of the aftermath. Strangely beautiful. https://x.com/deankolson87/status/1880026759133032662
Back a few years ago. This was the starship that in 2024 would reach Mars with humans, with so much space taken by crew and materials, and almost no fuel, and "10 times cheaper". And currently is an empty shell. Nice fireworks and show, but no meaningful payload yet. Not even LO. And this will be ready for 2026 artemis mission?
This is version 2 of Starship, with some upgrades, such as longer starship.
"Upgrades include a redesigned upper-stage propulsion system that can carry 25 per cent more propellant, along with slimmer, repositioned forward flaps to reduce exposure to heat during re-entry.
For the first time, Starship will deploy 10 Starlink simulators" [1].
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/01/heres-what-nasa-would-...
[1] https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/musks-starship-ready-...
Will be interesting to hear the postmortem on the second stage. The booster part seemed to work pretty flawlessly with the exception of a non-firing engine on boost back which then did fire during the landing burn.
If the person doing their on-screen graphics is reading this, I wonder if you have considered showing tank LOX/CH4 remaining as a log graph. I believe it decreases logrithmically when being used (well it would if you keep 'thrust' constant) so that would create a linear sweep to the 'fuel level' status.
When this comment gets 44 minutes old it's going to be T-0.
Catch was successful again, very impressive.
I miss the time before X broke so many things, like official streams being on Twitch where I've already paid for ad free viewing.
What worries me about space innovation is the fact that there is such little margin for error. Materials are being stressed so much while trying to defy the laws of physics that the smallest angle error, the smallest pressure mismatch, smallest timing error, and boom. This did not happen when we were inventing cars, trains and air planes. Now imagine these risks, while you're halfway to mars. Is it possible that we just have no found/invented the right materials or the right fuel/propulsion mechanism to de-risk this, and that is where we should be allocating a lot more resources?
I wonder if the second stage failure was related to the metal flap seen here on the very left of the image: https://imgur.com/a/VS8IPdv
Can someone please please PLEASE tell SpaceX PR/Streaming team that the speed (per SI system) is measured in meters per second, not kilometers per hour? The speed of sound is approx 300 m/s, orbital velocity is approx 8,0000 m/s (depending on altitude), free fall acceleration on Earth is 9.81m/s, 1.63m/s on the Moon, the speed of light is apporx 300,000,000 m/s, people learn these numbers in middle school. It's not 1000 km/h, or 28,000 km/h, it just looks so weird.
Edit: ok, acceleration is meters per second per second, but my point stands.
Tim Dodd is live as well:
Video of the breakup - https://www.instagram.com/reel/DE52_hVSeQz/
Two years ago: I really didn't think they'd make all those engines work at the same time. They did.
Waiting for the day when they can load more than a banana. But I fear, the planet will be uninhabitable before that's a thing.
This NASASpaceflight stream is up now: https://www.youtube.com/live/3nM3vGdanpw
Amazing. 2nd ever catch of the booster via the 'chopstick' arms. Looks like the starship itself won't be splashing down west of Perth, instead telemetry has been lost (assuming RUD - "Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly").
It is amazing to see the number of fairly significant changes they tested in this launch. I guess that is the advantage of private space flights and rocket launches where the speed of development is must faster than in a place like Nasa or any government run space program.
I am not surprised that stage 2 failed because they were testing with a lot of the thermal tiles removed.
That was so impressive. I was lucky enough to live in Florida and see the rockets go up. Standing on the beach and watching the first Falcon Heavy launch will be something that will always stick with me. Great job SpaceX.
Coders who require at least 7 iterations to properly implement a data entry form here grousing over a spaceship failure on the 7th iteration.
I noticed a strange debris at https://www.youtube.com/live/6Px_b5eSzsA?si=1hAiLjTrb7KUVaW7...
thought it was ice from the outside but now i'm curious
Speaking of exploding rockets, watch the hypnotic ending of Koyaanisqatsi with haunting music by Philip Glass:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OacVy8_nJi0
According to the comments, the footage in this scene is a Saturn V on a launchpad and then an Atlas-Centaur Missile.
Congratulations to the 14,000 SpaceX employees for their accomplishments.
What happens if the ship has exploded? Is there any kind of danger?
Clever product placement of iPhone and Starlink and excellent storytelling. Space age technology used to connect astronauts to their loved ones on earth. Can’t be done any better.
Really says something when manufacturing and space launch cycle times are faster than some software projects.
Seems they lost the ship , it is supposed to be v2 and had several changes
US scientists and engineers are second to none in the world. But they are distant second to their own marketing guys in innovation.
Rapid unscheduled disassembly!
Cool video of the upper stage breakup from Turks and Caicos
Any idea how long it took them to get the Falcon right?
Or is comparing dev timelines for both a moot point because they are different classes of rockets
WOW, the footage of Starship reentry was amazing
i still can't believe they can actually catch that first stage. it makes no sense, but works!
SpaceX started Starship development in 2012. Despite 12 years of work, its best test flight reached space but not orbit, sending a banana to the Indian Ocean.
While NASA's SLS began in 2011 and successfully flew around the Moon in 2022.
Blue Origin's New Glenn also started development in 2012 and reached orbit on it's first flight with an actual payload.
When they say SpaceX is fast, what do they mean exactly?
> as SpaceX seeks to make life multiplanetary.
What a waste of time and resources.
Anyone care to give the non spacey folks like me the highlights of this launch?
of course, no space x event is complete without the scam fake streams
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1VbZoYSyzA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMG8BbUjwRk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-uQNSxqQHY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PYuUj777a0
The most important payload for this flight was data. The ship was always going to be lost so from a standpoint of testing this was a huge success! I'm excited to see how quickly they resolve whatever happened and get IFT 8 going.
Beefed it the day after New Glenn makes orbit on the first try. Different philosophies, I know, but if I were at SpaceX I would be pretty unhappy right now.
Impressive string of success
"rapid unscheduled disassembly"
> This marketing jargon speak for explosion is lulz
Wow that was incredible
I absolutely cannot relate to the HN excitement over rockets. What is the point? What are we going to do with them? It feels like half religion half misplaced techno-positivism.
(Also a person who actively platforms outspoken neo-nazis runs the company that is launching them)
LGTM. Ship it.
It seems like they have the chopsticks catch down pretty well, but the ship exploded over the Atlantic so there's gonna have to be more tests before the ship can think about an RTLS test.
More generally, getting the ship to work reusably seems like it will be a considerably greater challenge than reusing the boosters.
Unbelievable. Congrats to the SpaceX team, again. Thank you for bringing the future into the present.
"rapid unscheduled disassembly"
they did it!
"Rapid unscheduled disassembly"
@elonmusk Preliminary indication is that we had an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall that was large enough to build pressure in excess of the vent capacity.
Apart from obviously double-checking for leaks, we will add fire suppression to that volume and probably increase vent area. Nothing so far suggests pushing next launch past next month.
Musk've had Cybertruck QA team on this one.
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Musk is going to end up killing a lot of people unintentionally.
Can someone tell me what's the point of all this? To export capitalism outside of solar system?
beautiful although one wonders what they're trying to escape
Every one of these are like right out of a sci-fi novel. It makes me truly excited for our future in a way little else out there does.
Between this, AI (even in its current LLM form), and mounting evidence suggesting the entire solar system is teeming with at least microbial life, we are going to become an interplanetary species far sooner than many “skeptics” imagine.
We are just one more lander / sample mission / whatever away from having solid proof of life elsewhere in the solar system. That is gonna jumpstart all a huge race to get humans out into deep space to check it all out.
People worry about AI stealing their jobs… don’t worry. We need that stuff so humans can focus on the next phase of our history… becoming interplanetary. Your kids will be traveling to space and these (very overhyped, don’t get me wrong) LLM’s will be needed for all kinds of tasks.
It sounds crazy but I maintain it’s true and will happen sooner than you’d think.
Hi there
I like how chopsticks catch (a very impressive feat) completely distracts everyone from totally fucked timeline and already spent budget on mars mission. Its like any criticism is being drowned in loud cheers. Only time will tell, but I hope I will be wrong on this one
4M viewers. comparable to top politics events.
ship looks to be lost. this was the main part, so it's almost complete failure.
Starship test successfull: - engineers did that Starship explodes: - Musk's failure!
Looks like second stage broke up over Caribbean, videos of the debris (as seen from ground):
https://x.com/deankolson87/status/1880026759133032662?t=HdHF...
https://x.com/realcamtem/status/1880026604472266800
https://x.com/adavenport354/status/1880026262254809115
Moment of the breakup:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DE52_hVSeQz/