Very clean flight, almost all the way through, despite the intentional missing tiles and new flight pattern. No flap burn through, no issues with simulated Starlink deploy, I don't think they even lost any engines.
They're clearly almost ready to scale this thing, if the next block version doesn't add a ton of problems back on. I'm not sure they're quite at the point of rapid reuse looking feasible, since tiles did come loose near the end of flight; not a problem for stage return, but definitely bad enough to warrant a meaningful correction before a (counterfactual) reflight.
Overall they've clearly proven the recipe works.
SpaceX got so good that even test flights that go well aren't news anymore.
Mission success, apparently. Next flight (in 2026) will launch next generation of Starship.
my favorite part of these has gone from liftoff to the purple plasma glow on re-entry. The glow is so perfect and beautiful it looks like an "artist's rendition" of what re-entry plasma would look like. I think the chopsticks catch still takes the cake just for the absurdity of it. It is a little depressing to realize some people pull things like this off yet i can't get my team to load a csv of records into a database correctly...
Still not orbital?
Well done, of course, props and snaps. But I'm looking forward to it getting up to full speed, and being able to get down from that.
The video and info: https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-11
(Liftoff is around 33 mins in)
Another smashing success. It is cool that they've started adding more explanations and nice footage leading up to the launch. Explaining some of the improvements they are testing out like the crunchwrap heat tiles, I enjoyed the "Live Mas" joke he snuck in there.
Just incredible overall to watch and very inspiring. Few things give me hope for the future like these videos do.
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Why are we going into space? Don't we already know what's there?
I think these videos and the fact that this rockets actually works is one of the inspirational things in my life (and I am almost 40). I grew up loving everything about space (sci fi books and movies, astronomy in school, etc), and it was very bewildering not to see any progress basically for the first half of my life. Now it seems that humanity is back in the game, and it is amazing!
Perhaps kids of my kids would be able to travel to the moon.