Starship's Twelfth Flight Test

maccam94

Dang, they aren't catching the booster this time, but I guess V3 is practically a new vehicle and validating the next Starship launch is probably too critical to risk damage to the launch site for now.

pixl97

There is a 70% chance for storms in the area tomorrow so it's very likely going to be a scrub tomorrow.

cooper_ganglia

These are always exciting, even if it's more of the same. I love that we live in a time where we can regularly watch huge rockets launch into space with intentional issues just to see what might go wrong and how best to monitor/solve them. Congratulations, everyone, at being alive at the best point in human history so far!

valine

> The two modified satellites will test hardware planned for Starlink V3 and will attempt to scan Starship’s heat shield and transmit imagery down to operators to test methods of analyzing Starship’s heat shield readiness for return to launch site on future missions Hope we get to see those images. Would be awesome to see a 3rd person view of starship in space.

Nevermark

I am watching Elon give a long speech about the launch, scarily delivered at high speed, without pause. Including a Bitcoin marathon promotional informercial complete with an on-screen scan code. "That QR code is your boarding pass." He just repeated several paragraphs verbatim from a few minutes ago. He occasionally mentions the aspirational 100x reduction in launch costs. AI slop. Yuck, Youtube. Surely Google could have AI moderators catching this crap.

sfjailbird

This is the first flight of the new engines. They look so much sleeker and simpler than the previous two generations: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQGMtnP... * And supposedly with a 20% power increase to boot!

chasd00

Really looking forward to seeing raptor 3 fly. Those engines are insane.

dayyan

Everyday Astronaut has posted a video on this launch https://x.com/Erdayastronaut/status/2057163096817332576?s=20

purpleidea

I don't know why they aren't doing more booster catches. Kind of a bit disappointed they keep skipping. Either they can land them or they can't. If it's not consistent then they're avoiding the possible failure so their stock price (launching soon) stays up, otherwise just prove it's solid and actually works.

GMoromisato

There is a lot riding on V3. SpaceX cannot afford to take too many launches to get V3 solid. If 2026 is another 2025 (3 V2 failures in a row followed by 2 V3 successes), then they can forget about landing on the moon before 2030. My hope is that Flight 12 goes nearly flawlessly (at least gets to soft splashdown) and they can start testing in-space refueling in July/August. If they can demonstrate in-space refueling by the end of 2026, then they have a shot at a lunar-landing demo in 2027 and a crewed-landing in 2028. But a lot has to go right for that to happen. Here's hoping it does.

lysace

They have really invested focus in creating mass market content lately - like, actually having someone spend some time creating the text on this page. Didn't really see that earlier. And a number of long form videos (like "Test Like You Fly"). IPO time: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg4pe2953q1o and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48213933 (in the last few hours)

7e

Wake me up for the launch of the v7 engines. SpaceX is like an incompetent AI agent, blundering their way to convergence, one painful launch at a time.

gcanyon

Sergei Korolev's ghost is looking at those 33 raptor engines and crying.

staplung

I wonder what's holding them back from attempting to land...on land (as opposed to another splashdown in the ocean). They must have their reasons but there have got to be engineers dying to get their hands on a returned vehicle to see exactly how the tiles held up and if there's any other damage that doesn't show up so easily on the video feed.

mattas

Will be interesting to see how the market reacts in real-time to flight tests going forward post-IPO. Usually big events (either good or bad) are announced pre- or post-market but launch windows don't care about market hours.

stinkbeetle

The new rocket engines mounted up to the first stage look like this: https://cdn.xcancel.com/pic/orig/B4150BF393BC9/media%2FHIyEI... What is incredible is that rocket engines traditionally looked like this: https://www.l3harris.com/sites/default/files/styles/896_x_50... https://i.ytimg.com/vi/SXEOVufxOyY/sddefault.jpg These new Space X engines look so minimalist that the CEO of another orbital rocket company mistook them for being incomplete. This is despite them being the most technologically advanced rocket engines ever made. It's probably not that other companies necessarily would be incapable of doing similar (previous iterations of this same Space X engine architecture looked similar to the "traditional" engine category). But I think the cost structure for other rocket engines never supported a significant push to optimize for manufacturing and unit costs, hard tooling, cost optimization, etc.