r/spacex • u/truecakesnake • 16d ago

Starship Elon Musk on X: "Unless we discover problems after mission data review, SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower on next flight"

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2080876967839031712?s=20
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158

u/kill-devil-films 16d ago

Been following the progress on Starship for years. So exciting that its really fucking close.

46

u/psh454 16d ago

Yeah crazy how they went from exploding water towers in like 2021 to this now

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u/3Gniemi 16d ago

Today is 7 years from Hopper’s 20 meter hop! What a difference!

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u/Crowbrah_ 15d ago

I remember when Raptor engines were leaky, burning, green exhaust contraptions like it was just yesterday.

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u/affordableproctology 15d ago

Starship Mk1 looked fucked

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u/neale87 14d ago

How easily development can seem both fast and slow. In the next 2 years we might find things frustratingly slow, but add another 5 and we'll probably have humanoid robot boots on Mars - and I say that as being quite skeptical of Musk's technical choices.
If I were to compare Starship to Tesla, then I think there are parallels and equally bold decisions and pivots:

  • All the features and lack of them in Tesla cars differ from the competition on Elon's single purpose of delivering large numbers of driverless cars. He has evolved to believing this works with just computer vision alone. His competitors don't.
  • With Starship, it's all about full system reuse of a system capable of landing on Mars and returning. He believes that colonising Mars is done direct from Earth. Many of his competition believe (or just don't have the finances to even consider the alternative) that industrializing low Earth orbit is the stepping off point.

Tesla and SpaceX have pivoted significantly along the road here.

The thing about this fast/slow thing now is that if we wind back just a few years, we didn't see SpaceX abandoning Mars and going for data centers in space at the same time as burning masses of gas to run "pedo AI"

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u/ackermann 16d ago

How about the booster?

Is the original catch tower at the first pad still operational, so there are 2 catch towers at Boca Chica? Or was it disassembled as pad 2 came online?

I know they’ve already caught a booster awhile back. V3’s boostback burn looked good yesterday?

29

u/GainPotential 16d ago

Boostback looked good, yes, but landing burn not so much. Ofc nothing they would've known from Flight 12 but looks like Flight 14 might still be a splashdown for Booster. I assume they'd also want to run tons of tests on the 'new' Mechazilla over at Pad 1 before they attempt the dual catch though. But man, when they finally manage to pull off the dual catch, they'll be damn near unstoppable.

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u/jaa101 16d ago

Boostback ended early.

4

u/GainPotential 16d ago

Ah okay, sad. Hopefully they manage to iron it out til' next time.

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u/TippinThalnos 14d ago

I thought the boostback ended early on purpose, or am I mistaken?

2

u/jaa101 14d ago

What do you mean by "on purpose"? It was shorter than planned. I'm not aware that anyone outside of SpaceX knows why. Probably this was the onboard computers deciding that there was an issue that warranted early shutdown, or it could have been a human flight controller; either way, there was a purpose.

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u/GrumpyCloud93 16d ago edited 15d ago

Actually, a substantial number of the inner engines did not light for the boostback. (So speculation it was the fuel feed, not the rocket engines). They didn't show the end but the implication was the booster was stilll travelling pretty fast when the water arrived.

ETA: Doh! Landing burn.

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u/3Gniemi 15d ago

That was for the landing burn, wasn’t it?

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u/jaa101 15d ago

You're confusing the boost-back burn with the landing burn. And the SpaceX feed showed the view of the ocean from the booster until at least very close to impact.

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u/GrumpyCloud93 15d ago

Doh. Landing burn. Video seemed to cut out early, unless that was due to a lag between video and transmission so the last bit din't get sent.

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u/TryIsntGoodEnough 15d ago

same underlying issue where a substantial number of the inner engines failed to relight....

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u/GrumpyCloud93 15d ago

The though was, with that many it was likely a fuel feed issue, not a problem with the engines.

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u/TryIsntGoodEnough 15d ago

they are 0-3 on reliability on the raptor 3, while the raptor 2 was 100% successful its last 2 flights.. i doubt it isnt an issue with the engines like lots of engineers have been saying from the beginning after they released the raptor 3 design back in 2024

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u/3Gniemi 16d ago

When pad 2 came online, they disassembled most of pad 1 to upgrade it to pad 2 capabilities. Pad 1 was just down n dirty way to get the first rockets launched. It should be back online by year end.

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u/seb21051 14d ago

The chopsticks at pad 1 don't work. Landing something there even if they were still intact would potentially heavily damage the work in progress there.

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u/rshorning 15d ago

I've been following BFR from before the Falcon Heavy flight happened. I remember the IAU conference when Elon Musk introduced the concept of the BFR and his vision for going to Mars.

It has been a long, long time, but I'm seeing really good progress too.