Like him or hate him, I gotta admit the notion of watching giant rockets plucked out of the air by giant tweezers sends an exhilarating thrill up my spine.
Launching only 26 Starlink v3 satellites is a disappointingly small number. That's about ~52t or half the block 3 advertised payload capacity of 100t. Elon said on the Q3 earnings call that flight 14 carrying 26 V3 Starlinks was only about half loaded, so apparently the ship can launch twice as many.
I'm curious why they don't fully load it, I can speculate:
0) starship is still in testing, they don't want to change too many variables from flight 14 and add 50t of payload.
1) lower payload gives them more options in engine-out situations. On flight 14, both booster and ship had engines fail.
2) derisking for ship failure, each Starlink sat costs ~$1.2m, and losing $30m of satellites hits less hard than $60m if orbital insertion fails.
3) the dispenser installed on ship 42 only fits 26 sats, and increasing this would require a hardware modification and possible delays.
4) Starlink v3 manufacturing is delayed and they don't have enough units, which I find doubtful given Starship is years late and they should have a backlog of v3s waiting to launch.
5) block 3 has worse performance than expected and can't reliably deliver 100t to orbit. Recent comments that raptor 3 can only reliably deliver 230t of thrust instead of 280t support this. I speculate SpaceX is running raptor 3 >230t on booster ascent, which is why we keep seeing engines failing. This should be resolved by block 4 or 5 with raptor 4.
I think it's likely to be 0-2: just de-risking in a program still characterized as testing; or at least I understand it to still be thought of as a test program.
I can absolutely see not wanting to change too many variables while they're working out the full, targeted flight profile. I can also see, with sufficient confidence, that they'd make the line between test/production a bit fuzzy with carrying production payloads rather than mass simulators. Trade-offs... not much else to say.
For Starlink v3, I could absolutely see them delaying production starts until the capability to actually deliver them was closer to reality without regard to backlogs and schedule delays: why tie up capital in satellites sitting in a warehouse? Especially if you're also improving designs, adjusting those designs for new realities/tech/etc. getting ahead of that game would (my gut feeling) have more costs than benefits.
IIRC they mentioned recently Raptor 3 while being cleaner and lighter can't run at higher thrust than Raptor 2 safely. And hopefully Raptor 4 should be able to do that.
Until then all the system level performance estimates that expected the higher thrust per engine need to be revised back.
The derisking argument seems unlikely. They're either putting $30M of extra satellites at risk, or guaranteeing the loss of ~$10-15M worth of launch capacity by letting it go unused. If the satellites are that cheap, that would suggest a very low confidence in their rockets that isn't really warranted. (Granted, the value of that launch capacity is probably less once they get Starship actually operational).
Getting the Starship back is of huge value of them, and one of the main things that would stop that would be to lose enough engines that you don't make it to orbit. There's some payload number that lets you make it to orbit with, say, 2 engines failing to start - and beyond that, you just lose control of the vehicle all the time so it doesn't matter.
Assuming the payload is low enough value, it makes sense to fill it up as far as you can without lowering the probability of success unrealistically.
> the loss of ~$10-15M worth of launch capacity by letting it go unused
What is the production rate of these birds?
If you have a 50/50 chance of success now and a 25% chance a month later, and you can't replace the lost birds in production in that interval, it makes sense to hedge irrespective of production cost.
6) Starlink v3 is itself new and nearly untested. Launching a lot of v3.00 models, then discovering that they really need to be upgraded to v3.01 to fix various hardware issues, is not a win.
>6) Starlink v3 is itself new and nearly untested. Launching a lot of v3.00 models, then discovering that they really need to be upgraded to v3.01 to fix various hardware issues, is not a win.
Yes, and that could also tie back into #4:
>Starlink v3 manufacturing is delayed and they don't have enough units, which I find doubtful given Starship is years late and they should have a backlog of v3s waiting to launch
This assumes that a delay isn't completely purposeful. Technology and their experience with Starlink has continued to advance over those years of delay, it's not like they simply stopped iterating with Starlink v2, they just couldn't do everything or put all the pieces together in one package due to size/mass. But I'd be unsurprised if they took advantage of those extra years to keep working on it. They've proven they can ramp Starlink production easily, it's not clear they'd have any reason to produce some big backlog and have it sitting in a warehouse. Seems better to tie it closely to Starship's dev cycle so they end up launching current stuff, not sats that have been sitting around and are now years old already. They can ramp v3 Starlink production alongside Starship.
If they would have enough v3, they would be able to build them fast enough and it would still be better to have them in orbit than keeping them on the floor and not knowing what to do with them.
After consuming ~4.5% of the federal budget at one point. And then stopped. Because it wasn't sustainable.
Project Apollo cost ~$340B of taxpayer money in 2026 dollars. The entirety of the Starship development program has been ~$15B so far, almost all of it private investor money and revenue from Starlink.
So why did Elon sell Tesla if its only been 15B and Starship is so close to the Moon and the Mars which his own words claim will create muiltiples of the earths value ?
Secondly Apollo was that expensive because it had to invent so many technologies which were not available then which are today. Materials, computers and knowledge have made significant advancements since the 1960s.
Just think how expensive it was back then to make computations either manually or by computer compared with today. Todays computers do things easily much more quickly than 20x, thats saving a lot of money on manual workers time and so on.
If you introduce these advantages Apollo is not 20x more expensive its actually much closer with todays Starship cost. Starship with all these modern advantages should have been on the Moon a long time ago.
I'm excited at the prospect of Starship landing on the moon. 100T payloads are maybe not required to make it happen, but probably are. For those of us who care about Artemis IV happening on schedule, being disappointed in a 52t payload capacity is very straightforward.
Starlink payloads are the literally the path to making Starship human spaceflight ready. Starship has to launch dozens to hundreds of times to identify and fix low probability failures. Without frequent Starlink flights testing and debugging the vehicle, it would take far longer to build a safe and reliable Starship.
They're also highly profitable, and fund/subsidize future missions. Recall, Starship development was funded by Starlink.
I would argue that we need a breakthrough in space technology before we can do proper and reasonable spaceflight.
We were able to land on the moon 60 years ago (why is Artemis IV not planned for 2029?) and nothing happend after.
Why would we have enough resources to start building stuff on moon OR even on Mars if we don't have enough resources (apparently) to make earth better?
So who will pay for any of it? And how much margin will be left after the other companies caught up to Space-X?
It's called the full-flow staged combustion cycle, supersonic retro-propulsion and reusable heat shields. Three technologies a certain company has shown mastery over.
> and nothing happend after
lack of political will
> we don't have enough resources (apparently) to make earth better
There's enough resources for both
> So who will pay for any of it?
Starlink customers. Anthropic. Any other AI inference customer.
> And how much margin will be left after the other companies caught up to Space-X?
They have had ~25 years. The nearest competitor is the entire nation state of China. The nearest commercial competitor is so far behind it is not even funny. SpaceX is so far ahead that when they announced that they are stopping reservations on their most successful vehicle, the whole market panicked [1]. There is so much demand that competitors are now bumping up prices on rockets that have not even flown yet [2].
What do you think? Required for what? I don't think we should be landing on the moon unless we can build a sustainable presence there. I think the only way the other moon lander is better if it turns out to be a better path to getting more equipment on the moon over time, and my feeling is that's unlikely. I would actually be somewhat surprised if Blue Origin landed their small lander on the moon before SpaceX lands Starship HLS.
I could see China being "first" but their first isn't anything resembling a sustainable presence.
Launching at only half payload capacity is disappointing. Starlink is severely capacity constrained, SpaceX needs to get as many v3 sats as they can into orbit, instead of flying partial loads.
Falcon 9 capacity over time went from 9,0000 kg expandable to LEO for v1, to 13,150kg for v1.1, to 22,800 kg for block 5 (17,500 kg reusable). Substantial gain.
So nothing to be disappointing about Starship. Raptor v4 is already on the roadmap, and more down the road. You can speculate all you want. I just don't understand why you have to be disappointed. That SpaceX doesn't just "move fast and break things"?
I’m not saying Starship won’t improve. My point is Starship block 3 is designed for ~60 v3 sats, and this flight will only do 26. This is the fourth flight in a row with a half payload. Every flight they make below full load delays the Starlink network.
The analogy you used (Falcon 9's payload growth) spans over 8 years. How long will it take Starship to start flying full payloads?
I'm completely aware. But this is the third flight in a row with a half payload. If this trend continues, it's not a good sign for Starship block 3's performance capabilities.
“If this trend continues” about Falcon 1. About Falcon 9 landings, about Falcon 9 reuse, about starlink capacity, about starship launching at all, about the heat shield, about the catch, about the towers, about drone ship landings…….
That has been the narrative about every single step spacex has ever taken.
And you know what the trend is?
They are kicking fucking ass. Annihilating old space and the writing the game one incremental win at a time.
Well, I have some bad news. Starship isn't following the Falcon 9 development philosophy.
Starship is literally a boondoggle project by a space company that was the new kid on the block and now has the same hubris as the old kids on the block.
Nothing about the Starship development process is remotely close or has any similarity to Falcon 9.
Starship SpaceX is "old space".
The Falcon 9 philosophy was as follows: Make it work, then push the envelope and learn from the failures.
The Starship philosophy: Let's set ourselves ambitious goals that push the envelope from the start. Partial success is a failure. The cathedral must be finished before we can launch the first customer payload.
Hint: SpaceX doesn't want to cannibalize their cash cow Falcon 9. Typical old company thinking.
> The cathedral must be finished before we can launch the first customer payload.
And it just did[1]. Putting the bandwidth equivalent of 1% of entire internet into orbit - representing nearly $500M annual revenue.
> SpaceX doesn't want to cannibalize their cash cow Falcon 9
That must be why they are no longer taking reservations[2] on the Falcon 9 - not even from the govt. Killing their best product, when competition is years away from matching it, and building the an even better product is indeed old company thinking.
I'm fully aware. But Starlink is blocked by today's Starship launch cadence and payload capacity. Pointing out Starship could handle this payload 5 years in the future isn't helpful.
All of Starlink's future ambitions are blocked by today's Starship.
If you assume Starship is a clusterfuck, it all makes sense. They will be able to meet their promised payload capacity after maybe the fifth full redesign of their engines.
cut and paste of the mission plan with details of the cargo
November 13, 2026 18:45 - 20:00 AT
Starship Flight 15
Flight 15 of Starship is preparing to launch as soon as Friday, November 13, pending regulatory approval. The 75-minute launch window will open at 4:45 p.m. CT.
A live webcast of the flight will begin about 30 minutes before liftoff, which you can watch here and on X @SpaceX. Coverage is planned to continue through ship catch, with the potential for hours of live views from Starship as it orbits Earth, powered by Starlink. As is the case with all launches, the schedule is dynamic and likely to change, so be sure to check in here and stay tuned to our X account for updates.
The upcoming flight is planned to be the first to return both Starship and Super Heavy to the launch site for catch. If successful, this will mark the first full recovery of an orbital launch system and a breakthrough moment in making Starship a reliable, rapidly reusable rocket.
Starship’s initial return to launch site mission is expected to orbit the Earth at an altitude of ~275 km and complete approximately 14 orbits around the planet over the course of a more than 22-hour flight. Similar to Starship’s first orbital mission, the flight profile has been designed with the opportunity to insert into a passively safe suborbital trajectory or safely deorbit at multiple pre-determined areas over the ocean after raising to an orbital altitude. Read more about the testing, mission design, and safety measures for first planned Starship catch.
Starship’s previous mission was the culmination of more than a dozen flight tests and years of development, sending Starship to orbit and deploying meaningful payloads to space for the first time. Watch “Go For Orbit”, the latest episode in the ongoing Starship series experience the moments behind flying the most ambitious Starship mission yet.
The booster’s primary objective on Flight 15 will be executing a successful launch, ascent, stage separation, boostback burn, and return to the launch site for catch. This will be the first return and catch attempt for a Super Heavy V3 booster. Three V1 boosters were successfully caught on earlier flight tests with two demonstrating successful reflights.
The Starship upper stage’s primary objectives include the deployment of 26 Starlink V3 satellites and the first return to launch site and catch at Starbase. Starship will only execute a return to launch site if the flight control team has ensured that the vehicle systems critical for reentry maneuvers and final landing burn and tower approach are healthy.
Starship will deliver 26 Starlink V3 satellites to orbit, which aim to greatly expand the network's capacity and user speeds. Each Starlink V3 satellite will add 1 Terabit of capacity to the constellation, with all 26 satellites equaling ~10 Starlink V2 Mini launches on Falcon 9.
After deploying from Starship, the Starlink V3 satellites will unfold their antennas and deploy their solar arrays and make initial contact with the ground and the rest of the Starlink constellation via radio frequency and laser links. The satellites will then begin raising their orbits with their onboard thrusters. Following their on-orbit checkouts, the satellites should begin serving customers as soon as a few weeks after launch.
Three of the satellites have been modified with a suite of cameras to scan Starship’s heatshield and transmit imagery down to operators. This method of analyzing Starship’s heatshield has been tested on previous flights and is one of several data sources to help inform Starship’s readiness to return to the launch site on Flight 15.
Starship’s heatshield will incorporate the improvements made on Flight 14 including additional retention mechanisms on tiles in areas deemed to be at highest risk of falling off during ascent and addressing areas with a flow path for plasma to get behind the tiles. The vehicle will also have a large portion of the heatshield equipped with a curved tile design that has shown the ability to reduce heating in the gaps between tiles.
Countdown
All Times Approximate
00:50:00
SpaceX Flight Director conducts poll and verifies GO for propellant load
00:35:33
Booster LOX (liquid oxygen) load underway
00:35:30
Booster fuel (liquid methane) load underway
00:35:12
Ship LOX load underway
00:35:11
Ship fuel load underway
00:21:40
Raptor begins engine chill on booster and ship
00:02:50
Booster propellant load complete
00:02:10
Ship propellant load complete
00:00:30
SpaceX flight director verifies GO for launch
00:00:17
Flame diverter activation
00:00:03
Booster engine startup command
00:00:00
Excitement guaranteed
FLIGHT TIMELINE
All Times Approximate
00:00:00
Liftoff
00:00:58
Max Q (moment of peak aerodynamic stress on the rocket)
00:02:19
Super Heavy MECO (most engines cut off)
00:02:21
Hot-staging (Starship Raptor ignition and stage separation)
00:02:26
Super Heavy boostback burn start
00:03:02
Super Heavy boostback burn shutdown
00:06:10
Super Heavy landing burn start
00:06:35
Super Heavy landing burn shutdown and catch
00:08:09
Starship engine cutoff
00:26:10
Starship orbital insertion burn start
00:26:30
Starship orbital insertion burn shutdown
00:35:01
Payload deploy start
01:17:40
Payload deploy complete
01:27:46
Early Hawaii Return Check
07:15:35
Mid Chile Return Check
20:41:55
Final Hawaii Return Check
21:35:57
Deorbit burn start
21:36:07
Deorbit burn shutdown
22:10:46
Starship entry
22:29:34
Starship is transonic
22:30:13
Starship is subsonic
22:32:16
Landing burn start
22:32:18
Landing flip
22:32:26
Landing burn 3 to 2 engines
22:32:33
Landing burn 2 to 1 engine
22:32:34
Starship landing burn shutdown and catch
They have several points where they can take an earlier backup option for de-orbiting. So they'll have the teams check things constantly, and only wait if they're confident that things look good for their de-orbit burn.
Everyone here ought to reconsider if they are truly an engineer for good.
If you are getting pulled into SpaceX noise... you are working for Elon and the share price. All of this tech is on display for one thing. Share price. Elon.
If you were really a wide thinking engineer... you'd realize what is best are datacenters on Earth, using solar/wind + battery.
Not only does it make way more financial sense than datacenters in space... Earth needs clean energy ASAP. That's where humanity's focus (including our top engineering companies) ought to be.
I'm pretty sure there are plenty of payloads and demand to put interesting stuff in space for SpaceX to have a profitable business. I don't think "datacenters in space" is a necessary condition for their success.
Which is good, because "data centers in space" has never made sense. Running a data center requires a ton of energy (because chips are functionally just heaters) and a way to recapture / dissipate that energy to keep the chips at an optimal operating temp. All the terrestrial arguments around data centers and water use are about cooling.
As far as I'm aware, space remains a vacuum. You can radiate some amount of heat off into a vacuum, but nowhere near enough to run modern hardware 24/7 at peak flops or whatever. Also, without an atmosphere, all the hardware you put up there needs to be radiation hardened. Also I know people whine about how few jobs data centers support during ongoing operations but the people who _are_ there are pretty much just swapping out failed drives and components because all these things have finite lifespans.
I've never heard someone explain what bottleneck exists on earth that is slowing data center development/deployment where the solution is "what if we put it in space, instead?" Is it some military defense thing about live target inference for rocket defense or something? I don't get it.
The payload increased from 1000t to 3000t only because of starlink. What we will get is a lot more starlink like satelites which might also then need to be replaced every 5 years and poisening our atmosphwere while doing so.
Watch the Scott Manley video where he does a very deep dive on the physics of cooling a data centre in orbit. He takes into account reflected heat off the earth and a LOT more.
TLDW summary: it’s entirely doable. Anyone that says it isn't simply hasn’t looked at the physics and math.
Will it be financially beneficial is a totally different question. Of course there were endless experts saying reusable rockets and electric cars never would be.
> I've never heard someone explain what bottleneck exists on earth
1. Power.
2. Political will (current massive pushback over data centre builds).
Feasable for sure, humans can solve this. But Elon Musk doesn't seem to really throw himself on solving power.
I find that very weird.
He 'makes' (panasonic) batteries on mass and had Tesla Solar roofs. So why instead of talking about a dyson sphere or DC in space, he wouldn't just build a solar city in the dessert, put some fiber around and start putting solar panels and his batteries around? AI is not that latency dependend than a lot of other things
Against my better judgment, I let someone on the internet tell me to do my own research by watching a 30 minute Youtube video. Parts of it, at least. I regret it.
Scott Manley literally waves his hands at thermals, claiming that because there exist 28kW SpaceX satellites in space (that operate only intermittently, because they need to cool down), it is feasible to efficiently run modern datacenters that are ~three orders of magnitude more power-hungry 24/7.
He does not do any math. He acknowledges that cooling systems are heavy, take up huge amounts of space, and that small, existing satellites need to schedule downtime to cool off. I'm no physicist, but I'm pretty sure radiant cooling systems scale with surface area, which is bad news for anyone trying to scale existing cooling systems up 1000x.
If you're going to suggest we advance in one direction, taking some profoundly negative stance against another advancement, like this all isn't a part of the same economic system, is a bit disingenuous.
Please save your woke moralizing for Bluesky. People like what they like, engineers & non-engineers alike.
You can like Elon or hate him but reusable rockets are cool AF. I would watch them all day, with out giving 2 shits whether they were making Elon richer or poorer.
I agree that reusable rockets are cool as hell and that the landing of the boosters from the first falcon heavy flight is one of the things that just sticks in my memory.
What I don't agree with is the idea that someone being aware of the greater social, economic and environmental impact of engineering efforts should be derided as "woke" or something negative. It is very short sighted and unworthy of someone who would claim the title of engineer.
I could trust you that datacenters make more sense on earth than in space. Or we could just let the market decide if its a profitable endeavor. Is there some reason to think market forces won't just solve this question? I'm being serious - is there some dysfunction in this market or can we just let it play out and enjoy the show?
Do you realize the difference between Starship and Apollo (Saturn V)? Starship is a fully reusable vehicle, something never achieved before. It is a very difficult thing to do.
The Apollo program was very impressive in its own right but you must see that SpaceX is doing something very different with Starship.
The reality is Starship works, SpaceX now has an astonishing lead over all of the competition, and they are cancelling Falcon 9 and arguably pulling up the ladder behind them.
The real criticism of SpaceX is they're now on the verge of quasi-monopolizing access to space. But the haters spent the last decade committed to "Starship doesn't work" so even after it does work, every other rocket is delayed and New Glenn vaporized its pad, they can't kick the supercopium and mount a critique of the company based in reality.
Their quasi-monopolization of access to space is entirely due to unserious efforts by virtually all non-US governments to build reusable rockets. Yes, space is hard, but I see no technical reason why only SpaceX should be able to achieve such a massive lead. The only explanation is stubbornness: legacy rocketry programs killing innovation to protect their own jobs.
Which non US government are you talking about. China is investing heavily and making at least some progress. EU couldn't get "legacy rocketry programs" working, so the reason is incompetence not stubbornness. India is trying a bit, but they don't have capacity to spend. Russia is also trying.
> The only explanation is stubbornness: legacy rocketry programs killing innovation to protect their own jobs.
No. It's financial.
Basically... SpaceX only got to where they are because it was literally Elon's money, and Elon's money alone. Like the guy or not (I don't any more), but that was the not-so-secret secret. Elon Musk was willing to risk going from triple-digit millionaire to single-digit millionaire over the Falcon 1, and they would have been out of money, had the third launch not succeeded. Only after that demo flight, the external money actually started rolling in.
In contrast, with the exception of Bezos, all other large scale programs are government/taxpayer funded. That means extreme risk-averseness, an excessive culture of cover-your-ass'ing and no one daring to go too experimental because the blowback from the general public, made rabid by "austerity" and "taxpayer money waste concern groups" for far too long, would instantly kill it (I'm honestly amazed ITER still gets funding). For Europe, the additional complexity is that member states are already whiny bitches when it comes to sending money to Brussels, they want a piece of the pork too, and that kind of crap just doesn't fly (literally) when you need extremely fast iteration times.
Regarding your second paragraph about SpaceX: I did some research. What you say is very, very close to the truth that I can verify. The only change I would make is "third launch" to "fourth launch". You can read about it here on Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX#2003%E2%80%932010:_Falc...
> The financial situation started to turn around with the first successful launch achieved on the fourth attempt on September 28, 2008. Musk split his remaining $30 million between SpaceX and Tesla, and NASA awarded SpaceX a $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract in December (2008), thus financially saving the company.
Look at space startups which will do their launches in 2027.
Space-X for its capability became a state issue, so China will just solve it on their end.
And then you have a payload issue: We don't need that much payload in space. We send up 3000 tons, 2000 is starlink.
Space-x is profitable with this for sure, no question ask, but its valued as a 2t company and with Starlink and payload only its valued 10x higher than its worth.
The profit they make today, they will have to share in 5-15 years.
if it goes the same way as Tesla, there is quite a moat to solve. I don't own shares so i could care little besides my worry on poisening our atmosphere and having real impact on our weather.
They are on the verge of quasi monopolizing - soon having lots of competitors I think is more accurate. If I were a SpaceX investor I would be more worried that Elon is once again squandering an early lead by losing focus - like he did with Tesla.
At this point, services delivering payloads to space are scarcer than payloads themsleves. Launch service contracts from them are already essentially unavailable. Running ahead while Blue Origin and Rocket Lab still catch up is a significant strategic advantage.
Hot payloads for the next few years are network connectivity and compute, two verticals SpaceX has chosen to compete in, which are major sources of revenue. Aside from saving room for strategic relationships with the US government, they can easily utilize all available capacity themselves.
If (1) SpaceX is the only organization actually able to launch at scale (vs. promising eventual launching at scale while burning through $billions), (2) the Big Money in space will be made with large constellations of internet/cellular communications satellites and orbital DC's, and (3) SpaceX is winding down the launch services that it provides to outside customers - then all of SpaceX's competition for the $$$ will be stuck on the ground, giving them a monopoly.
Eventually, anti-trust law and/or another competent launch provider might break that monopoly. But Elon's buddy Don will control the Justice Dept. for a couple more years. And even for the competent, ramping up launch is slow.
> Eventually, anti-trust law ... might break that monopoly.
This seems like a weak argument. If you look back to the 1990s, Intel was unbelievably dominant in desktop computing. There was never any discussion that anti-trust law should be used to somehow "break that monopoly". They were just damn good -- way, way better than all of the other competitors. Eventually, Intel's intellectual property pipeline slowed considerably (for a multitude of reasons) and AMD was able to catch-up. And it looks like ARM is biting at the heels of both Intel and AMD.
Tangential: I am surprised that the US gov't isn't paying SpaceX to continue the Falcon 9 programme. That rocket is used a lot to launch US military & spy satellites. Plus, Musk is very patriotic. I suppose there were some private conversations between Musk/Shotwell and senior US gov't officials (military and/or spy).
And yet, no matter how obvious the prestige (both national and personal), power (ditto), and wealth available to anyone who can build an org with capabilities similar to SpaceX, nobody else seems to be anywhere close. In spite of the massive subsidies and support which a number of governments (espec. China) are providing to credible would-be Musks.
What if at-scale rocket science is just extremely hard, and efforts to find "another Musk" continue to fail?
I think Bezos/Blue Origin/Amazon can get there. Bezos has essentially infinite money to fund the development of a reusable rocket. The Amazon can use it to launch a Starlink competitor (Leo). Of course, it will take Bezos longer than Musk, but I think he will get there. I just did a quick Google search: Amazon Leo claims they will introduce commercial service in the US by the end of 2026. Personally, I am very excited to see how Starlink and Leo will compete against each other.
Blue Origin was founded in Sep'00, didn't reach orbit until Jan'25, and probably won't manage 2 more successful launches (to orbit) until more than 2 years after that. Other than burning money, have they ever demonstrated that they can reliably do something at a serious cadence and scale?
Vs. SpaceX was founded in Mar'02, reached orbit in Sep'08 (on a relative shoestring budget), and succeeded with 18.9* out of 20 Falcon 9 launches in the first 6 years of that program - while fielding two major upgrades to the original version. When their AMOS-6 mission blew up on the launchpad (Sep'16), they were launching again in 4 1/2 months.
Bluntly put, there seems to be a "Right Stuff" in the rocket biz, and it really doesn't look like Jeff's got it.
Anti trust is completely out of the question. There is plenty of competition that is already selling contracts even if the physical product doesn't exist yet.
No, bell-cot's point is that they are the same company that gets the profits from the payload. It's vertical integration (pun accidental, but not avoided). That gives them a massive financial advantage as a launch company. It makes it hard for anyone else to compete with them - if they have the capacity to handle all other customers' launches as well as their own.
Internet satellites... that does look like a monopoly, or at least effectively one.
Companies spin off parts of their process into separate companies all the time. Auto and airframe companies are notable examples. If it was more profitable to do these in house, they would.
Serious question - could they actually nationalize starlink? Suppose starlink takes their C&C keys and builds a control center in some other country. What does the US government do?
> Serious question - could they actually nationalize starlink?
Yeas, why not?
> Suppose starlink takes their C&C keys and builds a control center in some other country
That won't happen. It is obviously better to be fully legal billionaire (even if the government take away 99% of his assets) in the USA than to be in some other country (which can in any time change it's mind), wanted for treason by the USA. Not even close.
Sure, but this pesky thing called the Constitution (specifically the 5th Amendment) requires paying what is essentially the fair market value of whatever is nationalized.
Now that SpaceX is a public company, it's somewhat harder to argue that the $2T valuation is just made up. So nationalizing it would probably entail handing Musk a fairly large fraction of a trillion (with a t) dollars in cash. The total cost of nationalization would equal the annual federal deficit, or 1/40th of the total federal debt.
And to what end? Current jurisprudence is that, when the government takes something, the purpose of the taking must be for some kind of generalized public benefit, not the enrichment of specific people... so that opens an avenue for Musk to argue that the purpose is actually to enrich ULA or Blue Origin or Rocketlab (or some combination of those three) via reduced competition for space launches.
If and when it were decided that the US govt can legally take it, I would think that XKCD 538 is relevant to whether or not it could be done technicaly.
I've followed MSM coverage (and that of many science communicators) since Starhopper tests and can confirm that the majority of reporting has been of the "Starship can't/doesn't/won't work" ilk. The very same groups are now crying about a potential monopoly. EDIT for grammar.
No that is a straw man. Nobody is complaining about SpaceX having a monopoly on a reproducible good, that is completely illogical. It's like saying McDonald's has a monopoly on the restaurant business. What SpaceX has is something like an internal monopsony that has swallowed the entire supply of their own launch capacity.
Starship doesn't work right now because it doesn't follow the Falcon 9 development process.
You first make it work, then you optimize and then you do the impossible.
The starship development process is: attempt the "impossible", then watch it not work out (which it didn't for Falcon 9 at first), and then optimize, then make it work.
Like, why exactly is full reusability necessary for Starship's success as a Starlink launcher? Why can't they do the reuse of the second stage after they've been flying payloads?
Something tells me they would be in trouble of they had to tell investors that their rocket is not as good as they advertise it. There is this strange incentive for them to delay their success as far as possible, which the exact opposite of the Falcon 9 development process.
It seems like SpaceX depends on Falcon 9 more than even its external customers otherwise they would have cannibalized its internal usage much sooner.
The main negative coverage I've heard is actually that starship is clearly optimized for the commercial LEO market while it has received to date $3B (of $5B) of government funds intended for space exploration as part of a contract it may never deliver on (at least, as it was originally envisaged), delaying Artemis by years and costing the government at least a further $5B in funding of gateway projects which will also be delayed and require expensive re-engineering if/when they are ever deployed.
This could be seen as either straightforward corruption or a gamble on the Starship platform for future Mars exploration.
There are very sound economic reasons why rockets for Moon exploration like Saturn-V were built the way they were. Saturn-V was around $35-40B in today's money for 13 rockets and 6 landings (excluding lander, crew costs). It took 5.5 years from greenlight to first successful orbital flight (which was also its first flight). Starship will likely meet this target of 6 landings after about 20 years of development, $25B R&D (excluding crew/lander contracts), and possibly about $5B in launch costs. Asymptotic costs will of course be much lower, but launch costs do not dominate space exploration costs. The platform might be capable of Mars missions one day - but it's not clear how far out that goal is.
Yes, starship funding itself as a workhorse for lifting to LEO is a good thing for the US.
That is not the point I made though. The question is why money was spent on starship as a lunar vehicle - that being the main criticism I have seen in the media (e.g. SmarterEveryDay video). Of course that could turn out to be misplaced, but there's no point denying that that is the main criticism.
> SLS still gets $2.5B every year, around $30 billion total so far
Not relevant to the HLS contract either.
But a) it is more like $40B and b) we don't have full numbers yet to make this comparison apples to apples. SLS costs come from the shorter timeline, the expensive shortcuts like ultralightweight shell, H2 fuel, disposable design, the crew rating, and the profit paid to manufacturers. We still don't know the equivalent numbers for starship: how long the timeline will be, the cost of taking the same payload to TLI, if the heavy structure will ever work as a lunar lander, if the booster can be used with an H2 upper stage / lander alternative, if the fully reusable architecture will work for lunar missions (depends on refueling performance), and finally how much profit SpaceX will make on these government missions (which depends on the market).
If those problems are all solved, and SpaceX gives NASA a good price, then we could see starship emerging as the best value somewhere between 2030 and 2035. Solving them in time for Artemis IV 2028 seems very unlikely now though.
Too bad it couldn't just be kept as a very profitable rocket company with an internet satellite company spin-off, and instead had to be an AI datacenter / rocket / satellite internet / social media company?
If we get another 40 year lull in the advancement of humans in space it might be because everyone hates AI datacenters, which would be a shame.
Starship is initially going to be a Starlink launcher, because a wholly owned subsidiary is a lot more tolerant of failure. But a rocket is a rocket -- it's not locked into one type of payload.
Elon has been discussing the uses of Starship for years. These include cargo delivery, passenger travel, Moon landing, a Mars mission component and deep space science missions. It's not just a "Starlink launcher." In 2027, one new application of Starship will be orbital fuel supply.
Like him or hate him, I gotta admit the notion of watching giant rockets plucked out of the air by giant tweezers sends an exhilarating thrill up my spine.
Yes and no: while it's very impresive, I wonder if the Chinese didn't invent a better system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt1V9UWhuKk
The Long March 10B is comparable to Falcon 9, not Starship.
Long March 10B booster weight: 740 ton at liftoff (dry weight unknown)
Starship booster weight: 5,000 tons at liftoff (dry weight ~200 tons)
You're not comparing apples-to-apples here.
Who's him? Such a tired (and illogical) refrain. Show some respect to the actual rocket scientists and engineers of SpaceX.
He literally had to convince them to do this not the other way around
Elmo Sunk
Launching only 26 Starlink v3 satellites is a disappointingly small number. That's about ~52t or half the block 3 advertised payload capacity of 100t. Elon said on the Q3 earnings call that flight 14 carrying 26 V3 Starlinks was only about half loaded, so apparently the ship can launch twice as many.
I'm curious why they don't fully load it, I can speculate:
0) starship is still in testing, they don't want to change too many variables from flight 14 and add 50t of payload.
1) lower payload gives them more options in engine-out situations. On flight 14, both booster and ship had engines fail.
2) derisking for ship failure, each Starlink sat costs ~$1.2m, and losing $30m of satellites hits less hard than $60m if orbital insertion fails.
3) the dispenser installed on ship 42 only fits 26 sats, and increasing this would require a hardware modification and possible delays.
4) Starlink v3 manufacturing is delayed and they don't have enough units, which I find doubtful given Starship is years late and they should have a backlog of v3s waiting to launch.
5) block 3 has worse performance than expected and can't reliably deliver 100t to orbit. Recent comments that raptor 3 can only reliably deliver 230t of thrust instead of 280t support this. I speculate SpaceX is running raptor 3 >230t on booster ascent, which is why we keep seeing engines failing. This should be resolved by block 4 or 5 with raptor 4.
I think it's likely to be 0-2: just de-risking in a program still characterized as testing; or at least I understand it to still be thought of as a test program.
I can absolutely see not wanting to change too many variables while they're working out the full, targeted flight profile. I can also see, with sufficient confidence, that they'd make the line between test/production a bit fuzzy with carrying production payloads rather than mass simulators. Trade-offs... not much else to say.
For Starlink v3, I could absolutely see them delaying production starts until the capability to actually deliver them was closer to reality without regard to backlogs and schedule delays: why tie up capital in satellites sitting in a warehouse? Especially if you're also improving designs, adjusting those designs for new realities/tech/etc. getting ahead of that game would (my gut feeling) have more costs than benefits.
IIRC they mentioned recently Raptor 3 while being cleaner and lighter can't run at higher thrust than Raptor 2 safely. And hopefully Raptor 4 should be able to do that.
Until then all the system level performance estimates that expected the higher thrust per engine need to be revised back.
6). They aren't sure the dispenser will work reliably, and if it doesn't they want the ship to be able to land with the payload.
Landing payload weight is probably much lower than takeoff payload weight.
I couldn't find anything that v3 have reached their target orbit and are functional. Shouldn't that be done and proven by now?
Missing 50t is still A LOT and they need to have enough fuel for the return too.
The derisking argument seems unlikely. They're either putting $30M of extra satellites at risk, or guaranteeing the loss of ~$10-15M worth of launch capacity by letting it go unused. If the satellites are that cheap, that would suggest a very low confidence in their rockets that isn't really warranted. (Granted, the value of that launch capacity is probably less once they get Starship actually operational).
It seems reasonable to me.
Getting the Starship back is of huge value of them, and one of the main things that would stop that would be to lose enough engines that you don't make it to orbit. There's some payload number that lets you make it to orbit with, say, 2 engines failing to start - and beyond that, you just lose control of the vehicle all the time so it doesn't matter.
Assuming the payload is low enough value, it makes sense to fill it up as far as you can without lowering the probability of success unrealistically.
> the loss of ~$10-15M worth of launch capacity by letting it go unused
What is the production rate of these birds?
If you have a 50/50 chance of success now and a 25% chance a month later, and you can't replace the lost birds in production in that interval, it makes sense to hedge irrespective of production cost.
I'll pick 0, 1, 5, and
6) Starlink v3 is itself new and nearly untested. Launching a lot of v3.00 models, then discovering that they really need to be upgraded to v3.01 to fix various hardware issues, is not a win.
>6) Starlink v3 is itself new and nearly untested. Launching a lot of v3.00 models, then discovering that they really need to be upgraded to v3.01 to fix various hardware issues, is not a win.
Yes, and that could also tie back into #4:
>Starlink v3 manufacturing is delayed and they don't have enough units, which I find doubtful given Starship is years late and they should have a backlog of v3s waiting to launch
This assumes that a delay isn't completely purposeful. Technology and their experience with Starlink has continued to advance over those years of delay, it's not like they simply stopped iterating with Starlink v2, they just couldn't do everything or put all the pieces together in one package due to size/mass. But I'd be unsurprised if they took advantage of those extra years to keep working on it. They've proven they can ramp Starlink production easily, it's not clear they'd have any reason to produce some big backlog and have it sitting in a warehouse. Seems better to tie it closely to Starship's dev cycle so they end up launching current stuff, not sats that have been sitting around and are now years old already. They can ramp v3 Starlink production alongside Starship.
If they would have enough v3, they would be able to build them fast enough and it would still be better to have them in orbit than keeping them on the floor and not knowing what to do with them.
You can tweak them on the floor, you can't when they are in space.
26 satellites on one reusable rocket and still people get snarky. NASA would blow up an entire rocket just to launch a single satellite!
NASA also got to the moon after testing 6 Apollos.
After consuming ~4.5% of the federal budget at one point. And then stopped. Because it wasn't sustainable.
Project Apollo cost ~$340B of taxpayer money in 2026 dollars. The entirety of the Starship development program has been ~$15B so far, almost all of it private investor money and revenue from Starlink.
So why did Elon sell Tesla if its only been 15B and Starship is so close to the Moon and the Mars which his own words claim will create muiltiples of the earths value ?
Secondly Apollo was that expensive because it had to invent so many technologies which were not available then which are today. Materials, computers and knowledge have made significant advancements since the 1960s.
Just think how expensive it was back then to make computations either manually or by computer compared with today. Todays computers do things easily much more quickly than 20x, thats saving a lot of money on manual workers time and so on.
If you introduce these advantages Apollo is not 20x more expensive its actually much closer with todays Starship cost. Starship with all these modern advantages should have been on the Moon a long time ago.
>Launching only 26 Starlink v3 satellites is a disappointingly small number. That's about ~52t
Which makes it the third heaviest orbital payload in all of history.
Funny thing to be disappointed about.
I'm excited at the prospect of Starship landing on the moon. 100T payloads are maybe not required to make it happen, but probably are. For those of us who care about Artemis IV happening on schedule, being disappointed in a 52t payload capacity is very straightforward.
I'm not excited about more Starlink satellites.
Starlink payloads are the literally the path to making Starship human spaceflight ready. Starship has to launch dozens to hundreds of times to identify and fix low probability failures. Without frequent Starlink flights testing and debugging the vehicle, it would take far longer to build a safe and reliable Starship.
They're also highly profitable, and fund/subsidize future missions. Recall, Starship development was funded by Starlink.
I would argue that we need a breakthrough in space technology before we can do proper and reasonable spaceflight.
We were able to land on the moon 60 years ago (why is Artemis IV not planned for 2029?) and nothing happend after.
Why would we have enough resources to start building stuff on moon OR even on Mars if we don't have enough resources (apparently) to make earth better?
So who will pay for any of it? And how much margin will be left after the other companies caught up to Space-X?
> we need a breakthrough in space technology
It's called the full-flow staged combustion cycle, supersonic retro-propulsion and reusable heat shields. Three technologies a certain company has shown mastery over.
> and nothing happend after
lack of political will
> we don't have enough resources (apparently) to make earth better
There's enough resources for both
> So who will pay for any of it?
Starlink customers. Anthropic. Any other AI inference customer.
> And how much margin will be left after the other companies caught up to Space-X?
They have had ~25 years. The nearest competitor is the entire nation state of China. The nearest commercial competitor is so far behind it is not even funny. SpaceX is so far ahead that when they announced that they are stopping reservations on their most successful vehicle, the whole market panicked [1]. There is so much demand that competitors are now bumping up prices on rockets that have not even flown yet [2].
[1] https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/10/analysts-find-looming-...
[2] https://investors.rocketlabcorp.com/news-releases/news-relea...
I mean something which motivates us as humans to actually wanting to go into space.
Do i want to go to space in general? yes. Do i want to go into space if there is nothing? No.
I mean breakthroughs in like technology which brings us to mars in an hour and to other galaxies. A signal of motivation to explore space itself.
SpaceX's nearest competitor is not China. It's more likely the US.
>if we don't have enough resources (apparently) to make earth better?
The least developed countries on earth are currently developing faster than any country ever has.
For billions of people life on earth is rapidly getting better.
Read Factfulness by Hans Rosling to get the facts.
100T payloads are not even remotely required.
The other moon lander NASA is going forward with has a tiny fraction of that, and there are plenty of people who think it’s better.
What do you think? Required for what? I don't think we should be landing on the moon unless we can build a sustainable presence there. I think the only way the other moon lander is better if it turns out to be a better path to getting more equipment on the moon over time, and my feeling is that's unlikely. I would actually be somewhat surprised if Blue Origin landed their small lander on the moon before SpaceX lands Starship HLS.
I could see China being "first" but their first isn't anything resembling a sustainable presence.
The company is built around Golden Dome, not Moon/Mars
Ask your favorite AI about Michael D. Griffin and Pete Worden and their connection to SpaceX
Launching at only half payload capacity is disappointing. Starlink is severely capacity constrained, SpaceX needs to get as many v3 sats as they can into orbit, instead of flying partial loads.
Falcon 9 capacity over time went from 9,0000 kg expandable to LEO for v1, to 13,150kg for v1.1, to 22,800 kg for block 5 (17,500 kg reusable). Substantial gain.
So nothing to be disappointing about Starship. Raptor v4 is already on the roadmap, and more down the road. You can speculate all you want. I just don't understand why you have to be disappointed. That SpaceX doesn't just "move fast and break things"?
I’m not saying Starship won’t improve. My point is Starship block 3 is designed for ~60 v3 sats, and this flight will only do 26. This is the fourth flight in a row with a half payload. Every flight they make below full load delays the Starlink network.
The analogy you used (Falcon 9's payload growth) spans over 8 years. How long will it take Starship to start flying full payloads?
> How long will it take Starship to start flying full payloads?
As long as it takes. Doing the never-done-before generally doesn't come with a firm finish date.
They are testing, learning and evolving the program, and they’re doing it in public so we’re lucky enough to get some inside tech details.
It continues to improve. Be patient.
I'm completely aware. But this is the third flight in a row with a half payload. If this trend continues, it's not a good sign for Starship block 3's performance capabilities.
“If this trend continues” about Falcon 1. About Falcon 9 landings, about Falcon 9 reuse, about starlink capacity, about starship launching at all, about the heat shield, about the catch, about the towers, about drone ship landings…….
That has been the narrative about every single step spacex has ever taken.
And you know what the trend is?
They are kicking fucking ass. Annihilating old space and the writing the game one incremental win at a time.
Yes, the trend is incredibly good.
Past wins are great, and I expect Starship to succeed. I’m sure block 4 will carry well over 100t.
Now the actual question: why is block 3 flying half loaded? You got a technical reason, or just vibes?
Everybody outside SpaceX is speculating on the reason.
I’m an Engineer, I don’t speculate.
You said:
> I’m an Engineer, I don’t speculate.
You also said:
> Yes, the trend is incredibly good.
So you do speculate. Just not when someone asks for a reason.
I’m looking at Past performance.
You’re making stuff up (your entire first post is 100% speculation)
I labeled my entire first post as speculation. What did I make up? Be specific.
You're speculating the reason it's half full.
Noone knows other than SpaceX, my guess is they want to reduce risk.
Since this is a test, maybe they want a good workload out of it, but if things go wrong they don't want to lose too many.
It could very well work fully loaded if they tried it, we don't know. Maybe they're waiting for this test to try fully loaded next.
Stay tuned and don't get too disappointed watching other people figure it out!
Or there's a few more satellites in there they can't tell us about
Well, I have some bad news. Starship isn't following the Falcon 9 development philosophy.
Starship is literally a boondoggle project by a space company that was the new kid on the block and now has the same hubris as the old kids on the block.
Nothing about the Starship development process is remotely close or has any similarity to Falcon 9.
Starship SpaceX is "old space".
The Falcon 9 philosophy was as follows: Make it work, then push the envelope and learn from the failures.
The Starship philosophy: Let's set ourselves ambitious goals that push the envelope from the start. Partial success is a failure. The cathedral must be finished before we can launch the first customer payload.
Hint: SpaceX doesn't want to cannibalize their cash cow Falcon 9. Typical old company thinking.
> Hint: SpaceX doesn't want to cannibalize their cash cow Falcon 9. Typical old company thinking.
They've already stopped booking new Falcon 9 launches for customers.
> The cathedral must be finished before we can launch the first customer payload.
And it just did[1]. Putting the bandwidth equivalent of 1% of entire internet into orbit - representing nearly $500M annual revenue.
> SpaceX doesn't want to cannibalize their cash cow Falcon 9
That must be why they are no longer taking reservations[2] on the Falcon 9 - not even from the govt. Killing their best product, when competition is years away from matching it, and building the an even better product is indeed old company thinking.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_flight_14
[2]: https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/10/analysts-find-looming-...
They are evaluated as a 2T company and their Owner talks about Dysonspheres.
There are some constraints or expectations though.
I don't see you can be disappointed that the experimental test ships are deploying real production hardware in any amount.
If Starship succeeds, that will be about half an hour's worth of launch capacity in the early 30s.
I'm fully aware. But Starlink is blocked by today's Starship launch cadence and payload capacity. Pointing out Starship could handle this payload 5 years in the future isn't helpful.
All of Starlink's future ambitions are blocked by today's Starship.
The musk lied? But the musk never lies! He is an unlier!... An unlier....
dude, it was literally the first orbit launch
be glad it wasn't mass simulators
Which is not what I'm discussing here. The second orbital launch will also be 26 satellites.
If you assume Starship is a clusterfuck, it all makes sense. They will be able to meet their promised payload capacity after maybe the fifth full redesign of their engines.
Why do we act like full redesigns are a bad thing? A company that can iterate redesigns is hilarious powerful, as they've shown.
Why would I assume this? Seems to be doing great.
Is there any more information or research done regarding the poisening of our atmosphere with A LOT more starlink satelites?
As far as i know, it can harm our ozon layer and change of temperature
Burned-up satellites are polluting the atmosphere
https://www.science.org/content/article/burned-satellites-ar...
Satellite-Generated Atmospheric Pollution to Skyrocket
https://peer.org/satellite-generated-atmospheric-pollution-t...
Emissions Assessment of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Broadband Megaconstellations; Starlink, OneWeb and Kuiper
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2309.02338
cut and paste of the mission plan with details of the cargo
November 13, 2026 18:45 - 20:00 AT Starship Flight 15 Flight 15 of Starship is preparing to launch as soon as Friday, November 13, pending regulatory approval. The 75-minute launch window will open at 4:45 p.m. CT.
A live webcast of the flight will begin about 30 minutes before liftoff, which you can watch here and on X @SpaceX. Coverage is planned to continue through ship catch, with the potential for hours of live views from Starship as it orbits Earth, powered by Starlink. As is the case with all launches, the schedule is dynamic and likely to change, so be sure to check in here and stay tuned to our X account for updates.
The upcoming flight is planned to be the first to return both Starship and Super Heavy to the launch site for catch. If successful, this will mark the first full recovery of an orbital launch system and a breakthrough moment in making Starship a reliable, rapidly reusable rocket.
Starship’s initial return to launch site mission is expected to orbit the Earth at an altitude of ~275 km and complete approximately 14 orbits around the planet over the course of a more than 22-hour flight. Similar to Starship’s first orbital mission, the flight profile has been designed with the opportunity to insert into a passively safe suborbital trajectory or safely deorbit at multiple pre-determined areas over the ocean after raising to an orbital altitude. Read more about the testing, mission design, and safety measures for first planned Starship catch.
Starship’s previous mission was the culmination of more than a dozen flight tests and years of development, sending Starship to orbit and deploying meaningful payloads to space for the first time. Watch “Go For Orbit”, the latest episode in the ongoing Starship series experience the moments behind flying the most ambitious Starship mission yet.
The booster’s primary objective on Flight 15 will be executing a successful launch, ascent, stage separation, boostback burn, and return to the launch site for catch. This will be the first return and catch attempt for a Super Heavy V3 booster. Three V1 boosters were successfully caught on earlier flight tests with two demonstrating successful reflights.
The Starship upper stage’s primary objectives include the deployment of 26 Starlink V3 satellites and the first return to launch site and catch at Starbase. Starship will only execute a return to launch site if the flight control team has ensured that the vehicle systems critical for reentry maneuvers and final landing burn and tower approach are healthy.
Starship will deliver 26 Starlink V3 satellites to orbit, which aim to greatly expand the network's capacity and user speeds. Each Starlink V3 satellite will add 1 Terabit of capacity to the constellation, with all 26 satellites equaling ~10 Starlink V2 Mini launches on Falcon 9.
After deploying from Starship, the Starlink V3 satellites will unfold their antennas and deploy their solar arrays and make initial contact with the ground and the rest of the Starlink constellation via radio frequency and laser links. The satellites will then begin raising their orbits with their onboard thrusters. Following their on-orbit checkouts, the satellites should begin serving customers as soon as a few weeks after launch.
Three of the satellites have been modified with a suite of cameras to scan Starship’s heatshield and transmit imagery down to operators. This method of analyzing Starship’s heatshield has been tested on previous flights and is one of several data sources to help inform Starship’s readiness to return to the launch site on Flight 15.
Starship’s heatshield will incorporate the improvements made on Flight 14 including additional retention mechanisms on tiles in areas deemed to be at highest risk of falling off during ascent and addressing areas with a flow path for plasma to get behind the tiles. The vehicle will also have a large portion of the heatshield equipped with a curved tile design that has shown the ability to reduce heating in the gaps between tiles.
Countdown All Times Approximate
00:50:00 SpaceX Flight Director conducts poll and verifies GO for propellant load 00:35:33 Booster LOX (liquid oxygen) load underway 00:35:30 Booster fuel (liquid methane) load underway 00:35:12 Ship LOX load underway 00:35:11 Ship fuel load underway 00:21:40 Raptor begins engine chill on booster and ship 00:02:50 Booster propellant load complete 00:02:10 Ship propellant load complete 00:00:30 SpaceX flight director verifies GO for launch 00:00:17 Flame diverter activation 00:00:03 Booster engine startup command 00:00:00 Excitement guaranteed
FLIGHT TIMELINE All Times Approximate
00:00:00 Liftoff 00:00:58 Max Q (moment of peak aerodynamic stress on the rocket) 00:02:19 Super Heavy MECO (most engines cut off) 00:02:21 Hot-staging (Starship Raptor ignition and stage separation) 00:02:26 Super Heavy boostback burn start 00:03:02 Super Heavy boostback burn shutdown 00:06:10 Super Heavy landing burn start 00:06:35 Super Heavy landing burn shutdown and catch 00:08:09 Starship engine cutoff 00:26:10 Starship orbital insertion burn start 00:26:30 Starship orbital insertion burn shutdown 00:35:01 Payload deploy start 01:17:40 Payload deploy complete 01:27:46 Early Hawaii Return Check 07:15:35 Mid Chile Return Check 20:41:55 Final Hawaii Return Check 21:35:57 Deorbit burn start 21:36:07 Deorbit burn shutdown 22:10:46 Starship entry 22:29:34 Starship is transonic 22:30:13 Starship is subsonic 22:32:16 Landing burn start 22:32:18 Landing flip 22:32:26 Landing burn 3 to 2 engines 22:32:33 Landing burn 2 to 1 engine 22:32:34 Starship landing burn shutdown and catch
This is much longer (22h) than starship ever spent coasting, right? If it doesn’t make it back I’d expect problems with boil off.
They have several points where they can take an earlier backup option for de-orbiting. So they'll have the teams check things constantly, and only wait if they're confident that things look good for their de-orbit burn.
That’s probably part of the point, to get real data on boil off and how they will need to spec their cooling system for the lunar and mars missions.
https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-15
Does catching ship require any tower arm changes from the booster catches or is it the same hardware setup?
The same chopsticks are used for both. You can see this when they load the stack.
Everyone here ought to reconsider if they are truly an engineer for good.
If you are getting pulled into SpaceX noise... you are working for Elon and the share price. All of this tech is on display for one thing. Share price. Elon.
If you were really a wide thinking engineer... you'd realize what is best are datacenters on Earth, using solar/wind + battery.
Not only does it make way more financial sense than datacenters in space... Earth needs clean energy ASAP. That's where humanity's focus (including our top engineering companies) ought to be.
I'm pretty sure there are plenty of payloads and demand to put interesting stuff in space for SpaceX to have a profitable business. I don't think "datacenters in space" is a necessary condition for their success.
Which is good, because "data centers in space" has never made sense. Running a data center requires a ton of energy (because chips are functionally just heaters) and a way to recapture / dissipate that energy to keep the chips at an optimal operating temp. All the terrestrial arguments around data centers and water use are about cooling.
As far as I'm aware, space remains a vacuum. You can radiate some amount of heat off into a vacuum, but nowhere near enough to run modern hardware 24/7 at peak flops or whatever. Also, without an atmosphere, all the hardware you put up there needs to be radiation hardened. Also I know people whine about how few jobs data centers support during ongoing operations but the people who _are_ there are pretty much just swapping out failed drives and components because all these things have finite lifespans.
I've never heard someone explain what bottleneck exists on earth that is slowing data center development/deployment where the solution is "what if we put it in space, instead?" Is it some military defense thing about live target inference for rocket defense or something? I don't get it.
The payload increased from 1000t to 3000t only because of starlink. What we will get is a lot more starlink like satelites which might also then need to be replaced every 5 years and poisening our atmosphwere while doing so.
Watch the Scott Manley video where he does a very deep dive on the physics of cooling a data centre in orbit. He takes into account reflected heat off the earth and a LOT more.
TLDW summary: it’s entirely doable. Anyone that says it isn't simply hasn’t looked at the physics and math.
Will it be financially beneficial is a totally different question. Of course there were endless experts saying reusable rockets and electric cars never would be.
> I've never heard someone explain what bottleneck exists on earth
1. Power.
2. Political will (current massive pushback over data centre builds).
Feasable for sure, humans can solve this. But Elon Musk doesn't seem to really throw himself on solving power.
I find that very weird.
He 'makes' (panasonic) batteries on mass and had Tesla Solar roofs. So why instead of talking about a dyson sphere or DC in space, he wouldn't just build a solar city in the dessert, put some fiber around and start putting solar panels and his batteries around? AI is not that latency dependend than a lot of other things
Tesla are now refining their own lithium, and SpaceX have just started to build a monster solar panel factory.
Against my better judgment, I let someone on the internet tell me to do my own research by watching a 30 minute Youtube video. Parts of it, at least. I regret it.
Scott Manley literally waves his hands at thermals, claiming that because there exist 28kW SpaceX satellites in space (that operate only intermittently, because they need to cool down), it is feasible to efficiently run modern datacenters that are ~three orders of magnitude more power-hungry 24/7.
He does not do any math. He acknowledges that cooling systems are heavy, take up huge amounts of space, and that small, existing satellites need to schedule downtime to cool off. I'm no physicist, but I'm pretty sure radiant cooling systems scale with surface area, which is bad news for anyone trying to scale existing cooling systems up 1000x.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCto6UkBJoI
>that operate only intermittently, because they need to cool down
Do you have a source on that?
All the information in my comment is discussing the content of the linked video.
Most people who read this site either:
a) own spcx/tsla directly.
b) own it indirectly (index fund).
c) are employed by someone who has a and/or b.
d) all of the above.
Most people would be for the share price going up.
If you're going to suggest we advance in one direction, taking some profoundly negative stance against another advancement, like this all isn't a part of the same economic system, is a bit disingenuous.
A record percentage of Americans cant afford a home, healthcare, holidays, or even holidays.
What advancement are we talking about ?
>A record percentage of Americans cant afford a home, healthcare, holidays, or even holidays.
I doubt that's true.
Please save your woke moralizing for Bluesky. People like what they like, engineers & non-engineers alike.
You can like Elon or hate him but reusable rockets are cool AF. I would watch them all day, with out giving 2 shits whether they were making Elon richer or poorer.
I agree that reusable rockets are cool as hell and that the landing of the boosters from the first falcon heavy flight is one of the things that just sticks in my memory.
What I don't agree with is the idea that someone being aware of the greater social, economic and environmental impact of engineering efforts should be derided as "woke" or something negative. It is very short sighted and unworthy of someone who would claim the title of engineer.
I could trust you that datacenters make more sense on earth than in space. Or we could just let the market decide if its a profitable endeavor. Is there some reason to think market forces won't just solve this question? I'm being serious - is there some dysfunction in this market or can we just let it play out and enjoy the show?
Thought police on patrol. Pathetic.
Whatever happened to actually getting the moon ?
Apollo did it in 6 launches...
Do you realize the difference between Starship and Apollo (Saturn V)? Starship is a fully reusable vehicle, something never achieved before. It is a very difficult thing to do.
The Apollo program was very impressive in its own right but you must see that SpaceX is doing something very different with Starship.
There was nothing economically viable about going to moon except a defense contractor circle jerk against the Russians
after that was over, there was no way to make money, Congress could not gain consensus so they stopped doing it
Now there might be with some deposits of resources there or base plans, so people are trying again
Im not talking about the Apollo program im asking about todays Moonshot.
The reality is Starship works, SpaceX now has an astonishing lead over all of the competition, and they are cancelling Falcon 9 and arguably pulling up the ladder behind them.
The real criticism of SpaceX is they're now on the verge of quasi-monopolizing access to space. But the haters spent the last decade committed to "Starship doesn't work" so even after it does work, every other rocket is delayed and New Glenn vaporized its pad, they can't kick the supercopium and mount a critique of the company based in reality.
Their quasi-monopolization of access to space is entirely due to unserious efforts by virtually all non-US governments to build reusable rockets. Yes, space is hard, but I see no technical reason why only SpaceX should be able to achieve such a massive lead. The only explanation is stubbornness: legacy rocketry programs killing innovation to protect their own jobs.
Which non US government are you talking about. China is investing heavily and making at least some progress. EU couldn't get "legacy rocketry programs" working, so the reason is incompetence not stubbornness. India is trying a bit, but they don't have capacity to spend. Russia is also trying.
> The only explanation is stubbornness: legacy rocketry programs killing innovation to protect their own jobs.
No. It's financial.
Basically... SpaceX only got to where they are because it was literally Elon's money, and Elon's money alone. Like the guy or not (I don't any more), but that was the not-so-secret secret. Elon Musk was willing to risk going from triple-digit millionaire to single-digit millionaire over the Falcon 1, and they would have been out of money, had the third launch not succeeded. Only after that demo flight, the external money actually started rolling in.
In contrast, with the exception of Bezos, all other large scale programs are government/taxpayer funded. That means extreme risk-averseness, an excessive culture of cover-your-ass'ing and no one daring to go too experimental because the blowback from the general public, made rabid by "austerity" and "taxpayer money waste concern groups" for far too long, would instantly kill it (I'm honestly amazed ITER still gets funding). For Europe, the additional complexity is that member states are already whiny bitches when it comes to sending money to Brussels, they want a piece of the pork too, and that kind of crap just doesn't fly (literally) when you need extremely fast iteration times.
Regarding your second paragraph about SpaceX: I did some research. What you say is very, very close to the truth that I can verify. The only change I would make is "third launch" to "fourth launch". You can read about it here on Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX#2003%E2%80%932010:_Falc...
I would call Blue Origin setting off the largest launchpad detonation in history a lot of things, but I would not call it unserious.
Look at space startups which will do their launches in 2027.
Space-X for its capability became a state issue, so China will just solve it on their end.
And then you have a payload issue: We don't need that much payload in space. We send up 3000 tons, 2000 is starlink.
Space-x is profitable with this for sure, no question ask, but its valued as a 2t company and with Starlink and payload only its valued 10x higher than its worth.
The profit they make today, they will have to share in 5-15 years.
if it goes the same way as Tesla, there is quite a moat to solve. I don't own shares so i could care little besides my worry on poisening our atmosphere and having real impact on our weather.
They are on the verge of quasi monopolizing - soon having lots of competitors I think is more accurate. If I were a SpaceX investor I would be more worried that Elon is once again squandering an early lead by losing focus - like he did with Tesla.
Tesla’s early lead is overstated. BYD was doing the same things at the same time, and are now in the lead.
How are they pulling up the ladder behind them?
At this point, services delivering payloads to space are scarcer than payloads themsleves. Launch service contracts from them are already essentially unavailable. Running ahead while Blue Origin and Rocket Lab still catch up is a significant strategic advantage.
Hot payloads for the next few years are network connectivity and compute, two verticals SpaceX has chosen to compete in, which are major sources of revenue. Aside from saving room for strategic relationships with the US government, they can easily utilize all available capacity themselves.
If (1) SpaceX is the only organization actually able to launch at scale (vs. promising eventual launching at scale while burning through $billions), (2) the Big Money in space will be made with large constellations of internet/cellular communications satellites and orbital DC's, and (3) SpaceX is winding down the launch services that it provides to outside customers - then all of SpaceX's competition for the $$$ will be stuck on the ground, giving them a monopoly.
Eventually, anti-trust law and/or another competent launch provider might break that monopoly. But Elon's buddy Don will control the Justice Dept. for a couple more years. And even for the competent, ramping up launch is slow.
Tangential: I am surprised that the US gov't isn't paying SpaceX to continue the Falcon 9 programme. That rocket is used a lot to launch US military & spy satellites. Plus, Musk is very patriotic. I suppose there were some private conversations between Musk/Shotwell and senior US gov't officials (military and/or spy).
There's nothing stopping other rocket companies from doing the same thing Musk is.
And yet, no matter how obvious the prestige (both national and personal), power (ditto), and wealth available to anyone who can build an org with capabilities similar to SpaceX, nobody else seems to be anywhere close. In spite of the massive subsidies and support which a number of governments (espec. China) are providing to credible would-be Musks.
What if at-scale rocket science is just extremely hard, and efforts to find "another Musk" continue to fail?
I think Bezos/Blue Origin/Amazon can get there. Bezos has essentially infinite money to fund the development of a reusable rocket. The Amazon can use it to launch a Starlink competitor (Leo). Of course, it will take Bezos longer than Musk, but I think he will get there. I just did a quick Google search: Amazon Leo claims they will introduce commercial service in the US by the end of 2026. Personally, I am very excited to see how Starlink and Leo will compete against each other.
Wonderful if true, but...
Blue Origin was founded in Sep'00, didn't reach orbit until Jan'25, and probably won't manage 2 more successful launches (to orbit) until more than 2 years after that. Other than burning money, have they ever demonstrated that they can reliably do something at a serious cadence and scale?
Vs. SpaceX was founded in Mar'02, reached orbit in Sep'08 (on a relative shoestring budget), and succeeded with 18.9* out of 20 Falcon 9 launches in the first 6 years of that program - while fielding two major upgrades to the original version. When their AMOS-6 mission blew up on the launchpad (Sep'16), they were launching again in 4 1/2 months.
Bluntly put, there seems to be a "Right Stuff" in the rocket biz, and it really doesn't look like Jeff's got it.
*The .9 was a primary mission success, but failing to successfully deploy a secondary payload after the loss of a first stage engine at T+79 seconds - https://www.spaceflightnow.com/falcon9/004/121114anomalies/
AGI will solve it. Make no mistake.
There's nothing stopping you from winning an NBA championship, just suit up and dunk the ball.
You might want to check out how Musk started in the rocket business.
Anti trust is completely out of the question. There is plenty of competition that is already selling contracts even if the physical product doesn't exist yet.
So we must break up a monopoly because it delivers more value at a lower cost than its competitors?
No, bell-cot's point is that they are the same company that gets the profits from the payload. It's vertical integration (pun accidental, but not avoided). That gives them a massive financial advantage as a launch company. It makes it hard for anyone else to compete with them - if they have the capacity to handle all other customers' launches as well as their own.
Internet satellites... that does look like a monopoly, or at least effectively one.
Companies spin off parts of their process into separate companies all the time. Auto and airframe companies are notable examples. If it was more profitable to do these in house, they would.
And auto companies are realizing this constrains them and are reconsidering whether to bring more manufacturing in-house.
If your product needs 10 chips, it is not worth building a chip fab to produce 10 chips.
Car companies didn't really spin off their chip fab. They spun off their transmission, brake, body panel, suspension etc to sub contractors.
No, but the government could nationalize it and spin it out again.
Nationalizing Starlink involves paying the current stockholders what it's worth.
After nationalizing, Musk will have a huge pile of cash. He can then self-fund a new SpaceX/Starlink.
Yes, many current SpaceX/Starlink employees will stay put, but I'll bet that a critical mass will say "We get a fresh start on everything? I'm in."
> Nationalizing Starlink involves paying the current stockholders what it's worth.
Oh hell no it doesn't.
It does, though. It's right there at the bottom of the 5th amendment: "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation"
That one will work out just as much as 4th’s been working out for us since 9/11 :)
Yea, the Constitution's just a piece of paper anyway. It's ok if we have an autocrat as long as he's my autocrat.
We already have NASA.
Which until spacex relied on ULA?
NASA couldn't do what spacex did, so NASA contracted the work out to spacex.
NASA has relied on contractors for a long time. The big fat defence contractors have been getting contracts for decades before SpaceX existed.
None of the other contractors could do what Musk did.
Serious question - could they actually nationalize starlink? Suppose starlink takes their C&C keys and builds a control center in some other country. What does the US government do?
Nationalize SpaceX launch services, absolutely. Starlink… unlikely.
> Serious question - could they actually nationalize starlink?
Yeas, why not?
> Suppose starlink takes their C&C keys and builds a control center in some other country
That won't happen. It is obviously better to be fully legal billionaire (even if the government take away 99% of his assets) in the USA than to be in some other country (which can in any time change it's mind), wanted for treason by the USA. Not even close.
Sure, but this pesky thing called the Constitution (specifically the 5th Amendment) requires paying what is essentially the fair market value of whatever is nationalized.
Now that SpaceX is a public company, it's somewhat harder to argue that the $2T valuation is just made up. So nationalizing it would probably entail handing Musk a fairly large fraction of a trillion (with a t) dollars in cash. The total cost of nationalization would equal the annual federal deficit, or 1/40th of the total federal debt.
And to what end? Current jurisprudence is that, when the government takes something, the purpose of the taking must be for some kind of generalized public benefit, not the enrichment of specific people... so that opens an avenue for Musk to argue that the purpose is actually to enrich ULA or Blue Origin or Rocketlab (or some combination of those three) via reduced competition for space launches.
If and when it were decided that the US govt can legally take it, I would think that XKCD 538 is relevant to whether or not it could be done technicaly.
Why would it, though?
I've followed MSM coverage (and that of many science communicators) since Starhopper tests and can confirm that the majority of reporting has been of the "Starship can't/doesn't/won't work" ilk. The very same groups are now crying about a potential monopoly. EDIT for grammar.
No that is a straw man. Nobody is complaining about SpaceX having a monopoly on a reproducible good, that is completely illogical. It's like saying McDonald's has a monopoly on the restaurant business. What SpaceX has is something like an internal monopsony that has swallowed the entire supply of their own launch capacity.
Starship doesn't work right now because it doesn't follow the Falcon 9 development process.
You first make it work, then you optimize and then you do the impossible.
The starship development process is: attempt the "impossible", then watch it not work out (which it didn't for Falcon 9 at first), and then optimize, then make it work.
Like, why exactly is full reusability necessary for Starship's success as a Starlink launcher? Why can't they do the reuse of the second stage after they've been flying payloads?
Something tells me they would be in trouble of they had to tell investors that their rocket is not as good as they advertise it. There is this strange incentive for them to delay their success as far as possible, which the exact opposite of the Falcon 9 development process.
It seems like SpaceX depends on Falcon 9 more than even its external customers otherwise they would have cannibalized its internal usage much sooner.
The main negative coverage I've heard is actually that starship is clearly optimized for the commercial LEO market while it has received to date $3B (of $5B) of government funds intended for space exploration as part of a contract it may never deliver on (at least, as it was originally envisaged), delaying Artemis by years and costing the government at least a further $5B in funding of gateway projects which will also be delayed and require expensive re-engineering if/when they are ever deployed.
This could be seen as either straightforward corruption or a gamble on the Starship platform for future Mars exploration.
There are very sound economic reasons why rockets for Moon exploration like Saturn-V were built the way they were. Saturn-V was around $35-40B in today's money for 13 rockets and 6 landings (excluding lander, crew costs). It took 5.5 years from greenlight to first successful orbital flight (which was also its first flight). Starship will likely meet this target of 6 landings after about 20 years of development, $25B R&D (excluding crew/lander contracts), and possibly about $5B in launch costs. Asymptotic costs will of course be much lower, but launch costs do not dominate space exploration costs. The platform might be capable of Mars missions one day - but it's not clear how far out that goal is.
> while it has received to date $3B
SLS still gets $2.5B every year, around $30 billion total so far (at least billion every year since 2011) and cost 40% more than they said it would: https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-sls-and-orion
Starship being able to otherwise fund itself except for the Artemis R&D project is good for the government.
Yes, starship funding itself as a workhorse for lifting to LEO is a good thing for the US.
That is not the point I made though. The question is why money was spent on starship as a lunar vehicle - that being the main criticism I have seen in the media (e.g. SmarterEveryDay video). Of course that could turn out to be misplaced, but there's no point denying that that is the main criticism.
> SLS still gets $2.5B every year, around $30 billion total so far
Not relevant to the HLS contract either.
But a) it is more like $40B and b) we don't have full numbers yet to make this comparison apples to apples. SLS costs come from the shorter timeline, the expensive shortcuts like ultralightweight shell, H2 fuel, disposable design, the crew rating, and the profit paid to manufacturers. We still don't know the equivalent numbers for starship: how long the timeline will be, the cost of taking the same payload to TLI, if the heavy structure will ever work as a lunar lander, if the booster can be used with an H2 upper stage / lander alternative, if the fully reusable architecture will work for lunar missions (depends on refueling performance), and finally how much profit SpaceX will make on these government missions (which depends on the market).
If those problems are all solved, and SpaceX gives NASA a good price, then we could see starship emerging as the best value somewhere between 2030 and 2035. Solving them in time for Artemis IV 2028 seems very unlikely now though.
> e.g. SmarterEveryDay video
The mission architecture discussed in that video has already been scrapped.
In-orbit refueling will permit missions to the moon and beyond. This has been stated repeatedly.
> majority of reporting has been of the "Starship can't/doesn't/won't work" ilk
> The very same groups are now crying about a potential monopoly.
Be a realist: we should be thankful they don't do it simultaneously.
Too bad it couldn't just be kept as a very profitable rocket company with an internet satellite company spin-off, and instead had to be an AI datacenter / rocket / satellite internet / social media company?
If we get another 40 year lull in the advancement of humans in space it might be because everyone hates AI datacenters, which would be a shame.
I don't see how the monopoly argument makes sense considering everyone and their dog is building a rocket startup these days.
I mean Falcon 9 is dead simply because the Neutron rocket will make it obsolete for small sat launches.
And obviously Falcon 9 was never really meant to be a moon rocket either so that is where New Glenn comes in.
Starship was always meant to be a Starlink launcher and everything else was a bonus.
Starship is initially going to be a Starlink launcher, because a wholly owned subsidiary is a lot more tolerant of failure. But a rocket is a rocket -- it's not locked into one type of payload.
Elon has been discussing the uses of Starship for years. These include cargo delivery, passenger travel, Moon landing, a Mars mission component and deep space science missions. It's not just a "Starlink launcher." In 2027, one new application of Starship will be orbital fuel supply.
Elon says a lot of things. Some which are true, some which are spin, some which are outright lies.
And for the record, orbital fuel supply isn't a new idea for Starship. It's been a core part of the HLS/Artemis project for quite awhile.
Is it really so hard to say 13Nov so that its not a bunch of numbers in a strange US-date format
Sorry if you thought it was the eleventh of tredecimbruary.
I think undecember would be more accurate since December means the tenth but is the 12. month, so the 13. month should be called the eleventh in latin