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Starship's Twelfth Flight Test

spacex.com

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Re: Starship's Twelfth Flight Test

#81

Post by GMoromisato »

brynnbee wrote: post #79
GMoromisato wrote: post #32

There is a lot riding on V3. SpaceX cannot afford to take too many launches to get V3 solid. If 2026 is another 2025 (3 V2 failures in a row followed by 2 V3 successes), then they can forget about landing on the moon before 2030. My hope is that Flight 12 goes nearly flawlessly (at least gets to soft splashdown) and they can start testing in-space refueling in July/August. If they can demonstrate in-space refueling b…

Were any of them actually failures? My understanding is they push limits and create intentional weak points to see where it fails, and something failing isn't a mission failure but rather part of the research process.

The goals of the V2 flights were to test the improved heat shield and to test satellite deployment. The first three V2 flights did not make it far enough to test either of those goals. It wasn't until Flight 10 that they could actually test that, and that was 9 months later.

Effectively, SpaceX lost 9 months due to problems with V2.

Sure, one could argue that it's still research (no customer was affected), and there was no way to know V2 would fail until it was tested.

But watching the stream, it was clear that the SpaceX team was very disappointed with the outcome. I remember watching Flight 1, which nearly destroyed the launch pad and didn't make it to SECO, but still SpaceX was ecstatic with the results.

2025 was supposed to be the year SpaceX tested in-space refueling. The V2 failures delayed that, and whether or not a different company could have done better (my guess is no), SpaceX still felt like they failed.

Re: Starship's Twelfth Flight Test

#82

Post by Pedro_Ribeiro »

sfjailbird wrote: post #17
Nevermark wrote: post #10

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

That's a fake youtube channel that is somehow allowed to squat the SpaceX channel name. It's been going on for years, including the crypto scam. Baffling. Maybe a big middle finger from Google to Elon.

You know Google owns a big part of SpaceX right?

Re: Starship's Twelfth Flight Test

#83

Post by GMoromisato »

russdill wrote: post #56
GMoromisato wrote: post #32

There is a lot riding on V3. SpaceX cannot afford to take too many launches to get V3 solid. If 2026 is another 2025 (3 V2 failures in a row followed by 2 V3 successes), then they can forget about landing on the moon before 2030. My hope is that Flight 12 goes nearly flawlessly (at least gets to soft splashdown) and they can start testing in-space refueling in July/August. If they can demonstrate in-space refueling b…

Small edit, 2 V2 (not V3) successes (flights 10 and 11).

Thank you! [Wish I could edit, but for some reason I can't, or I can't see the link to edit.]

Re: Starship's Twelfth Flight Test

#84

Post by PyWoody »

Recurecur wrote: post #50
pixl97 wrote: post #4

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

AccuWeather has it at the infamous 51% probability level for thunderstorms at 5 CST, so there’s still a decent chance for success tomorrow. Time will tell!

The percentage isn't the percent of it occurring but the area affected. So 51% of thunderstorms means 51% of that town/county/etc. will experience thunderstorms.

Re: Starship's Twelfth Flight Test

#85

Post by dlcarrier »

GMoromisato wrote: post #32

There is a lot riding on V3. SpaceX cannot afford to take too many launches to get V3 solid. If 2026 is another 2025 (3 V2 failures in a row followed by 2 V3 successes), then they can forget about landing on the moon before 2030. My hope is that Flight 12 goes nearly flawlessly (at least gets to soft splashdown) and they can start testing in-space refueling in July/August. If they can demonstrate in-space refueling b…

It has a new engine design. If it can make it only a minute into launch, it'll provide a lot of useful data.

Re: Starship's Twelfth Flight Test

#86

Post by ericcumbee »

Recurecur wrote: post #50
pixl97 wrote: post #4

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

AccuWeather has it at the infamous 51% probability level for thunderstorms at 5 CST, so there’s still a decent chance for success tomorrow. Time will tell!

the real question is what is our probability of Launch Commit Criteria Violation at T-0. i've seen them be no go at t-10 with a 10% chance of go and watched it lift off on time.

Re: Starship's Twelfth Flight Test

#87

Post by ericcumbee »

lysace wrote: post #44

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

they Typically put out a hype video before each flight at least the last several.

Re: Starship's Twelfth Flight Test

#88

Post by ericcumbee »

sfjailbird wrote: post #17
Nevermark wrote: post #10

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

That's a fake youtube channel that is somehow allowed to squat the SpaceX channel name. It's been going on for years, including the crypto scam. Baffling. Maybe a big middle finger from Google to Elon.

the scammers steal channels, rename them and run those until google shuts them down. which they typically do but its swatting flies.

Re: Starship's Twelfth Flight Test

#89

Post by bediger4000 »

pmontra wrote: post #61
bediger4000 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Liquid handling in microgravity has always been weird. Big gas bubbles in the fluid, surface tension effects causing liquid to float in balls in the ullage, stuff like that. Turbopumps break if they ingest a larger bubble. There could be some odd failure modes I would think. Failure to pump the liquid, broken pumps, who really knows? My guess would be that a failure mode would be a big spill, a failure to pump, only…

A probably very naive question: why not pistons?

NASA has used tanks with a bladder. Pressurizing gas on one side of the bladder, all fluid inside. Cold liquids (methane in SoaceX case) means materials are crucial. A big piston is heavy and could jam.
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