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Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm concerned about the cracking clearly visible on the heat shield tiles. It doesn't bode well for rapid reusability.
The tiles ablate. The shuttle returned from every mission with missing tiles.
I am just delighted that SpaceX continues with the "good enough" pace of development here, at least at these phases. Rapid iteration of build, test, learn, and improve rather than wait for perfection. They are willing to have "negative outcome learning experiences" to gather data quickly. and, of course, data, data, data. I like it because I know what insane amount of red tape has built up to do anything similar in a…
This incremental progress, far smaller improvements than planned, has put them so far behind schedule I'm not confident this design is any good. Still haven't done orbit. This launch was not a smooth launch. SLS by contrast seems to work. Why did nasa contract SpaceX for the lander. The whole plan is bad.
There's plenty of finicky systems which go on to be good systems with a lot of work. Some things are just hard, a lot of the time you just don't see them being hard so publicly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't see the progress between flights, do you?
Some of his employees have died in the meantime, but that's a price Elon is more than willing to pay
[0]: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/spacex-m...
[1]: https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/18/osha-probing-worker-death-...
Summary from my watch: - Launch roughly on time, after a scrub yesterday. (Sounds like the scrub was due to ground equipment, most notably the water system.) - Initial ascent was good, but then one engine on the booster went out. - Relight of the booster's engines after stage separation for the boost back burn failed. Engines did light again for a landing burn, but seems to have hit the water harder than expected and…
The re-entry itself looks amazingly smooth compared to V2. TBD whether it's good enough for re-usability (much less rapid re-usability).
But Flight 12 was definitely forward progress.
This incremental progress, far smaller improvements than planned, has put them so far behind schedule I'm not confident this design is any good. Still haven't done orbit. This launch was not a smooth launch. SLS by contrast seems to work. Why did nasa contract SpaceX for the lander. The whole plan is bad.
Are you serious? They just launched a completely revamped version of Starship from an entirely new pad, and still hit almost all of their planned milestones while demonstrating that the design is reliable enough to handle a missing engine.
Summary from my watch: - Launch roughly on time, after a scrub yesterday. (Sounds like the scrub was due to ground equipment, most notably the water system.) - Initial ascent was good, but then one engine on the booster went out. - Relight of the booster's engines after stage separation for the boost back burn failed. Engines did light again for a landing burn, but seems to have hit the water harder than expected and…
SpaceX does an excellent job at videography. Sad that Nasa flew its Artemis mission with potato cameras.
Not just space-potatoes… but missed the separation shot on the live feed. How in the hell!?
It lifts off so rapidly, it’s truly incredible
“Like a rocket” is a phrase for a reason
> Sprint accelerated at 100 g, reaching a speed of Mach 10 (12,000 km/h; 7,600 mph) in 5 seconds. Such a high velocity at relatively low altitudes created skin temperatures up to 6,200 °F (3,400 °C), requiring an ablative shield to dissipate the heat. The high temperature caused a plasma to form around the missile, requiring extremely powerful radio signals to reach it for guidance. The missile glowed bright white as it flew.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(missile)
Maybe v4.
It's worth remembering that, according to SpaceX's own filings, they've spent >$15 billion on the Starship program thus far with more to come. And SpaceX is burning cash still, particularly because Elon Musk bailed out his own bad decisions with Twitter and xAI with SpaceX stock, basically. Flight 12 was a relative success. Some engines failed to light but that's an unintended good test. Rockets are typically designe…
No. If it is just $15B I can think of dozens different usecases ranging from military applications(fast transportation, it is the cheapest ICBM) to asteroid deflection to moon mining to science applications to space datacenter.
Are you seriously thinking $15B is big? Artemis by comparison has spent $93B and has cost of $4B per launch.