They said they were gonna deviate from the normal tower grab and go for a splashdown with the booster. It's probably damaged a bit from the splashdown, but within the expected parameters.
Beautiful and seamless launch. Further proof why you ignore the contrarians: SpaceX has a solid track record of analyzing and correcting its faults to ensure future launch success (and doubly so since the IPO). Almost like actual tests do wonders for making for reliable systems
Oh they just said the V3 starlinks will only be up there for 20 min and will burn up. I didn't think about that, too bad I guess. They're going out now.
Cause of boostback failure: It was Flight 13. Superstition reigns supreme [their naming convention allowed them to bypass STS-13]
But on a more serious note, this is concerning for what is going to happen with Flight-14. This was meant to be the last suborbital test flight, before moving onto orbital flights were the attempt was to perform the catching of a superheavy. The failure of a mile stone is going to be defending on how Starship performs on reentry, if it can confidently perform a simulated reentry and capture. If that is so, it is likely to go to orbit and attempt a landing [albeit, attention is going to be given to Superheavy as this is the second issue in a row]. The issue likely is with Raptor-3, with it being a relatively new engine.
They were always meant to be better economically. SpaceX has been working on this for years, and it is the main limitation with the growth of the Starlink network. There is an email from years ago which was Musk going on about the neccesity for Starship for Starlink's success. Falcon 9 has a maximum amount of east and west coast launches now because of one of the barges being assigned per coast now. Starlink uses the barges for recovery, and so this will allow for better growth as well. Without Starship, Starlink will eventually get to the point where the network will reach a stable rate where you need to constantly launch satellites to maintain the network. This is partly why SpaceX are now starting to turn away launches with Falcon 9.
It is basic mathematics, and the Starship payload capacity is far larger in terms of volume and capacity.
Seems pretty well sorted, not counting the landing. I'm looking forward to seeing how a ship performs on second use, because all that heating will make some serious structural changes to the steel.
It's crazy how insane the first several reentries were compared to now, it looks so smooth and easy. Those early ones the thing was constantly on the verge of breaking up and burning through all over.
Wow, soft landing, some fire but didn't blow up yet.
