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 abilit...
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.
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 more.
I'm curious why they don't fully load it, I can speculate:
1) lower payload gives them more options in engine out situations. On flight 14, both booster and ship had engines go out.
2) derisking for total ship failure, each Starlink sat costs ~$1.2m, and $30m of satellites is a noticeable amount of money to lose if orbital insertion fails.
3) block 3 has worse performance than expected and delivers less capacity to orbit than planned. This should be resolved by block 4 or 5.
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).
> 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.
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.
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 path to making Starship human spaceflight ready. Starship has to launch dozens to hundreds of times to identify and fix low probability failures. Without profitable Starlink flights funding and testing the vehicle, it would take far longer to build a safe and reliable Starship.
They're also highly profitable, and fund/subsidize future space missions.
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?
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And yet, no matter how obvious the status (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?
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
Elon has been discussing the uses of Starship for years. These include cargo delivery, passenger travel, Moon landing, science mission platform, a Mars mission component and deep space missions. It's not just a "Starlink launcher."
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 broadly agree with the sentiment. I don't agree with his political views or some of the other things, but I think he has been pretty pivotal in ushering in EVs as a viable thing, and now space access too. Who knows maybe we really will get to mars in the next decade or two.
Hopefully instead of wasting more money on politics, he can focus his attention/resources on something else transformative for humanity next. Fusion, cancer etc.
If that means "packing space into a box owned by a rich asshole", I'll pass. It hands even more money to a man who spent a billion dollars trying to buy an election, and he failed only because he so monstrously fucked up the country that not even that much money could salvage it.
It is a remarkable technical achievement. That is nowhere near my top priority. I'm not even certain I like "containerization of space".
If this is the top comment here people are most certainly going to respond to it and talk about why they hate Elon instead of 'appreciating what Starship represents.'
What motivates someone to make this kind of comment and derail the conversation from the technical stuff?
Elon Musk decided to be explicitly partisan during one of the most politically divisive periods in American history. Nobody hates him because of his rockets, they hate him because he has taken many, many political and social stances that have nothing to do with his companies.
If you're going to blame anyone, blame Musk for derailing his own companies' missions by taking sides politically as loudly as he has. He's a very poor representative for the things that actually matter.
It might be more related to snapping a Nazi salute at a Presidential inauguration and constantly promoting “race science” on X. That kind of thing.
If he had just shut up and built rockets and cars he’d be a hero like he was before he either got fash pilled or revealed himself. Not sure which it is but it doesn’t matter at this point.
I appreciate Starship quite a lot, but it's much more sad that there are millions of dead people because of his other activities (cutting USAID). It's not reasonable to ignore this just because it sounds so bad it can't possibly be true. There has been no serious disagreement on whether this happened! That's more people dead from Elon than Americans dead from COVID-19!
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 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?
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.
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 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).
89 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 38.3 ms ] threadNovember 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 abilit...
I'm curious why they don't fully load it, I can speculate:
1) lower payload gives them more options in engine out situations. On flight 14, both booster and ship had engines go out.
2) derisking for total ship failure, each Starlink sat costs ~$1.2m, and $30m of satellites is a noticeable amount of money to lose if orbital insertion fails.
3) block 3 has worse performance than expected and delivers less capacity to orbit than planned. This should be resolved by block 4 or 5.
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.
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.
be glad it wasn't mass simulators
Which makes it the third heaviest orbital payload in all of history.
Funny thing to be disappointed about.
I'm not excited about more Starlink satellites.
They're also highly profitable, and fund/subsidize future space missions.
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?
Ask your favorite AI about Michael D. Griffin and Pete Worden and their connection to SpaceX
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.
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.
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.
Until then all the system level performance estimates that expected the higher thrust per engine need to be revised back.
Missing 50t is still A LOT and they need to have enough fuel for the return too.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
The 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.
> The very same groups are now crying about a potential monopoly.
Be a realist: we should be thankful they don't do it simultaneously.
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.
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.
Internet satellites... that does look like a monopoly, or at least effectively one.
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.
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."
Oh hell no it doesn't.
What if at-scale rocket science is just extremely hard, and efforts to find "another Musk" continue to fail?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hopefully instead of wasting more money on politics, he can focus his attention/resources on something else transformative for humanity next. Fusion, cancer etc.
It is a remarkable technical achievement. That is nowhere near my top priority. I'm not even certain I like "containerization of space".
What motivates someone to make this kind of comment and derail the conversation from the technical stuff?
If you're going to blame anyone, blame Musk for derailing his own companies' missions by taking sides politically as loudly as he has. He's a very poor representative for the things that actually matter.
It might be more related to snapping a Nazi salute at a Presidential inauguration and constantly promoting “race science” on X. That kind of thing.
If he had just shut up and built rockets and cars he’d be a hero like he was before he either got fash pilled or revealed himself. Not sure which it is but it doesn’t matter at this point.
I’ve never seen anyone burn that much goodwill.
https://mortality47.org/deaths/usaid-cuts https://www.propublica.org/article/usaid-cholera-deaths-trum... https://www.refugeesinternational.org/statements-and-news/ju...
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.
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.
TLDW summary: it’s entirely doable. Anyone that says it isn’t 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).