Comments on: The most powerful rocket ever, built and financed by a private company, has a near perfect tenth test flight

By: Jeff Wright

Jeff Wright — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 18:15:54 +0000

Images
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By: Jeff Wright

Jeff Wright — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 20:47:32 +0000

I am still a bit worried about any softening of the steel.

Two developments I hope SpaceX takes a look at:

https://phys.org/news/2025-08-effective-method-high-entropy-alloy.html
https://phys.org/news/2025-08-spacecraft-boost-origami-patterns.html

What I would like to see is some kind of Zylon HIAD aeroshell with some coatings and unfurled around Starship so it takes the abuse and not the hull. Origami would allow it to deploy.

By: Cotour

Cotour — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 17:56:50 +0000

Things like this will never get old: https://youtube.com/shorts/Jltznfom29M?si=AP2PiK9GverwosHi

By: Edward

Edward — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 01:33:02 +0000

Robert,
Thank you for being clear that this is a development test and that the final operational version is different from this one and is still down the road. There were several failures during this test, but I noticed that most people I have talked to about it seem to think that just because it landed successfully, it must have been a complete success. They have found some more information about the limits of the design, and they have found several areas to improve. Most likely, they have found much more information about thermal protection materials and methods than they knew before.

Scott Manley has a recap, where I watched the payload door opening, because I missed it during the live broadcast; we were too fascinated with the mist in the payload bay to keep our eyes on the door. He also discusses a few other results that we saw during the test.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZw2vyZNz5I (1/2 hour)
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David Eastman,
You wrote: “I was concerned at the amount of apparent outgassing from the stern after shutdown, I thought something must be leaking or there was a fire in the skirt or something, but nothing got called out, and it obviously didn’t cause any problems.”

Is it possible that this is venting from the tanks? It may also have been attitude control thrusters.

By: Mike Borgelt

Mike Borgelt — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 21:27:22 +0000

The entire human race is indeed lucky to have produced such as Elon.

By: Steve Richter

Steve Richter — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 21:15:18 +0000

That was terrific. The NSF YouTube broadcast I watched was excellent. The final shot from the buoy cam, very cool. Would be neat to have the buoy cam tracking Starship from the first moment it appears in the sky.

By: Ray Van Dune

Ray Van Dune — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 18:24:05 +0000

Pretty impressive to slowly land a massive prototype space vehicle, one that was being aerodynamically stressed-tested no less, within a few hundred meters of a buoy in the ocean, half a world away from the launch point.

Landing on the moon will probably be a bit more straightforward. No plasma, no fins, no tiles. A walk in the park!

By: Jeff Wright

Jeff Wright — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 17:24:45 +0000

The color on return–SLS camouflage?

By: David Eastman

David Eastman — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 16:29:50 +0000

I was concerned at the amount of apparent outgassing from the stern after shutdown, I thought something must be leaking or there was a fire in the skirt or something, but nothing got called out, and it obviously didn’t cause any problems. Perhaps they were just purging the area after shutdown. It will be interesting to see if that’s an ongoing thing. The amount of vibration in the satellite dispenser was also interesting, I suspect they’ll be making improvements there.

By: BLSinSC

BLSinSC — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 16:12:57 +0000

Truly amazing what that African American accomplishes!! He is indeed a GENIUS!! We should all Thank God for the talents he gave Mr. Musk and the Patriotism that Mr. Musk displays! Where would we be if he had not bought Twitter and opened the TRUTH FLOW?? I’m sure this wouldn’t have been the 10th launch had the DEMOcrats stolen another election!

By: Lee S

Lee S — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 16:05:30 +0000

I can only say… Go SpaceX!!!…

Although I remain skeptical about the ease of starships soft landing capabilities on the moon and Mars.. ( I believe these to be the biggest challenges. It’s hard to test to destruction a few days from earth, and more so a few months, and neither have chopsticks… Yet.. ), I would bet very little against SpaceX being the company to achieve these goals, even in Musktime…

Once more… Go SpaceX, go private enterprise in space flight, ( I am not total pinko commie), and for what it is worth… I have more functional chopsticks than SpaceX this evening… Szechuan chicken for my evening meal! ;-)

By: James Street

James Street — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 13:27:06 +0000

Another first I appreciate is the constant live clear color video from cameras both inside and outside the crafts throughout the entire flight.

Remember the agonizing minutes of communications blackout in the past while the crafts reentered the atmosphere?

By: Ronaldus Magnus

Ronaldus Magnus — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 10:12:47 +0000

Some of my earliest memories are of the Mercury 7 astronauts.

I am so lucky to have been born in America, and to have lived long enough to witness, as Dick Eagleson just wrote,

“”Starbase teeing up for what should be a truly landmark year in 2026″”

By: Dick Eagleson

Dick Eagleson — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 07:34:14 +0000

All hail, indeed. Success with this particular test flight profile was always a matter of when, not if. So now we know when.

Which immediately raises the question of what new ground SpaceX intends to plow on test flight 11. That is likely to depend, at least in part, on detailed examination of the copious pile of data just gathered on flight 10. Improvements to the heat shield would constitute a bare minimum advance. But I would like to see another booster catch and Ship 38 actually go to a real orbit and deploy at least a handful of real Starlink V3 birds before de-orbiting, re-entering and being caught by the tower chopsticks. I would certainly understand, though, if SpaceX decides to put off an initial ship catch until the V3 booster and ship test campaign as the latter will have improved catch hardware.

The remainder of this year should see considerable additional progress at, and out of, Starbase teeing up for what should be a truly landmark year in 2026.