Next Starship/Superheavy test flight now targeting November 18th
SpaceX today announced its plan to fly the next and sixth orbital test flight of its Starship/Superheavy rocket on November 18th, less than two weeks from today.
The next Starship flight test aims to expand the envelope on ship and booster capabilities and get closer to bringing reuse of the entire system online. Objectives include the booster once again returning to the launch site for catch, reigniting a ship Raptor engine while in space, and testing a suite of heatshield experiments and maneuvering changes for ship reentry and descent over the Indian Ocean.
The success of the first catch attempt demonstrated the design feasibility while providing valuable data to continue improving hardware and software performance. Hardware upgrades for this flight add additional redundancy to booster propulsion systems, increase structural strength at key areas, and shorten the timeline to offload propellants from the booster following a successful catch. Mission designers also updated software controls and commit criteria for the booster’s launch and return.
As noted earlier, the FAA has made it clear that no new license is required since this flight plan is essentially the same as the fifth flight.
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In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
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SpaceX today announced its plan to fly the next and sixth orbital test flight of its Starship/Superheavy rocket on November 18th, less than two weeks from today.
The next Starship flight test aims to expand the envelope on ship and booster capabilities and get closer to bringing reuse of the entire system online. Objectives include the booster once again returning to the launch site for catch, reigniting a ship Raptor engine while in space, and testing a suite of heatshield experiments and maneuvering changes for ship reentry and descent over the Indian Ocean.
The success of the first catch attempt demonstrated the design feasibility while providing valuable data to continue improving hardware and software performance. Hardware upgrades for this flight add additional redundancy to booster propulsion systems, increase structural strength at key areas, and shorten the timeline to offload propellants from the booster following a successful catch. Mission designers also updated software controls and commit criteria for the booster’s launch and return.
As noted earlier, the FAA has made it clear that no new license is required since this flight plan is essentially the same as the fifth flight.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Can’t wait for it!
It was an interesting exercise skimming through the comment box on Eric Berger’s article on this at Ars Technica. There was an unusual profusion of Ars subscribers publicly melting down over the election results, offering variations of hopes that not only that the rocket should explode on the launch pad, but that Elon Musk would be underneath the orbital launch mount when it does. But, on the other hand, all of them appeared to be getting downvoted to oblivion. So, a mixed bag.
I try to think what my reaction would be had Elon gone all in on Kamala instead of Trump. I’d be disappointed, to be sure. But Starship and Starlink would be no less game-changing in opening us up to a multi-planetary future, and I like to think that would trump (no pun intended) all political considerations in maintaining a rooting interest for SpaceX. And after all, I first started following SpaceX back when Elon was still a public Obamaphile. I’m used to living life as a political outlier.
Of course, if your politics have become religious in their metaphysical commitment, it seems to be just about impossible to maintain that composure.
Being an SLS/MSFC fan, I’m used to down votes :)
I am surprised Biden/Harris didn’t make overtures towards Elon…I might have said “though Elon and I differ on political matters, Musk has re-captured the Apollo spirit….” etc.
I would have done a lot of things differently.
Richard M, what really saddens me is Berger’s change in tone toward Musk since Elon’s redpilling began. He’s not happy these days.
Spacenews comments are also nuts, but the post count is a lot lower than at Ars. There is a guy there with your first name who posts the best takes on the site. If that’s you… good job.
Jeff,
I am surprised Biden/Harris didn’t make overtures towards Elon…
That’s not where their base has been the last several years, though, with Elon getting steadily more demonized as a spergy libertarian billionaire even before he purchased Twitter. And the Democratic leadership has been too high on their own supply, too. After 2012, they really started thinking that they only needed true believers. 2016 was dismissed as a fluke, rectified readily enough the next time around. The litmus test ended up being absolutist, and you could see it with poor Liz Cheney being forced to abandon her long pro-life track record every time she was up on stage with Kamala.
Whereas Trump and his posse were happy to look for people who were there on 40% of things and see if they could walk them up to 50%.
Patrick,
Yes, I post over at SN as “Richard Malcolm.” I got lazy typing it out every time here, so I’m just plain “Richard M.” But thank you, just the same!
Richard M, what really saddens me is Berger’s change in tone toward Musk since Elon’s redpilling began. He’s not happy these days.
Eric is careful to hide his politics most of the time, but you can see glimpses every now and then that he shades as a moderate liberal. I can’t paint his contours on every issue, but…. At any rate, I think that’s part of what is at work. But (playing devil’s advocate) I think he is also offering a critique that Elon is endangering a really astounding enterprise in revolutionizing space technology (an enterprise Eric deeply appreciates at its full) with his sudden foray into political entrepreneurship. And, I think I can concede that he was not wrong to worry that his companies were vulnerable to suffering serious, even fatal damage from it. Elon was making a massive, all-in bet that he could win at presidential politics like he had at online payment systems, rocketry, satellites, electric cars, and Diablo IV.
This week, Elon’s political bet paid off. But it was a very risky bet. It is just as well that it paid off for everyone involved, because it is an open question to me whether Trump still wins without everything Elon has done since April 14, 2022.
Richard M: I don’t think Musk risked anything at all by backing Trump openly. For the past three years he has had intimate experience with what he could expect from the administrative state and the Democrats should they have won. He realized that he no longer had a choice.
If Berger thinks Musk should have kow-towed, then he is surprisingly naive.
Berger has actually implied that. He seems to accept as completely natural the idea of government agencies working against citizens based on their unfavorable political speech. I once pointed this out, very politely, in an NSF YT interview of Berger, and the hosts ripped me a new one.
Hello Bob,
I don’t think Musk risked anything at all by backing Trump openly. For the past three years he has had intimate experience with what he could expect from the administrative state and the Democrats should they have won. He realized that he no longer had a choice.
I do think that this is how Elon views it.
The obvious counterpoint (I am steelmanning what I imagine might be Berger’s response) is that no other head of a space company has gotten publicly political like this. In effect, every other one has chosen to “kow-tow”…though I have the sense that Berger, who *has* expressed criticism of FAA and other agency regulation of SpaceX from time to time, might argue rather that they merely choose to push back on regulators and political actors in less public or, er, “rascible” ways. They might complain in congressional hearings, they might even file the odd lawsuit, but otherwise the arguments take place behind closed doors and the campaign donations get carefully spread out to both parties.
But then again, we could observe that ain’t none of these other companies trying to launch to orbit three times a week, fight tooth and claw for frequencies for the largest satellite constellation in human history, or undertake an aggressive iterative flight test development program for the largest rocket in human history, all while building the most ambitious private spaceport in the world. But Elon is. And Elon has hinted before that the Becks, Brunos, Lapsas, Bezoses and Noones are free-riding on Musk’s bull-dozing of political and regulatory resistance to private sector innovation in space.
Richard M: Your attempt to see Berger’s perspective is good, except for one thing. Musk for years has routinely and quietly tried to deal with his government hassles behind closed doors, like you suggest. He finally gave up three months ago, I think in desperation and decided it was time to go public.
Hello Bob,
Oh, I don’t disagree.
I do find Berger’s commentary and reporting valuable because – despite his evident political inclinations – he is pretty arguably the major space journalist most sympathetic to what Elon Musk has done and is trying to do. He also has the most access!
By the way, Berger just published (30 minutes ago) an overview of what he thinks space policy under the Trump Administration might be like. Which is to say, heavily shaped by Elon Musk – so long as he has a good relationship with Donald Trump. (Recall that Elon started off on a good foot with Trump in 2017, only for their relationship to sour within the year. I doubt that will happen this time….but it is worth keeping in mind.) There are things I think are valuable insights…and some things I might push back on. You can feel much of the range of how conflicted Eric feels in this passage, in fact:
But it is worth reading. Just avoid the comment section.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/11/space-policy-is-about-to-get-pretty-wild-yall/
Interesting new Berger interview https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ph5QddxOY54&list=PLPCR_prKenHw5Jo-O1JmtD4IoG3HvNkxM&index=1&pp=iAQB
The largest bet on the US election was Elon’s. He pledged his life, fortune and sacred honour. Somewhere, the Founders smile.
As Richard M says, good grief stay away from the comments in Berger’s article. Not a single one in the green, and with the reasonable voices being the most downvoted. So many delusions being presented there.
There is no question at all that Elon clearly saw that not only he, but the entire country, was being pushed into a corner by the woke progressive left. His most recent interview with Joe Rogan, that appeared just before the election, made that crystal clear. And, judging by Rogan’s unprecedented Trump endorsement shortly thereafter, Elon made a believer out of Joe too.
Elon has been persona non grata on the left since he defied the California Covid Reich five years ago. Since then, the attacks have been coming ever thicker and faster. It certainly didn’t take anyone of Musk’s awesome intelligence to see that there was, in consequence, no alternative to taking on the beast. Elon never attacks problems half-heartedly so he went all in – full tilt boogie in ludicrous mode. And, as is also becoming customary, emerged victorious.
The Russians lived to bitterly regret their rude treatment of Musk back at the turn of the century. The woke progressive left and the slimy denizens of the Deep State have done much more than spit on Musk’s shoes. As with the Russians, Musk is now in a position to do grievous damage to everything the left has built in the past century. I can hardly wait for him to get started.
Eric Berger remains the best space journalist extant however disappointing his recently expressed political opinions. I think the passage of a bit of time and the uptick in the fortunes of both the U.S. under Trump and the space industry under Musk will likely serve to soothe his expressed concerns.
Berger is hardly unique in being a personage of considerable ability and insight in his professional role who one must, nonetheless, indulgently ignore when it comes to his opinions about U.S. politics. Another is geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan whose incisive analysis, sadly, goes off the rails when it comes to U.S. domestic politics. He correctly predicted the timing of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine in a book written a decade ago but has also been predicting a massive defeat for Donald Trump ever since Trump decided to run for a third time. Needless to say, that particular opinion has done nothing helpful for his batting average as a prophet.
What Elon does is delineate what party planks are–how you make Trump ad without it looking like a Trump ad…stress party platforms.
I would have made a big stink on how liberal California still puts more money to prisons than schools, how Greens want to take away gas stoves, etc.
I think the reason folks don’t appreciate Elon is that his Falcons mostly launch his Starlink’s.
At some point it will be completed–only needed to top it off.
I think someone needs to make a visual presentation of what ISS might look like, if all those Falcon launches went to expanding it.
Com-sats capture the imagination the way utility poles do…not at all. We need them, but they are invisible until they fail.
Trump’s daughter Tiffany Tweeted a family picture of Trump with his kids and grandkids at Mar-a-Lago. Elon Musk is in the picture.
Tiffany Ariana Trump @TiffanyATrump
Dad, we are so proud of you!
1:13 PM · Nov 6, 2024
https://x.com/TiffanyATrump/status/1854270797365334221
James–
Elon Musk, Son X, and Tucker Carlson at Mara-Lago
November 5, 2024
https://youtu.be/284VFHrO8Nc?t=10240