SpaceX delays 6th Starship/Superheavy launch one day to November 19, 2024
In a tweet yesterday SpaceX announced that it is now targeting November 19, 2024 for the sixth orbital test flight of its Starship/Superheavy rocket. The thirty minute launch window opens at 4 pm (Central). Though SpaceX will provide a live stream on X, X does not provide a standby service, so I am embedding below the feed of SpaceX’s live stream provided by Space Affairs.
From SpaceX’s webpage for this mission:
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.
Starship’s landing will be in daylight this time in order to allow for better observation.
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In a tweet yesterday SpaceX announced that it is now targeting November 19, 2024 for the sixth orbital test flight of its Starship/Superheavy rocket. The thirty minute launch window opens at 4 pm (Central). Though SpaceX will provide a live stream on X, X does not provide a standby service, so I am embedding below the feed of SpaceX’s live stream provided by Space Affairs.
From SpaceX’s webpage for this mission:
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.
Starship’s landing will be in daylight this time in order to allow for better observation.
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 to see the launch
Other than Elon, is there a single person in charge of the Starship program? Fascinating and worrying at the same time, that Boeing and Blue Origin can’t get things right. Yet SpaceX is expected to pull off another successful test while the guy in charge is also negotiating, sometimes face to face, with world leaders, establishing a new government oversight department which is intended to make unilateral decisions to improve federal government efficiency, sitting in on meeting after meeting which evaluates who will run federal departments, attending publicity events with the president elect. Young children, multiple wives. Junk food diet, not very fit, inclined to self medicate.
“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” Stein’s law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Stein
Just blow everybody’s mind and send the upper stage to Mars.
Steve Richter,
Elon has his own bizjet and Starlink. He can run all of his companies from anywhere he happens to be. Among the many other things he’s very good at, time management is way up the list. A lot of this seems attributable to his ability to multi-task. As was famously revealed recently, Elon is perfectly capable of simultaneously running a virtual meeting of his Starship engineers and defending his top 20 ranking as a player of Diablo IV.
Who runs the Starship program day-to-day on-site? That would be Kathy Lueders who is General Manager of Starbase. She was the long-time head of Commercial Crew at NASA.
And don’t forget Gwynne Shotwell, President and Chief Operating Officer of SpaceX. Another helpless woman enslaved by the evil Musk! /s
Cold front blowing through South Texas tomorrow, with strong winds above safe levels for launch. By Tuesday, it will have blown through and winds will be light out of the North with blue skies for perfect visibility. Get thyselves down to SPI!
Remember, Mahi Nic has the best Fish Tacos on the Island, and be sure to get a toe ring at Karen’s!
And to add to what Mr Eagleson says….Elon has been present on site for every Starship test launch to date. I have to assume he will be present for this one, too.
Not that he is *needed*, save as a moral presence – he has a great team in place at Starbase.
A lot like Bobby Fischer?
Ray Van Dune,
I would never forget Gwynne Shotwell. But Shotwell runs everything at SpaceX with the five biggest such things being the Falcon, Dragon, Starlink, Starshield and Starship programs. Lueders runs Starship and Starbase and is one of Shotwell’s key deputies. Elon runs engineering for everything. The management structure of SpaceX seems to be a modified version of so-called matrix management. To borrow a bit of verbiage from our PRC opponents, SpaceX is matrix management with Elon characteristics. That appears to be the case with Elon’s other enterprises as well.
Jeff Wright,
Bobby Fischer was a misanthropic loner and one-trick pony. No resemblance to Elon at all other than perhaps also being on the autism spectrum – but in a decidedly different place on it. Fischer was close to being what used to be referred to, in pre-PC times, as an idiot-savant. Elon, in contrast, is the closest thing we’ve seen in quite awhile to the paradigmatic Renaissance Man.