Spaceception

This looks like a better landing than SN5/6, in terms of standing straight up at least.

It landed!! Now we wait and see if it's a good one

From SpaceX updates: https://www.spacex.com/updates/starship-moon-announcement/index.html Italics mine. That's impressive. It seems as though they've slowed down Raptor development from last summer, and are taking their time with the more recent Raptors. If last year's tweet updates were anything to go by, it sounded like they were moving through ~10 engines per month or so, and would likely have hit SN50 by early fall. Since that's supposed to have been a major milestone for the Raptor, could they have started to slow down around the same time?

That should be almost a thousand tiles so far (992). I wonder when we'll see tiles wrapping around the nosecone, also SN16?

Either both, as a repeat of SN10 because it lands a bit too hard, or a good landing. I think they'll do everything they can to prevent it blowing up again or RUD-ing on impact

Lift off, I just realized how the 3 raptors together have a really cool looking exhaust. EDIT: It didn't even make it to the pad. It blew up mid-air. Bad raptor relight?

It's live. This is really early. T - 1 minute

The first (tentative) orbital booster now has parts in production.

Maybe 4th time's the charm for them? It was with Falcon 1

They are planning a second pad. Maybe they'll use that one for practicing the catches without risking the main pad? Or they'll set up a landing pad with the major elements for the catching system until they're ready to land on the pad itself. It'll be interesting to see how they move forward with it.

I'm almost more interested to see the completed pad over more ship prototypes to be honest. I wonder how they're planning for pad turnarounds.

I didn't see that, I checked right after the static fire, I thought it was still there. Thanks for the update

As early as tomorrow, or Wednesday/Thursday as backups.

SN11 static fire attempt ongoing. It's currently on engine chill, but NSF thinks they heard a brief siren. Possibly around 2-4 minutes away

He did say transport, presumably to the pads. Maybe they'll pressure test if they're able, and go on from there? MK1 was a Pathfinder iirc (that they originally wanted to fly but that's besides the point), and they still attempted to pressure test. BN1 has much better build quality. But if that doesn't work out, they'll try their chances with BN2.

Guessing that there's a good chance that the first full stack will be for the intended orbital mission, and not a publicity shot.

That gap looks narrow from a distance

Not even a half hour since the SLS firing, and they're getting ready to stack their own Superheavy lift booster.

Apparently, they reached the minimum test burn, and are going for the full ~8 minutes! Hopefully everything is good when they check the stage later.

Mainly Stellaris lately, there's a new update coming that I'm looking forward to.

I disagree further.

I'm going to try and catch it live, I missed it last time.

Starship can't be reused if in SSTO mode. And this contract is something like a year away, while SpaceX seems to be specifically aiming for orbit by July. Which I think is a more reasonable prediction than this time last year when they vaguely predicted the end of 2020, while they were still dealing with cryo issues, Raptor was less developed, and only Starhopper had been flown. At this point, they're flying full scale prototypes every month or so, and finally have a couple boosters on the way. Raptor production seems okay. If last summer's tweets about its development are any indicator, it looked like they were making 10 Raptors a month. This attempt to orbit is a bit more than 3 months away, and might slip out to fall anyway (either because of hardware issues, or general testing delays), so between that and their current stockpile (if needed), it should be enough.

You ever used the Saturn V to fling a block into orbit? https://spacenews.com/spacex-bid-on-launch-of-nasa-cubesat-mission/ Someone pointed this out elsewhere, but: And Did SpaceX bid Starship at a lower price than Electron?