Fight Seven of the Giant Stainless Steel Rocket!!!! (also Flight one of Jeffy Bs new toy)

glhs837

Power with Control
Thanks to a last minute slip due to high winds, the almost impossible happens and a test flight for Starship happens on the same day as the Blue Origin New Glen rockets first flight. This isnt SpaceX screwing with Bezos, its NG that's slipping NG will land its much larger first stage on a boat similar to Falcon 9. Or try, it took SpaceX a few tries to get that landing dialed in.

So when you wake up Monday morning, you should hear what happened to it, since it's launch window is 1am to 3am EST.

Starship is due for a 5pm est launch with and expected booster catch minutes after. 35-45 minutes into flight, it will attempt to open the Pez Dispenser doors and launch six mass simulators of the V3 Starlink sats, which will follow Starship into reentry, then 45-55 minutes after launch, the Ship itself will reenter and land some hundreds of miles off the coast of Australia. NASA has an observation aircraft there already, and a small fleet of ships have left port apparently headed to stand b y outside the landing zone. Speculation is that if they judge it safe, they might attempt a tow back to land.

new-glenn-competitive-comparison.jpg
 

glhs837

Power with Control
And in case you were wondering what changes there are for this test? Too many to list, but one is a new heat shield tile. But an interesting bit is that they are deliberate leaving off some tiles in critical areas to test worst case reentry.

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