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

[glhs837]

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.

 

[glhs837]

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.

 

[stgislander]

What happened???

 

[jrt_ms1995]

What happened???

IDK, but waiting to find out!

 

[stgislander]

NASASpaceflight seems to think launch may be tomorrow around 2pm.

 

[stgislander]

Sounds like launch slipped another day.

 

[glhs837]

What happened???

Sounds like launch slipped another day.

NASASpaceflight seems to think launch may be tomorrow around 2pm.

So Jeffs rocket scrubbed for a frozen line, happens with cryogenic fuels. Then waves at the landing ship out in the ocean were too high the next time. Next attempt 1am EST tomorrow.

Elon's rocket launch got pushed by winds that were in excess of allowed both on Monday and today. Tomorrow might not bee looking good either, but they are sticking right now to a 4pm CST launch time. Nice thing about that later afternoon launch is that we get afternoon daylight for launch and booster catch, and also morning daylight in the Indian Ocean 45ish minutes later when the Version 2 Starship attemps reentry and flip and burn for vertical landing in the water. NASA has an observation bird in Australia, so eventually there should be amazing footage in addition to the 30 cameras onboard and more footage from a drone and the buoy assuming it survives to landing.

SpaceX

SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft.

www.spacex.com

 

[glhs837]

So New Glen was a success. Good launch, stage sep, and the second stage accomplished its mission. Second stage was lost on reentry, which is where the smart money was. Landing a spaceship really hard, enough that SpaceX made a whole highlight reel showing how not to do it. I'd post a video, but its pretty boring compared to SpaceX. No shots from the rocket, or drones, just take off and ascent.

 

[dgates24]

Launched the whole stack with 33+ engines blazing away. Good hot stage separation. Booster was caught successfully. Ship blew up and rained a firey down on the Atlantic Ocean. Islanders in the Caribbean got a nice show at the tiki bar.