Finally … Bravo! Nice that they avoided the Kaboom.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/pmRrnyDssZc[/youtube]

What a time to be alive!

Wow.........just WOW

That is quite the short field technique, wonder what a go around would look like.

Impressive, I have seen pictures of Flash Gordon doing this about eighty years ago but they had a longer ground roll.


https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=fl ... &FORM=VIRE

It works!
Ship it!

I watched it live. Pretty damn impressive!

Will be interesting to see what they do with it now. With previous attempts that problem took care of itself, but now that they have an intact ship, will they re-fly it again?

I am also curious, if they launched it on downrange trajectory rather than vertical, and didn't shut down the Raptors until all the climb fuel is consumed, how far would it go?

I'm very curious too.

I wonder what the wear and tear they find inside, I mean what they expect to find and replace and what they don't expect to find, and if they find anything that suggests this flight was a near-miss.

This is pretty exciting stuff, like another golden age of aviation but right now in our lifetimes. I certainly hope they re-fly that ship!

"Live" as in "in real time" or "LIVE" as in "I was there"? Either way cool. I was watching in real time too and it was fantastic, even though the 2000' ceiling prevented much of the flight from being captured. The liftoff and landing were in full view, and we're going to see some spectacular video in the next few days, including a shot of it emerging from the clouds, engines lit, mid-flip.


What will they do with it now? Lots of people are asking that. They don't "need" it to fly again, but it would be interesting to see it. I think that if you see SN17 getting ready for flight, then SN15 is probably not going to fly again. 17 is the last of the Gen 2 full size prototypes, after which they'll move on to Gen 3 with SN20, which is slated to be the first orbital prototype. My guess is that they'll pull the Raptors off for re-use, carefully inspect the entire vehicle, and then quietly set it aside like they did with Starhopper. It will make for a cool display in the museum. If not, then they'll scrap it, which I think would be a shame, but the dang thing is so huge it's not like you can just tuck it away in the closet.

As to range, the Starship upper stage (what is currently flying) has a propellent capacity of 1200 metric tonnes. What I heard yesterday was that they use about a quarter of that for these 10Km hops. I do not know what that translates into with respect to downrange distance, but there are lots of other factors. For one thing, the three engines it is using right now are just enough to do the job of getting it up to testing altitude and back down. It's grossly under powered, on purpose. So, with only three Raptors, rather than a full complement of six? A nominal trajectory rather than straight up? My math isn't that good this morning. I would guess that it would get well out over the Atlantic, and that's about it. It would be a sub-orbital flight as Starship isn't capable of reaching orbit without a Super Heavy booster.

It will be interesting to watch the next flights to see if this was a step change in progress or an outlier. I'll be equally interested to see BN2 fly. That's when it will really start to get interesting.

They're really taking a risk launching through an overcast. If there's a malfunction, they won't be able to see what happened from the ground. I guess they're counting on their onboard cameras and telemetry.

I could not any find any external videos of the relight and flip. Anybody seen a video that shows that?

Looks like they relit much higher than prior tests.

Seemed like it was well off center on the pad. The wind seemed higher than I expect for such a test, perhaps contributing to that.

Seemed like it burned a long time after landing, suggesting a fuel leak.

I wonder if they can launch SN15 again.

Mike C.

^ or possibly a “methane stack” since they can’t just vent it is what some were speculating?

Also on the bluboard they are saying same flip profile as prior, some say higher. Either way I wish there was video :/

Next.... stack it and send it once around for a reenty and dual landing of the booster and starship. Now that’ll be a sight to behold.

Right, what happened to the YouTube army watching this? Didn't have their cameras on?

Seems weird not to have video of the relight and flip.

Mike C.

Right, what happened to the YouTube army watching this? Didn't have their cameras on?

Seems weird not to have video of the relight and flip.

Mike C.

Right, what happened to the YouTube army watching this? Didn't have their cameras on?

Seems weird not to have video of the relight and flip.

Mike C.

The opening line of The Tale of Two Cities comes to mind.