Resolution criteria:
Each of the following events will resolve as "Yes" if successfully completed during SpaceX's Starship Flight 9:
Stage Separation: The Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage separate as planned.
Booster Catch: The Super Heavy booster is successfully caught by the launch tower's mechanical arms, known as "chopsticks."
Second Engine Cutoff (SECO): The Starship upper stage's engines shut down at the intended time after reaching the desired trajectory.
Ship Reentry:
The Starship upper stage successfully endures reentry without breaking up.
Ship Landing: The Starship upper stage lands intact at its designated landing site.
If any of these events do not occur as described, they will resolve as "No."
1,000🏅 Top traders
| # | Name | Total profit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ṁ1,269 | |
| 2 | Ṁ303 | |
| 3 | Ṁ249 | |
| 4 | Ṁ154 | |
| 5 | Ṁ130 |
People are also trading
@NGK the people I respect who are neither fanboys nor haters seem to have settled on there being a fundamental problem with V2 that SpaceX doesn't want to spend resources fixing.
But it feels like there is some possibility that this is copium.
@JoshuaWilkes my concern is that you are iterating and optimising towards what? A system that you can't fly humans on? Because you can't launch crew on a ship that has no maneuvering redundancy such that it can't recover from a loss of attitude control.
@JoshuaWilkes i guess this isn't quite right if the issue was a persistent leak. But that just rephrases the problem: you have to be able to recover these kinds of situations.
@JoshuaWilkes we’re at the 1 year point without any real progress. It’s been 6 years of what I would say is “proper” development, disregarding the days of composite test tanks etc (which I think is being generous).
@NGK superheavy still beats literally every other rocket humanity has ever made, now with demonstrated reuse. Even if the laws of physics themselves prohibited starship, just slap some disposable second stage on S.H. and you have the best platform ever made.
Compare the timelines, estimated budget, and results against SLS, Shuttle, or N1, and Starship comes out looking great. Apollo doesn’t count (no one should be surprised at miracles wrought with 0.5% GDP and 1960s levels of project direction), and all other launch systems are so much smaller in scale they fail as a comparison.
@ElPlan can you please add Payload deploy demo and Raptor in-space relight demo? https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-9
Licence has clearly removed Boca Chica as a flight destination, no longer in 4 b (iii). So not going to be a catch unless there is a new licence.
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=62494.0;attach=2381022;sess=54281