Following Flight 7's upper stage destruction due to a propellant leak, this market predicts whether the next Starship test (Flight 8) will achieve a successful landing without destruction of either stage. Resolution criteria: Market resolves YES if both stages of Starship complete their mission profiles without destruction during Flight 8. Market resolves NO if either stage is destroyed or experiences catastrophic failure during the mission. Sources for resolution: Official SpaceX streams and announcements, verified space news sources like space.com.
Update 2025-19-01 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Resolution Criteria Update:
Blowing up of a stage is only considered a successful resolution if it is part of the mission plan.
If a soft splashdown is planned and a stage blows up unexpectedly, the market resolves to NO.
1,000@DanHomerick Only if blowing up is part of the plan-- if the plan is a soft splash and it blows up, it resolves no
@IsaacLinn What if it is absolutely clear that a soft splashdown is planned and this happens. If they then have contingency plans for both a) it blowing up and sinking and b) it not blowing up or doing so in a way that leaves large pieces that need to be dealt with to avoid them being a danger to shipping.
It might be that blowing up after soft splashdown is considered >99% certain but such information on assessed probability is not available. I believe the expectation is that the downcomer will break when it topples over and this will mix fuel and lox causing explosion. If we don't hear anything different, this may well be the case again.
So if they have multiple contingency plans for after soft splashdown at least one of which includes the ship blowing up, is the blowing up after soft splashdown acceptable for a yes judgement?
I assume there still has to be a soft splashdown? i.e. Does a hard splashdown or well off vertical going to resolve no even if there is a contingency plan for not attempting soft splashdown?