Orbital is understood to include flight plans similar to the first test flight.
The December+ includes all dates after November 30th 2023, into 2024 and beyond. If a second test flight has not taken place by December 1st 2023, this market will resolve to December+, UNLESS SpaceX has announced that Starship is cancelled, in which case it will resolve NA.
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@JoshuaWilkes mostly because I've been advocating it :p I've seen markets with countdown reaching zero, or clearing the launch tower. I feel like they're more ambiguous though
With Starship, I gather that the launch clamps are released earlier than ignition, it just stands there until engine power ramps up to more than weight of rocket.
Does that mean no launch counts ๐คฃ ? (obviously not, I'm just joking)
Not sure what definition of launch should be in this case. Perhaps "upward movement as intended". The 'as intended' part is so that if there is an explosion prior to liftoff that propels it upwards then this should not count.
@ChristopherRandles Uhhh not sure where you got that idea, but nope, ignition comes first and then launch clamps release. Starship at this point in time does not have any legs, and any launch from the orbital launch mount is held only by the clamps. If they release early then Starship would fall down through the launch mount!
@Mqrius From NasaSpaceflight.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQboHROM5X0&t=1200s
It comes about a minute after that starting ~20:56
@Mqrius There was some discussion of this last time, and I thought we all decided the clamps had some additional "unlatching" step (which we heard the call-out for) that prepared them to release, but that they didn't actually release in the sense we meant until liftoff. However, NasaSpaceFlight are being pretty unambiguous here about that not being the case!
Like, what we're trying to capture is the moment where they've committed to launch, and they can't scrub simply. If that's launch clamp release, then that's still a good option. If it's ignition after launch clamp release, that should maybe the criteria. Otherwise I guess it would be "any movement of the rocket"?
@Mqrius According to the video, it'd be something like the command to throttle up to >1 TWR.
IIRC the launch clamp "unlatching" or whatever people heard the call-out for happened long before launch, like fifteen minutes or something. So I'm pretty sure that step doesn't preclude a scrub.
@Mqrius From that video flight computers make decision at about T- 1 second whether to ramp up or shutdown. So that may be a possible point unless anyone has info that it can still be aborted after that.
@Mqrius I was thinking that if explosion happened between t-1 second and T 0, we might be committed to launch but did launch happen? I would suggest no, therefore it has to be rocket movement. But others may disagree about what we are saying has happened.