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@traders See my comment in the below-linked market, with updates from SpaceX on the root cause of the booster explosion (a filter blockage), and comments from the FAA describing the separation as "successful", and listing corrective actions, together I think this information points to nominal stage separation for IFT-2, and therefore a NO resolution for this market:

/YaakovSaxon/will-starships-hotstaging-work-on-t ‌

@YaakovSaxon could we get these markets resolved?

@YaakovSaxon Can this resolve by now?

@oh To what though?

I'd be ok resolving to YES if nobody else here minds, but I think there were arguments made to wait to resolve until an accident report came out.

Although on some further looking, it doesn't seem like the accident report for IFT1 was actually ever made public so I'm not sure that that's actually something we can expect to see for IFT2. So I'm leaning towards just biting the bullet and saying that by any reasonable colloquial definition, the answer is YES, and this question didn't specify otherwise (regardless of what may have happened in comment sections of my other questions).

Any objections?

@YaakovSaxon No real objections other than presumably you mean NO, since the booster didn't make it back!

Did we get any information from the accident report last time, even if the report itself wasn't published? Like, maybe SpaceX talked about it? I forget.

Here's what we got from the FAA last time, it does have a bit of a summary even though it's lacking in details:

https://www.faa.gov/media/70901

@YaakovSaxon Yeah, NO would make a lot of sense IMHO.

@chrisjbillington Yes, that is what I meant, thank you for the correction!

@Mqrius Any objections if I resolve NO?

@YaakovSaxon eh it seems kinda strange to do so imo, all these markets were created at the same time with similar wording, and it seemed obvious that their conditionals depend on each other. Specifically this market seems like a prerequisite condition:

/YaakovSaxon/on-the-next-full-stack-launch-of-st-19d3901cff4e

It would be strange to me to resolve the current market while the prerequisite hasn't resolved Yes.

@Mqrius Presumably if one resolves, the other will have to as well.

@chrisjbillington This phrase makes it sound to me like he wants to resolve them independently, but I may have misunderstood?

> and this question didn't specify otherwise (regardless of what may have happened in comment sections of my other questions)

@Mqrius Ah ok. Well, there wasn't anything conclusive in the comment section of that thread. But yeah, the two should be consistent, whatever happens.

@chrisjbillington I guess the cleanest is to resolve all these markets as N/A due to inconclusive criteria + inconclusive information. But that's equally un-fun for everyone 😅

@Mqrius Maybe, I guess I am an advocate of N/A being reached for more often.

My gut is comfortable with pretty much any resolution here, I think, in that all sound defensible enough that I wouldn't fault the creator, who has been reasonable and definitely put more than enough thought into it whatever happens. I barely even feel like I have a preference, other than whatever makes me more mana (which on this market is NO, but I haven't checked what it is on net across both markets).

@chrisjbillington I wouldn't mind a N/A either, ift2 is in the past anyway my mind is preparing for ift3 :)

@YaakovSaxon any more thoughts? Can these markets be resolved?

SpaceX has said

• Starship executed a successful hot-stage separation, powering down all but three of Super Heavy’s Raptor engines and successfully igniting the six second stage Raptor engines before separating the vehicles. This was the first time this technique has been done successfully with a vehicle of this size.

This seems to indicate this market should resolve no?

Booster engine restart clearly had issues which may well relate to the stage separation but it seems clear for this that SpaceX is regarding the stage separation as complete and successful and the problem issues relate to boostback flight/burn and/or engine start which they don't consider to be part of stage separation.

An alternate view might be that this should be considered marketing blurb and we shouldn't take too much notice thereof?

I have not traded this market, at least not yet. Waiting for more official account of what the problems were could be sensible, but it seemed worth pointing out this statement from SpaceX which might be relevant to what is considered required for nominal/successful stage separation

@ChristopherRandles Cases like this should ideally be described in the market conditions before they happen, but Yaakov hasn't said much.

@Mqrius Right. There's a lot of confusing ambiguity here and I'm sorry I didn't anticipate it.

The question is: should I be applying the exact same definition of nominal here as I did in the /YaakovSaxon/will-starships-hotstaging-work-on-t question, where I agreed beforehand in the comments that if the hot-staging led to flight failure of the booster then it would resolve NO? (In which case we should wait for the accident report)

Or would it make more sense to say that these are unrelated markets (not even really part of the same "On the next full launch with X will Y be nominal series) so a comment made on the other one shouldn't be determinative, and as @ChristopherRandles points out, the stage separation is itself being described as successful, and indeed in many senses was: the stages did cleanly separate.

Also open to entirely different arguments and options, including arguments to resolve N/A or resolve to market.

I'm going to temporarily pause trading on this market to give people a chance to share opinions without other people speculating on the basis of those opinions before we've hopefully come to a consensus.

@chrisjbillington
@fwave
@ErickBall

@YaakovSaxon have to say I'm a bit confused. It's obvious the booster didn't reach the intended site, so the only question is whether stage separation was nominal, right? And "executed a successful hot-stage separation, powering down all but three of Super Heavy’s Raptor engines and successfully igniting the six second stage Raptor engines before separating the vehicles" is pretty unambiguous. I'm totally on board with waiting to see if the accident report contradicts this press blurb, but as it stands, why wouldn't it resolve no?

@ErickBall The question is

On the next full stack launch of starship (after 4/20) with nominal stage separation, will booster reach intended site?

Whichever first launch has nominal stage separation is the one that is being asked about. If this one did not have nominal stage separation, then the question is about a future launch.

@ErickBall Whether this question is about IFT2 launch or a future launch, seems to depend on whose definition of 'stage separation'.

Some alternatives might be

1 SpaceX's definition (perhaps whatever public statements we get are enough or probably more formal accident report is better).

2 SpaceX's unless FAA uses a different definition when it becomes FAA definition.

3 Claim creator's definition (in which we may need to ask if it is reasonable to expect traders to be aware of claim creators other markets)

Using the relevant regulator's definition might seem more objective and avoids issues of whether traders are aware of claim creator's other markets? Also avoids SpaceX spin if possible. So I think I would tend to suggest option 2. But other views may certainly be valid and/or better.

(looked for definitions in a few places like https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-III/subchapter-A/part-401/section-401.7 but not found anything useful,)

The question could more clearly be posed as “On the first launch of Starship that achieves nominal stage separation, will booster reach intended site?” - and then the question obviously hangs, right now, on exactly how the boundaries of nominal stage separation are defined.

Not sure who's buying No but this market probably doesn't resolve until next flight.

This market is undervalued, since it's not guaranteed that stage separation was nominal.