Resolution criteria for what counts as an attempt copied from this market.
For the purposes of this market the test doesn't have to be successful or even conclusive - a scrub is fine as long as it's clear that SpaceX was trying to do an orbital flight test.
I'll resolve YES if an official SpaceX social media channel puts up a livestream entitled "Starship Orbital Flight Test", "Starship Orbital Launch", or similar, which shows a live feed of Starship and a countdown, NO if there is clearly no such livestream by market close, and N/A if it is ambiguous whether this has happened at market close.
April 17th refers to local time at the launch site.
Note: if there is a successful launch or vehicle destruction prior to the 17th, I will resolve this market NO immediately.
/chrisjbillington/will-starships-orbital-test-flight
/chrisjbillington/will-starships-orbital-flight-test
/chrisjbillington/will-a-starship-orbital-flight-atte-883c2b0587e9 (you are here)
/chrisjbillington/will-a-starship-orbital-flight-atte-0becacaa1884
/chrisjbillington/will-a-starship-orbital-flight-atte-1bf5c0002512
/chrisjbillington/will-a-starship-orbital-flight-atte-bd3fb4f7bd63
/chrisjbillington/will-a-starship-orbital-flight-atte-a5458089285c
1,000
3.00Something fell inside the launch tower at 1:57:20 (visible on LabPadre's rover cam), leaving a trail of sparks and making a loud noise impacting the ground. Better audio uploaded by Epic SpaceFlight here.
Speculation in Youtube livestream chats that it's an elevator counterweight, and the sparks are from its cable (hitting parts of the tower...?).
Unsure if this is likely to be a problem for launch or not.
@chrisjbillington Maybe they'll still go for Monday. It's not like they're gonna let something as mundane as gravity stop them, right? :D
A comment I've added to all my market descriptions just now:
Note: if there is a successful launch or vehicle destruction prior to <date>, I will resolve this market NO immediately.
Basically I will treat a launch or vehicle destruction as 100% evidence against a subsequent attempt later in the week, in order to prioritise timely resolution over complete logical certainty.
@chrisjbillington Could you please explicitly confirm that these markets refer to the test that is expected to happen soon because apparently they're not going to call it "orbital" like in the examples in the market description: https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-test
@NamesAreHard yes, they do refer to the hopefully-imminent starship flight test. I'm going to resolve YES even if they don't use the word "orbital", and even if the trajectory is technically suborbital, as long as it is a test of orbital capabilities.
Some developments. They're not going to do a rehearsal:
And there's a page on spacex's website containing details for the launch:
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-test
On the main SpaceX launches page, the test is dated Apr 17th.
https://www.spacex.com/launches/
/r/SpaceX users report that the SpaceX YouTube channel briefly had a live stream for the launch (before being set to private), scheduled to go live at 6:15AM Texas time. The timeline on the launch page says the stream will go live 45m before launch, so this is consistent with a 7am launch.
I initially sold all my NO on this, but bought some back after reading further - it seems to me that whilst this is the earliest possible launch and therefore what they're working towards, Elon's comments about the launch being more probable later in the week likely still stand.
@chrisjbillington You can use the Percentage market shorthand in the market description as well, same as in comments. Less info on what you previously bet, but easier to see a trendline/comparison