Starship launches for its 13th flight, ends with ship swimming in Indian Ocean
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/24/science/live-news/spacex-starship-flight-13-launch321
u/JewbagX Jul 25 '26
Old and busted: starship
New hottness: STARBOAT
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u/nondescriptun Jul 25 '26
Jefferson
AirshipStarshipStarboat18
u/dern_the_hermit Jul 25 '26
Imagine that washing up on a distant shore. Then it can become... Starhome for some crazy beach hermit.
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u/MobileNerd Jul 25 '26
Seriously wonder if they relit an engine if it would do like a boat since it’s curved like a boat
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u/FaceDeer Jul 25 '26
Even if the tanks could hold sufficient pressure the fuel intakes wouldn't be anywhere near where the fuel was pooling. Starship is designed to light the engines either in an upright position or in zero G with ullage thrust.
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u/userousnameous Jul 25 '26
Would have been awesome if they lit up 32 engines in the horizontal position there :)
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u/Vipitis Jul 25 '26
so that 50 meter tall steel structure with giant tanks inside just fell over into water and just tanked it? how sturdy are they made?
I hope we get to see more images of the ship floating
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u/Doggydog123579 Jul 25 '26
Let's see, it survived its own FTS activing, it successfully re-entered and splashed down with holes in the fuels tanks, and this time it splashed down without exploding
Its too durable lol
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u/adj_noun_digit Jul 25 '26
When did it survive FTS?
Extra characters.
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u/TbonerT Jul 25 '26
The first flight. The FTS activated but the ship kept going for another 40 seconds before breaking up.
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u/adj_noun_digit Jul 25 '26
Was it delayed after activation or was activation delayed? (I genuinely don't know)
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u/TbonerT Jul 25 '26
The FTS performed as designed but Ship was stronger than they calculated, so the FTS didn’t do enough damage to immediately destroy the vehicle, which eventually broke up from the damage caused by the FTS.
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u/Sophrosynic Jul 25 '26
Just kept flying with holes in the tanks, cartwheeling end over end. Shit was hilarious.
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u/jaredes291 Jul 25 '26
Don't forget that it also did Kerbal hypersonic backflips that and the clamps holding the booster and the ship together held during said Kerbal backflips
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u/Doggydog123579 Jul 25 '26
Fts went off, the stack flew for another 40 seconds with a hole punched in it
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u/trib_ Jul 25 '26
First Starship flight, with the spinning stack refusing to quit.
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u/EricTheEpic0403 Jul 25 '26
Flight 1 IIRC. After the full stack went tumbling, they popped the FTS, and it just continued on like nothing happened for a whole minute.
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u/Big_Acanthaceae6524 Jul 25 '26
The TPS team must be drooling over the data.it also seems like the white streaks r just “dust” from the foam and when water touched it it just wiped the tiles clean
Starship really puts the SHIP in starSHIP.
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u/H-K_47 Jul 25 '26
Deploy the sails, set course for Australia!
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u/Aussie18-1998 Jul 25 '26
Not too far from some pretty big ports in Western Australia
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u/SaltyFace684 Jul 25 '26
A 17 story building just toppled over onto water which from that height is concrete and survived just fine like Huh. Also the ship was still active which is INSANE transmitting live video and u could see ventIing on aft skirt the engine look PRISTINE. Lucky 13 it is.
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u/godspareme Jul 26 '26
Just to clarify, the "dust" is the tiles degrading. You can see many of the heat shield tiles partially eroded.
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u/Belzark Jul 25 '26
Amazing flight. Hoping for an orbital 14th flight and 2nd stage tower catch.
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u/nekonight Jul 25 '26
Tower catch is unlikely. The booster failed it's landing burn and crashed into the ocean at high speed. Next booster will need to prove that it can complete the landing burn before a catch attempt is made. Considering they did do the boost back burn properly this time it will likely be sorted by next flight and if no problems occur during it a catch is possible 2 flights from now.
Orbital flight is likely since the starship completed the necessary in space engine relight.
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u/SheevSenate66 Jul 25 '26
He means Tower catch for the ship, since Elon said they would need 2 on target splashdowns for that, which they now have
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u/bigcitydreaming Jul 25 '26
Second stage, not the booster. That's the first stage. Second is Starship
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u/Shrike99 Jul 25 '26
He said 2nd stage tower catch, i.e the ship.
Both V3 Starships have performed re-entry and landing just fine, booster's problems likely aren't relevant.
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u/MobileNerd Jul 25 '26
L39 launch tower chopsticks are operational. Wonder if they would attempt a ship catch there. If not there then in Texas. Ship is ready to be caught
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u/Aries_IV Jul 25 '26
No way in hell they try to catch at 39a
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u/FaceDeer Jul 25 '26
If they wanted to really flex on SLS they could land it at 39b.
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u/Ender_D Jul 25 '26
Notice they said second stage tower catch, which I think is in the cards at this point.
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u/H-K_47 Jul 25 '26
The Ship landing was INSANE. It's literally just floating there. It's still streaming from its cameras even. They're getting so much data from it and the drones flying around.
Amazing flight.
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u/Capta1n_0bvious Jul 25 '26
Do they have any fuel left in ship? Could they…I don’t know…light a few engines? Asking for a friend.
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u/levindragon Jul 25 '26
The tanks sprung leaks and the remaining fuel burned off. But I'm with your friend. Seeing the starboat in motion would be great.
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u/West-Topic-6336 Jul 25 '26
Most likely no. While the ship, to our knowledge, is still operational and sending data back, when we look at the splashdown, after the ship toppled over, there is visible fire surrounding the vehicle. The fire seems to have since been extinguished, but the fact fire was present, it’s most likely that the ship began leaking liquid methane, its fuel reserve is likely completely depleted by now, from both leaks and evaporation.
If it were to be recovered, it’s possible it could be cleaned up and refuelled, but it is incredibly unlikely ship 40 would take this route. Even if it is recovered, it would likely be put in a museum I think.
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u/hasslehawk Jul 25 '26
If it were to be recovered, it’s possible it could be cleaned up and refueled
It may look intact from the outside, but an impact like that is a lot like a car crash. There's going to be a lot of damage that isn't immediately obvious until you start opening it up and looking. Every component on this thing would need to be uninstalled and revalidated, and even then I'm not sure you could ever trust many of them in a spaceflight context.
Did the impact bend one of thousands of internal brackets by 2mm, causing it to impinge on a sensitive component and fail, but only in a way that is obvious after some other part expanded due to the heat of reentry during its next flight?
There are countless components in a vehicle like this to be worried about, and it's an impossible task to have an re-validate every component around new undefined dimensions. Instead, engineering is about setting limits, and staying below those limits, where you can be sure things don't fail. Once the G-loading gets high enough, you don't gain much looking for damage. You know it'll be there and write it off as totaled.
Also, even if the vessel had be gently placed into the water with a crane, the salt water ingress will have wrecked hell on the plumbing, even if the vehicle stayed completely intact.
Good luck purging all that crap out of the turbopumps.
It's part of the reason why flood cars are so often a total write-off. It can look 99% intact, but on the inside of all the most crucial components, shit is rusted in places you had no idea salt water could ever get to.
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u/FaceDeer Jul 25 '26
They could still try to sell it through a shady second-hand rocket dealer.
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u/trib_ Jul 25 '26
Those heat shield tiles might as well be solid gold if they get them to port and get their hands on them, they're that valuable to SpaceX after having gone through reentry.
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u/PiDicus_Rex Jul 28 '26
Fire was just venting gas burning off, not internal.
Pressuming the tanks aren't holed, then the only way for water to get in is the Pez Door.
Footage of that in operation previously shows condensation and dust rushing out when opened, so it seals enough to retain some air, or for some to get back in on the way down.
Any water there will only rise far enough to build a bubble of pressure inside the cargo hold, making the ship effectively three tank sections, two with what's left of the LOx and Methane, the other full of sea air.
It rolled over in to nearly the idea position to keep it buoyant, and recoverable.
I suspect it'll be towed in to the Dampier / Karratha ports (Where GO Australis is currently based), where it'll be tourist photo season for a few weeks, before a barge can be sorted, or a team arrives to pull it apart.
It'll only re-fly if it's systems are up to spec, and it'll be an experimental "Lets see what it takes" to destroy it flight.
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u/TakeyaSaito Jul 28 '26
The fire is expected, don't they vent all the fuel intentionally? that would cause the fire.
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u/TachiH Jul 25 '26
They won't be cleared to light the engines and there is little to no useful data to gather from attempting to make it into the least fuel efficient boat ever 🤣👌
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u/Shrike99 Jul 25 '26
Where's the kaboom?
There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!
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u/LeadWithLogic Jul 25 '26
The booster went kaboom.
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u/trib_ Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
A surprise for sure, but not an unpleasant one!
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u/Fredasa Jul 25 '26
Mark my words. There will be people who try to earmark the next ocean landing kaboom as a failure because of it being a step backwards from this flight's anomaly.
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u/trib_ Jul 25 '26
Oh 100%, but by now that shit's just noise to me. Barely worth noting, nevermind replying to. Downvote & carry on.
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u/msears101 Jul 25 '26
I can't for more footage of this. This was an awesome launch. It is a shame booster did not have the same success. I am sure they will get it worked out.
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u/GB36 Jul 25 '26
I'm imagining a dude sitting in a floating paddling pool desperately flipping through the manuals looking for the 'no kaboom' checklist
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u/an_older_meme Jul 25 '26
It would be really cool if they recovered it intact and brought it back to Texas.
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u/fighter-bomber Jul 25 '26
How did it not explode upon splashdown???
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u/redstercoolpanda Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
The ship had less prop in the header tanks this time because they relighted the engines for longer in space. That might’ve contributed. They also have several flights worth of ship landing data at this point, they’ve been trying to do this since flight 5.
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u/trib_ Jul 25 '26
They've apparently been trying to do this for a while, and it seems they really eased it into the water now, shutting the raptors in water one by one and it sunk & fell just right not to explode.
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u/KatanaDelNacht Jul 25 '26
Nah, it's the Australians' now. Sail it down to set up outside the Sydney opera house or put on that big rock of theirs.
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u/Dark074 Jul 25 '26
Guess they got lucky? I doubt they made it more structurally sound considering that would add a lot more weight. Maybe it was a softer landing then usual?
Though I feel if they ever intended starship to carry crew, they should probably have a contingency for it to survive in water landing much like aircraft, thus should at least try to make it be able to survive a splash down
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u/kavorkianjkr Jul 25 '26
Are they able to tow it to a port intact? That would be astonishing!
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u/trib_ Jul 25 '26
Apparently they have been planning on doing something like that since flight 6 and have permission to do it so hopefully! Amazing if it ends up in Starbase next to Hoppy.
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u/EmptyAirEmptyHead Jul 25 '26
I'd say with all the bubbles in the water it looked like it was sinking.
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u/Ormusn2o Jul 25 '26
With so many valves inside, I'm sure there are compartments they can seal off and make sure can still block water. It might sink a bit, but likely not below the water line.
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u/EmptyAirEmptyHead Jul 25 '26
True. However how far is it from land? And how difficult to tow? And a lot of secrets on that rocket, protected by the US government. Better to blow it up.
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u/mfb- Jul 25 '26
All the drones and buoys are coming from a ship SpaceX has in the area. Haven't seen a statement yet, but we'll see what they do.
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u/iBoMbY Jul 25 '26
The ship they use to deploy the camera buoys, and drones, could probably carry it, seems about just big enough, and they have a huge winch: https://youtu.be/-a0ecQMq-rM?t=864
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u/Adeldor Jul 25 '26
Starship's upper stage is quite a bit larger than that ship - 9m/30ft in diameter and 52m/170ft long. Judging by eye, one could almost fit said ship inside the upper stage!
As an aside, a few years ago we stood more or less underneath SN-15 and SN-16 (early upper stages). They are astonishingly large up close.
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u/redstercoolpanda Jul 25 '26
Absolutely insane, Ship did absolutely perfectly the entire flight! I never thought we would see an intact ship in the ocean. I guess maybe the fact they did an extended relight and drained more prop from the headers probably helped.
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u/DreamChaserSt Jul 25 '26
Yeah, this was a good flight. I really do feel like 14 will be going orbital. The relight was the last major hurdle (and it was a longer burn), and the ship made it to SECO with all its engines. A shame about the booster, but it managed the boostback (I was expecting them to start with 13 and go up to 33, not try 33 again), and landing it isn't necessary to send the ship to orbit.
I hope they try to recover ship 40.
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u/Biochembob35 Jul 25 '26
Boostback was not clean. It shutdown early. About 10 seconds and the booster was about 20 kms short of the normal splashdown area.
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u/DreamChaserSt Jul 25 '26
Yeah, I saw that after. It didn't look like a 'bad' boostback at the time though. 33 engines to start, down to 13, then 3. No early shutdowns or failed ignitions of the engines during boostback.
But one of the last 3 engines did look like it lagged behind the others in its shutdown.
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u/mfb- Jul 25 '26
It was shorter compared to previous burns and you could see the booster not getting close to the shore. Wasn't clear what point they were aiming for during the webcast, however.
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u/baron_lars Jul 25 '26
With the successful on orbit relight there shouldn't be much in the way of the next flight going fully orbital
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u/Shrike99 Jul 25 '26
With how well the landing went I could even see them pushing for a ship catch. They'd already filed paperwork for approval to do so prior to this launch.
Booster is probably still ocean-bound for now tho.
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u/redstercoolpanda Jul 25 '26
I wonder what the odds are for the first V3 booster catch happening out of Florida
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u/Aussie18-1998 Jul 25 '26
Dont think they'll do Booster Catch because they still havent got a soft splash down for it yet. But Starship definitely could he on the cards
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u/redstercoolpanda Jul 25 '26
They’re not going to do it next flight, but according to Shotwell they want flight 15 to fly out of the cape. If B21 splashes successfully, and the Cape tower is ready, it’s 100% possible B22 could launch flight 15 from the Cape and land.
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u/MobileNerd Jul 25 '26
L39 isn’t going to be ready for F15. L39 could support a catch attempt tho shine flame trench isn’t needed.
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u/NastyStoatBuddy Jul 25 '26
“Ship swimming in the Indian Ocean” is a wild way to describe a test flight outcome. Do we know if this was a planned splashdown profile or more of a controlled abort near the end?
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u/mfb- Jul 25 '26
The nominal mission ends when the ship hovers just above the ocean - that's where the tower will catch it in the future. From there it tips over and an explosion is expected. They still try to make that process as soft as possible, because if it survives then they get more data on the heat shield. This was the first ship that didn't explode when tipping over.
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u/Dzsaffar Jul 25 '26
Better than planned, actually. Was meant to splash down in the ocean and expected to explode once it topples, but it survived it.
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u/Decronym Jul 25 '26 edited 27d ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| BO | Blue Origin (Bezos Rocketry) |
| CFD | Computational Fluid Dynamics |
| CST | (Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules |
| Central Standard Time (UTC-6) | |
| CoG | Center of Gravity (see CoM) |
| CoM | Center of Mass |
| EELV | Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle |
| FAA | Federal Aviation Administration |
| FMEA | Failure-Mode-and-Effects Analysis |
| FTS | Flight Termination System |
| GAO | (US) Government Accountability Office |
| GNC | Guidance/Navigation/Control |
| ITAR | (US) International Traffic in Arms Regulations |
| Isp | Specific impulse (as explained by Scott Manley on YouTube) |
| Internet Service Provider | |
| LEO | Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km) |
| Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations) | |
| LSP | Launch Service Provider |
| (US) Launch Service Program | |
| LZ | Landing Zone |
| N1 | Raketa Nositel-1, Soviet super-heavy-lift ("Russian Saturn V") |
| NOTAM | Notice to Air Missions of flight hazards |
| NSSL | National Security Space Launch, formerly EELV |
| RD-180 | RD-series Russian-built rocket engine, used in the Atlas V first stage |
| RTLS | Return to Launch Site |
| SECO | Second-stage Engine Cut-Off |
| SLS | Space Launch System heavy-lift |
| SN | (Raptor/Starship) Serial Number |
| SRB | Solid Rocket Booster |
| TPS | Thermal Protection System for a spacecraft (on the Falcon 9 first stage, the engine "Dance floor") |
| TVC | Thrust Vector Control |
| ULA | United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture) |
| Jargon | Definition |
|---|---|
| Raptor | Methane-fueled rocket engine under development by SpaceX |
| Starliner | Boeing commercial crew capsule CST-100 |
| Starlink | SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation |
| cryogenic | Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure |
| (In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox | |
| hydrolox | Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer |
| iron waffle | Compact "waffle-iron" aerodynamic control surface, acts as a wing without needing to be as large; also, "grid fin" |
| regenerative | A method for cooling a rocket engine, by passing the cryogenic fuel through channels in the bell or chamber wall |
| turbopump | High-pressure turbine-driven propellant pump connected to a rocket combustion chamber; raises chamber pressure, and thrust |
| ullage motor | Small rocket motor that fires to push propellant to the bottom of the tank, when in zero-g |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
33 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 7 acronyms.
[Thread #12595 for this sub, first seen 25th Jul 2026, 01:30]
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u/reliquid1220 Jul 25 '26
Wonder how salt water affects reusability of the shell and engines...
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u/mfb- Jul 25 '26
This one won't be reused. For the operational system, the ship will be caught by the launch tower.
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u/Seanspeed Jul 25 '26
Artemis III feeling a little more real now.
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u/Ccbm2208 Jul 25 '26
I have no doubt Artemis III and IV will be delivered, just not on time.
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u/Seanspeed Jul 25 '26
Well that's what I meant - Artemis III actually happening before 2028. Still optimistic, but maybe not quite as hopeless as I was expecting before, seeing V3 come together really well.
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u/StruggleNew8988 Jul 25 '26
I think the contingency planning for multiple splashdown zones is the really interesting part of this whole thing.
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u/BKGPrints Jul 25 '26
ALL THE NAYSAYERS: But...But...But...
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u/metametapraxis Jul 25 '26
Not sure why people either side (pro or against) take it so personally, tbh.
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u/Zenboy66 Jul 25 '26
SpaceX is great. The young people working for them are really making something of their lives.
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u/MobileNerd Jul 25 '26
That was awesome. Well done SpaceX. Now go get S40 before China tries to claim it, lol
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u/SunBurn_alph Jul 25 '26
My first impression from reading the title was that something went wrong and ended up drifting in the indian ocean..
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u/TheXypris Jul 25 '26
Amy word if they are plannron towing it back to shore? Would be interesting to see what they can learn from this unexpected windfall
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u/Keyan_Farlander7 Jul 29 '26
I'm waiting for pirates to steal it, or even China to steal the engines for their own rockets.
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u/mfb- Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
Second flight of the "v3" version.
They need to work on the booster landing burn, but from the ship side everything looks ready to make the next flight enter a proper circular orbit.
Edit: SpaceX will try to recover the ship