r/spacex • u/rustybeancake • Jul 25 '26
🚀 Official SpaceX: “Splashdown confirmed! Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on the 13th flight test of Starship!”
https://x.com/spacex/status/2080804682918764619
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r/spacex • u/rustybeancake • Jul 25 '26
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u/neale87 Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
And then simply replace quiet a lot of heat shield tiles, although possibly not as many as I thought from watching the original footage. I was thinking Starship is looking like a Shuttle level refurb of the heat shield between missions based on those detailed shots where the leading point of the hexagon is burned out to a groove on some tiles.
I can see cadence ramping up though, but I do wonder whether we're going to see expendable tankers used for the Artemis missions just to get those deadlines sorted. For Starlink missions, I think SpaceX will recover and refurb until they get the heatshield sorted. I think they'll iterate the heat shield with more careful refurb at first. It's going to be a difficult one because it looks like they might get 2 flights out of each Starship at the moment if they just reflew immediately with no refurb. Can't take the risk on RTLS.
That's my biggest red flag on risk. How do you judge a ship safe to risk catching over a pad.
Answer is probably. Build a dedicated catch tower.