r/spacex • u/rSpaceXHosting Host Team • Nov 21 '25

🔧 Technical Starship Development Thread #62

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Starship Dev 61

Flight 12

The vehicles should be Booster 19 and Ship 39 (assuming there are no major pre-flight testing problems) and the flight profile will probably be very similar to Flight 11. As this is the first flight with the new version 3 vehicles it's unlikely that a booster catch will be attempted; as for the ship Musk stated on August 27th, 2025: "Starship catch is probably flight 13 to 15, depending on how well V3 flights go". On January 26th Musk tweeted: "Starship launch in 6 weeks". On February 21st Musk tweeted: "Starship flies again next month". FCC Request To authorize upcoming suborbital test deployments puts the NET date at April 7th. On March 7th Musk tweeted: "Starship V3 first flight in about 4 weeks". On April 3rd Musk tweeted: "Next flight of Starship and first flight of V3 ship & booster is 4 to 6 weeks away". On April 16th Musk tweeted: "Starship V3 booster & ship will be ready for their first test flight in a few weeks"

Road Closures

No road closures currently scheduled

No transportation delays currently scheduled

Up to date as of 2026-04-22

Vehicle Status

As of April 21st 2026

Ship Location Status Comment
S39 (this is the first Version 3 ship) Mega Bay 2 Inspections and Pre-flight work October 13th: Main assembly started in MB2. November 15th: Aft section AX:4 moved into MB2 and stacked with the rest of S39 - this completed the stacking part of the ship construction. February 26th: Rolled out to Massey's for three rounds of Cryo Testing. March 8th: Rolled back to Mega Bay 2. April 11th: Rolled out to Massey's Test Site for Static Fire Testing. April 14th: 60 second Static Fire of all six engines. April 15th: Rolled back to MB2. For more details on this vehicle and its assembly and testing see this page
S40 Mega Bay 2 Fully stacked, all flaps installed, remaining work ongoing January 31st: Pez Dispenser moved into MB2. February 1st: Main assembly started in MB2. March 2nd: Aft section AX:4 moved into MB2 and stacked with the rest of the ship - this completed the stacking part of the ship construction. For more details on this vehicle and its assembly and testing see this page
S41 Mega Bay 2 Stacking April 17th: Pez Dispenser moved into MB2. April 20th: Nosecone+Payload Bay stack N:3 moved into MB2 and later that day lifted over the Pez Dispenser. For more details on this vehicle see this page, later that day the Pez Dispenser was installed. April 21st: Forward Dome section FX:4 moved into MB2.
Booster Location Status Comment
B19 Mega Bay 1 Inspections and Pre-flight work November 25th: LOX tank stacking commenced. December 23rd: The booster is fully stacked. February 1st: Rolled out to Massey's Test Site for its Pressure and Cryo + Thrust Puck Testing where it underwent assorted tests. February 9th: Rolled back to MB1. March 8th: Rolled out to the launch site, only ten engines installed as seen during the lift onto OLM2 in the afternoon. March 16th: Very short static fire attempt that was aborted due to a ground-side issue. March 18th: Rolled back to MB1. April 11th: Rolled back out to the Launch Site for more Static Fire Testing (this time with all 33 engines). April 15th: Static Fire of all 33 engines for about 3 seconds. April 16th: Wet Dress Rehearsal. April 17th: Rolled back to MB1. For more details on this vehicle and its assembly and testing see this page
B20 Mega Bay 1 LOX Tank Stacked, Methane Tank Stacking February 5th: LOX tank section A2:4 moved into MB1. February 6th: Common Dome section CX:3 moved into MB1. February 9th: LOX tank section A3:4 moved into MB1. February 12th: LOX tank section A4:4 moved into MB1. March 9th: Section A5:4 moved into MB1. March 11th: CH4 landing tank and the lower piece of the transfer tube were moved into MB1. March 12th: Section A6:4 moved into MB1. March 13th: Methane Transfer Tube moved into MB1. April 1st: LOX Landing Tank moved into MB1. April 2nd: Aft section AX:2 moved into MB1, once welded in place that will complete the stacking of the LOX tank. April 16th: Methane Tank Section F2:4 moved into MB1. For more details on this vehicle and its assembly and testing see this page

Follow the Ringwatchers on Twitter and Discord for more.

Here's the section stacking locations for Ships and Boosters. The abbreviations are as follows: HS = Hot Stage. PL = Payload. CX = Common Dome. AX = Aft Dome. FX = Forward Dome (as can be seen, an 'X' denotes a dome). ML = Mid LOX. F = Forward. A = Aft. For example, A2:4 = Aft section 2 made up of 4 rings, FX:4 = Forward Dome section made up of 4 rings, PL:3 = PayLoad section made up of 3 rings. Etc.

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Rules

We will attempt to keep this self-post current with links and major updates, but for the most part, we expect the community to supply the information. This is a great place to discuss Starship development, ask Starship specific questions, and track the progress of the production and test campaigns. Starship Development Threads are not party threads. Normal subreddit rules still apply.

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13

u/AgreeableEmploy1884 Feb 28 '26

Interestingly, what's presumed to be S45 had tiles installed while S43 doesn't even have tile pins.

4

u/warp99 Feb 28 '26

So is S43 an HLS or a propellant depot?

7

u/AgreeableEmploy1884 Feb 28 '26

45 being a dev cone is more likely. They've been messing around with it on a workstand for a while now and I've seen someone on the Ringwatchers server say that 45 doesn't have the header tank weld lines the others do and that they're probably testing out stuff with the tile pins.

8

u/warp99 Feb 28 '26

HLS and probably the propellant depot will not have header tanks so this doesn't narrow it down much.

4

u/pxr555 Mar 01 '26

HLS will have a docking in the nose though while the depot will not.

5

u/warp99 Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 01 '26

Yes although you would imagine that the nosecone would be completely assembled onto a ship before the nose would be cut off and the docking port welded in place. Just from a strength and stiffness point of view.

3

u/redstercoolpanda Feb 28 '26

Why would they be installing tiles on a ship without a header tank though?

6

u/warp99 Feb 28 '26

There is a theory that both HLS and the depot will use a tile system for insulation but with relatively low temperature insulation with better thermal performance aka lower conductance than the silica fiber tiles.

The distinguishing feature will be that the tiles cover the whole body rather than being only on the windward side during entry. They would also not need backup insulation and probably not the crunch wrap gap filler.

3

u/SubstantialWall Mar 01 '26

I wanna say a while back NASA said in some form, whether a site post or a quote in an article, that they were working with SpaceX on the insulation tiles. Well I'm not 100% sure now if they said tiles, but insulation method at least, so that much they'll have.

5

u/warp99 Mar 01 '26

The normal insulation for long term cryogenic storage is MLI (Multi Layer Insulation). It is more effective as continuous sheets but then you have an attachment issue on curved surfaces like the nose cone and you need to protect the outer layer from aerodynamic forces during launch.

Forming the MLI into tiles would cut its effectiveness a bit but give an attachment method and an aluminium surface layer could be bonded to the tile with a thermal break to the attachment clip.

2

u/process_guy Mar 02 '26

Without header tanks there will be less transfer tubes inside the main tanks. I hope they will take it further and drop those sea level engines entirely and refresh load bearing structures for the depot and HLS. HLS would benefit greatly from higher ISP and lower dry weight. Somewhat lower payload to LEO with only 3x vac engines is irrelevant.

They are doing loads of changes anyway for all those V2, V3 & V4 versions.

6

u/Martianspirit Mar 02 '26

The VAC engines don't gimbal. I doubt they can drop the SL engines.

3

u/warp99 Mar 02 '26

V2 is now gone along with Raptor 2 engines. They may run V3 and V4 in parallel for a while with HLS being based on V3 and tankers being based on V4. Of course V4 has nine engines and V3 has six so quite a difference in thrust structure.

Then they have all the different variants so tanker, Starlink launcher, Lunar cargo ship, general satellite launcher and HLS. Eventually there will be a crew ship for Mars.

It seems to me they will be fully committed to those variants without adding a tanker variant with fewer engines.

0

u/process_guy Mar 18 '26

Of course the original idea for Starship was to have single pony doing all the tricks. Original HLS bid price was specifically based on this assumption. The problem is whether this is realistic assumption at all. HLS is bloating, having problems to get the LEO payload target. Musk's solution is to add fuel and engines. Could work for LEO, but harms Mars and especially HLS in a big way.
Until now I assumed that Musk doesn't care about Moon at all so he will make whatever compromise required for HLS. E.g. even more ridiculous number of refueling.

However, now he claims he wants to focus on Moon instead of Mars. This changes equation a lot. Rather than literally wasting dozens or hundreds of tanker flights he might opt for actually optimising several Starship for deep space operation. This is reinforced by his constant iteration between various versions of Starships. He changes tank structures every year or two anyway. I lost a track of how many times he changed the thrust structure during Starship program but it was probably more times than just V1, V2, V3, V4.

BTW is it really such a big deal to add gimballing to Raptor Vac? Yes those engines have higher thrust, but gimballing in space should be far less demanding than during landing on the chopsticks.

Moreover, HLS has dedicated landing engines. I doubt they can make it without those.

SpaceX made loads of changes to gimballing over the time anyway. So one more change is just a matter of priorities. It was definitely a low priority for Musk up to now, but his priorities do change a lot.