Starship Flight 3 hardware should be ready to fly in 3 to 4 weeks. There are three ships in final production in the high bay (as can be seen from the highway).
There will need to be a new FAA license but there is no launch pad issue for the next flight.
SpaceX needs to determine the causes of problems in the last flight. However, the problems from the second flight seem to be smaller and should be faster to fix.
Starship Flight 3 hardware should be ready to fly in 3 to 4 weeks. There are three ships in final production in the high bay (as can be seen from the highway).
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 20, 2023
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SpaceX has over 250 launches without a misshapen of the first ship they created doing exactly what they are doing now. Get out of the way and let them do their job
An amateur astronomer on twitter apparently captured the nose cone of starship, forward flaps and all, apparently intact after starship destruction still flying downrange at some point though. FAA might have something to say about that…
The ships are almost built and ready for launch. The explosions show that safety precautions worked – they blew up both vehicles when sensors indicated they were off course. FAA should have no objections. One month to another launch.
It’s not clear that’s why they blew up, starship was on course and still exploded, and superheavy wasn’t too off course either. Scott Manley analysis on YouTube suggested that it was an unplanned failure. Despite that, I still hope that the FAA won’t freak out again.
What happens next really depends on why the latest blow-ups happened. Patience.
Indeed. Wonder if the engineering telemetry has pinned it down ?
I suppose everytime SpaceX does a new test, it incorporates fixes to what went wrong in the previous one, but already includes new things to be tested
So I wonder what kind of stuff SpaceX will be including to already test, if possible, Starship, for future unmanned and manned missions.
Upgrades to the heat tile system apparently. Many fell off in IFT2 but this was apparently already addressdd on the newer articles
Judging from the past, the next flight should be in April 2024.
EM always gives super optimistic timelines.
It depends on whether the launch schedule is dictated by technical matters or politics. But, of course, they need to have some idea what went wrong.
3 or 4 weeks means 3 or 4 months, in Musk speak. This flight was a huge step, should get around the planet with the next one.
And if ULA was doing it, 3-4 years!
There is no reason whatsoever why the flight hardware won’t be ready in 3-4 weeks. He didn’t say they’d be launching in that timeframe, just that the hardware will be ready. FAA approval will be the thing that determines next launch date. The last license only covered IFT2, no other launches. So it will likely be sometime in January, as long as FAA doesn’t find anything major.
It’s more important that the cause of the failures be determined and remedied than to fly faster. There needs to be some sort of black box set up.
That’s if the bureaucracy allows it. Which I doubt they will.
Too bad some bureaucrats will see just an explosion. I hope they fly again faster than in 6 months.