Weekly Space Report: Orbital Starship!

SCANALYZER The Happening World
,
1

{Published Tuesday}

Highlights:

  • TF14 Recap: Orbital success! (A few bumps along the way.)

  • One booster raptors out on ascent.

  • Two booster raptors out on boostback.

  • Switched programmed raptrors for booster landing burn to avoid problem engines. Successful soft splashdown.

  • Ship lost one vacuum raptor shortly before end of ascent burn. Other five ran slightly long to compensate. But slill slightly short of orbital insertion speed.

  • Initial announcement that orbital insertion would be called off. Reversed after a few minutes, and insertion burn was successful.

  • Starship dispensed 26 Starlink V3 Group 31-1. (Pays for the entire mission, and then some.)

  • Cool views of Starship from last few satellites.

  • Discussion of on-orbit endurance with fuel onboard.

  • First optional water landing target chosen after 1½ hour into the mission, due to concern over the one engine failure.

  • Successful soft water landing near Hawaii, but ship did not survive the post-landing flop into the water.

I read elsewhere that the 26 V3 Starlinks on this one mission are comparable to the capacity of the V2 minis of twenty Falcon 9 launches. And that Starship is expected to normally carry 60 V3 Starlinks at a time.

2 Likes