SpaceX Starship - Orbital Test Flight - Starbase TX

Launch Date: April 20
Launch Window: 8:28am CDT (6:28am PDT, 13:28 UTC) - 62 minute window
Launch site: LC-1? - Starbase, Boca Chica Beach, Texas
Core Booster Recovery: Expended in Gulf
Starship Recovery: Water landing near Hawaii
Booster: Super Heavy Booster 7
Starship: Starship 24
Mass: No mass simulator mentioned
Orbit: LEO-ish
Yearly Launch Number: 26

A SpaceX Super Heavy and Starship launch vehicle will launch on its first orbital test flight. The mission will attempt to travel around the world for nearly one full orbit, resulting in a re-entry and splashdown of the Starship near Hawaii.

Webcast:

 

[JohnnyEnglish]

SpaceX webcast scheduled to start at 5:45AM PDT. Launch window 6:28 to 7:30 according to the NSF livestream right now.

Waiting for it to start - 4 minutes late

 

[JohnnyEnglish]

Just starting!

 

[mongo]

Elon says green

https://twitter.com/x/status/1649032884517482497

 

[ecarfan]

Webcast has started. Hosts talking about reason first flight test attempt was scrubbed. It sounds like the vehicles are using autogenous tank pressurization.

 

[ecarfan]

The flight path diagram they just showed appears to indicate that the booster will return most of the way back to Starbase. So a major boostback burn!

 

[ecarfan]

Kate Tice: “Raptor engines are completely designed and built in-house”.

Dig at ULA and Vulcan?

 

[ecarfan]

Glad to see that the weather and range AND vehicle are all GO!

 

[mongo]

OLM unlatched, QD ready

https://twitter.com/x/status/1649039669190098947

 

[ecarfan]

So the booster engines will be ignited in “three banks”, or three different groups, starting at T-00:06 and that will take 4 seconds in total.

 

[ecarfan]

5 engines in the outer ring didn’t ignite but it’s still going!

 

[ecarfan]

Stage sep failure, FTS activated. The booster started the flip maneuver but it was still attached to the ship.

Still, a test flight success! Cleared the tower.

 

[tivoboy]

Purposeful abort and detonation… is there an acronym for that? Always exciting. I wonder where they internally put the probability of separation complete and landing?

update: i guess they call it AFT… automated flight TERMINATION. I wonder what those charges look like and where.

I guess worse of course would have been blowing up (or needing to be blown up nearby) on the pad, so that infrastructure is saved. Anyone know how many of these they have as secondaries? Time to next launch?

 

[ecarfan]

5 engines in the outer ring didn’t ignite but it’s still going!

I got excited and was incorrect; looks like 4 engines in the outer ring and one in the center cluster failed to ignite.

 

[ecarfan]

Purposeful abort and detonation… is there an acronym for that? Always exciting. I wonder where they internally put the probability of separation complete and landing?

I would guess “very low” probability. Of course it is disappointing that stage sep failed which meant the booster flip and ship engine starts could not be tested.

 

[ecarfan]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1649046293489254402

 

[mongo]

Stage sep failure, FTS activated. The booster started the flip maneuver but it was still attached to the ship.

Still, a test flight success! Cleared the tower.

Due to loss of 5 engines, the flip turn timing would be much later than base timeline. Seemed like reduction in control happened before separation event.

 

[bfayer62]

Primary objective was to launch Super Heavy, which was successful. Now they have lots of real world data to analyze. Overall good job on Space X!

 

[bfayer62]

On another note, this is also where all the lawsuits start back up. Various groups have been waiting for the launch to have standing to file suit

 

[JohnnyEnglish]

Primary objective was to launch Super Heavy, which was successful. Now they have lots of real world data to analyze. Overall good job on Space X!

Yes. They know the booster (and stage 0) work which is key.

As most of the engines ignited I'm hopeful they will be able to solve the ignition issues without significant mods to either the engines or stage 0. Fixing the separation issue might be more difficult depending on the failure mode.

 

[SMAlset]

I know I couldn't appreciate the size of it, but it was pretty amazing to see it launch. Too bad something went wrong with separation but exciting up until the point of the revolving flip. I was watching on my phone and took a couple of screen grabs for the casual reader here not having time to rewatch the launch. Sorry I had cc on .

Very cool view.

And we got an onboard camera view.