NET 16 July 2026 @ 1745CT. There was a snazzy 'infographic' on "formerly known as" but I didn't include that because I do not wish to trigger Musk haters - but evidently they're going to "Pez" 20 V3 operational (?) Starlink birds during the test flight. Since this will be a 0 Perigee flight, I expect that the satellites will have about a 20 minute operational endurance - but that's Elon being Elon again. Looking forward to them getting the hardest part behind them........those famous or infamous 'first six inches.'
It appears 4 of 33 engines failed to light, 4/33=12%, failed to start. Good reason to find and fix before flight. Bob Wilson
Absolutely fabulous! Some rough spots (i.e., engine restarts) to address but what a brilliant accomplishment! Bob Wilson
Absolutely fabulous just about sums it up. Ship 40 appeared to perform flawlessly - and 20/20 working Starlink V3 birds were lofted and tested. If we believe Space-X, these were issue-free as well. Booster 20 repeated some of the V3 Raptor light/relight problems we've seen but I feel that the 2 most important 'next steps' which are orbiting and landing a ship are well within reach on the next IFT. This means that we now have not just one but TWO private companies who have demonstrated capability in landing and re-using a super heavy booster and most of the steps necessary to do the same things with an orbiting vehicle. The Pez dispenser has more or less worked without issues and if they can work out the rest of the bugs then we could well see mass-to orbit prices reduced from an already revolutionary LOW $2500 per kilo to something like $600 using Starship. All of this is IF we are to believe Space-X numbers. Before the IPO they were largely controlled or at least moderated by Musk himself, but now those numbers are somewhat 'crowd sourced' by the stock market and "regulated" by the SEC. Fun times......
Hard to find much on this that isn't AI crapola but it appears that SpaceX is going to try to tow S40 back to Oz. with either one or two support wessels. It will be interesting to see if it makes the trip - but I'm thinking that perhaps the V3 ships must be built a little stronger than I originally thought - OR they picked a VERY benign place to set it down. She's NOW a 50-meter, 120 tonne boat (dry mass, NOT to be confused with displacement) which leads THIS armchair astronaut to think that average wave heights in the I.O. (2m? 2.5?) will have periodicities what might stress Ship 40 a bit since she's not exactly ballasted down. She IS girthy though. There are other squids in the forum that are better at estimating sea state and direction than I am but I give local conditions at 6-8' waves with maybe 12-15kt wind gusts (whitecaps.) My warfare designators are 'SS' and 'EXW' - so that skimmer stuff is off my patch. Can't wait to see if they bring it off!!! @bwilson4web You're the engineer Bob. Thoughts?
