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Cake day: June 10th, 2023
  • threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.worksOPMtoSpaceX@sh.itjust.works•Starship Development Thread July 2026English
    2·
    2 days ago

    2026-07-13:

    • Jul 12th addenda: Timelapse of B20 rollback. (ViX)
    • The 4th tower crane at the Gigabay build site was raised by five modules. (ViX)
    • Pad 1: The 1st section of the ground support equipment bunker was lifted into place. (ViX)
    • Massey’s: Road delay for “Masseys to Production” is posted for Jul 13th 23:59 to Jul 14th 04:00. (starbase.texas.gov, archive)
    • Flight 12: Mishap investigation is closed. Report cites two most probable root causes for the loss of the Super Heavy booster as “heat effects on propulsion system components during the ascent and erroneous engine alarm system settings”. SpaceX identified four corrective actions, including vehicle hardware and software configuration updates to prevent a reoccurrence of the event. (FAA, archive, J_A_Rees_94)
    • Possible relevant hardware changes between B19 and B20. (Anderson 1, Anderson 2)
    • Flight 14+: The FAA post a “Draft Tiered Environmental Assessment for SpaceX Starship Reentry Contingency Operations in the Pacific Ocean and Additional Starship Landing Trajectory”. (FAA, NSF 1, NSF 2, NSF 3)
    • McGregor: Past week’s Raptor tracking summary. (SpaceRhin0)
  • threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.worksMtoSpaceflight@sh.itjust.works•Rocket Report: "Panic" over Transporter availability; Isar to launch from CanadaEnglish
    1·
    6 days ago

    Where is the capacity constraint that SpaceX would need to abandon this line of business?

    I was about to say “launch pads and drone ships”, since they’ve taken LC-39A and JRTI offline, but then remembered that Transporter missions launch out of SLC-4E, which is on the west coast, so it can’t be that.

    the reduction of F9 cores that would suggest they have plenty of extra capacity to produce more second stages

    We know from their 2025 launch cadence that they can churn out second stages at an absolutely insane rate, so it’s probably not that either.

    he expects SpaceX to focus Falcon 9 more on its own internal customers, including Starlink and its future orbital data center system

    I’m not sure what makes the CFO of Rocket Lab think that. I would expect the rate of F9 Starlink launches to drop substantially as Starship comes online.

    If SpaceX is redirecting their F9 capacity for internal consumption then perhaps the plans they had with Starship timelines aren’t going well.

    Starship is behind schedule, but deploying Starlink satellites is one of the few milestones we’ve already seen demonstrated. As soon as they can confidently deorbit the ship, they can go fully orbital and start launching v3 Starlink satellites.

    Is it possible that SpaceX are thinking of phasing out Falcon 9 entirely around 2029, but are unsure if they will have a method of deploying non-Starlink payloads from Starship by then?

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