Man, that thing really hauls ass when all its engines keep working.
Booster RUD happened at an ideal time.
Excitement guaranteed; excitement confirmed.
Booster did it’s job. It’s fine.
Flight termination system appeared robust enough this time.
That’s what I meant, if it was going to blow up waiting until after staging was ideal. Everything else seems to be going exactly as planned.
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Guessing we aren’t really coasting. That was fun tho. Wonder how Stage 0 fared.
That methane flame is really pretty.
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That was spectacular. Lot more successful than last time too. Wish these things would stop exploding though.
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It’s painful that they got so close but didn’t get a chance to test ship re-entry. That’s the hardest part of the whole project, and I would be kinda surprised if they nail it on the first try.
I’m guessing the booster was terminated because some of the engines didn’t restart as expected.
Hopefully they can iterate faster this time around…
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Will be very interesting to see re-entry esp. with the tiles that pop off during launch.
They’ll probably have another full stack on the OLM within 2 weeks just to show that they’re ready to go once they get their next flight permit, even if the stack isn’t really ready to launch.
I have an astronomy question… Jupiter (and to a lesser extent Saturn) have been insanely noticable and bright lately. I never noticed this before. Are they in some once in 30 year close orbits relative to earth?
Also, a little north of Orion’s belt are a very faint cluster of 3 or 4 stars (or glaxies) that my SkyMap doesn’t detect. Was curious if anyone knows what they are
Jupiter was recently at its closest approach. Happens about once a year. I had to look it up. Don’t know about those stars. I usually rely on my ex for this stuff.
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@Cactus While I’m waiting to watch my team get crushed on national TV… Last year Jupiter was closer at opposition than it had been in 59 years. I remember watching and yep, it was bright. That distance is increasing now but it was still relatively close this year. It will be closer than it was last year in 2033. Something to look forward to!
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Thanks. That would make sense. I don’t ever remember it being this prominent. Other than the moon, it’s by far the brightest object in the night sky right now. I thought it was Venus at first. Then again, I’m somewhat new to the southwest. Skies are much cooler here than in big Midwestern cities and so much more is visible. I’m thinking of joining an astronomy club
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We know the booster FTS works but it seems like Starship’s might need some work:
Starship’s forward section survived the RUD/FTS
https://x.com/space_josiah/status/1726090284818383224?s=46&t=9xanL2tZoKj22erGoTuL4A
Speculates that hot staging might have sloshed the booster’s fuel around, leading the engines to fatally ingest some air.
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Redditors were doubting this because “Falcon 9 does a boostback every flight, this is a solved problem” but they seem to be forgetting the Starship tanks are autogenously pressurized so SpaceX still has some learning to do.
Short 360 video of the IFT-2 liftoff:
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