While they're still testing and preparing, it's looking like Starship test flight 12 is going to be a week from today, May 15, at 6:30 PM EDT, 5:30 PM local (CDT).
The date has changed before (it was originally May 12) and it might change again, but the latest test was the super heavy booster with all engines running at full thrust for around 15 seconds. This will be the 12th Starship test flight, but a totally new, Version 3 (V3) with a different SuperHeavy booster as well as the V3 Starship itself.
SpaceX cleared a big hurdle on the path to liftoff on Thursday (May 7), conducting a static-fire test with Starship's Super Heavy first stage at its Starbase site in Texas. The company lit up all 33 of Super Heavy's Raptor engines while the booster remained anchored to the pad — and everything apparently went well.
"Full duration and full thrust 33-engine static fire with Super Heavy V3," SpaceX wrote in a Thursday post on X that shared two videos of the 14-second-long test. (One video is about a minute long, but it seems to be a slow-motion version of the trial.)
Screen capture from the Space.com video of the static fire test.
Because this is the first test of the V3 system, it appears they're going to take it very cautiously. I've read (not in the Space.com source) that they aren't going to attempt to recover either the SuperHeavy booster or the ship. The lengthy delay between flights 11 and 12 owes partly to a mishap involving the original Flight 12 Super Heavy, which was destroyed during a pressure test this past November. Because the launch time is similar to the previous suborbital Starship test flights, I expect that the trajectory will be similar, toward the east, over the Florida straits and Caribbean eventually splashing down near Australia. I will try to see this one by eye, crossing from SW to SE, like we saw flight 10. It will probably be lighter than that launch, IIRC.
Excellent
ReplyDeleteAnd now SpaceX has bought a huge piece of property in Vermillion Parish in Louisiana, conveniently located on the Gulf.
Looks like SpaceX may be building their very own high capacity starport.
Their Louisiana Purchase didn't make sense to me at first. The direction they're going to fly at launch doesn't seem as good as either Starbase or KSC because there's land on virtually all sides and it's farther to get over the Florida straits into a more conventional orbit than from Texas. Maybe that's irrelevant. This is Starship, not a plain old rocket. And it's not a real sharp left hand turn at Cuba.
DeleteI'm expecting complaints around here when they start flying Starships out of the KSC. "It's so loud!" There's a little of that now, just in the frequency of launches. Hard to understand, but a bunch of retired old Karens...
SiG, about the complaints, that's all certain humans want to do. It fulfills them somehow. The comments under that (excellent) video on X are all about "how dare you waste all that fuel just for a light show", and "how many humans does it take to match all that carbon pollution [sic] you just threw into the air?". I don't even listen to people anymore.
DeleteThis time the ground track for the launch is further south between the Yucatan and Cuba so you won't get s light show. There are some pictures over at the NSF Forums.
ReplyDeleteTook a while to the time to look over that thread - the more recent "Flight 12 UPDATES" and the "Flight 12 Discussion" - to see what it shows and the path looks like what I'm expecting. It wasn't high in the sky, and since I didn't even know if I'd see it I didn't bring a camera and try to get pictures. It still seems to be launching earlier than the previous flights and I'm more concerned about it being too light.
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