The first downer of the day was the first launch, when ULA's Vulcan LV-01 was scrubbed for today's launch attempt some time before 10:00 AM. (I was going with "disappointment of the day" but some old comic bit about "downer of the day" in a corner of my mind hijacked it. Maybe it was The Daily Downer?) In reality, their trajectory is toward the NE which means it's typically just a bright dot in the sky and those aren't really interesting to watch.
The second downer was when the Starship mission waved off landing the booster on pad 2 and stuck it in the Gulf's bottom close to, but safely offshore of pad 2. Everything looked to be going so well that the team on NASASpaceflight's YouTube coverage were as surprised as everyone about why they waved off the booster.
That said, the rest of the first hour of Flight 15 was fun to watch as the Starlinks were deployed with the ship transiting from nighttime over southernmost Africa, the Indian Ocean and through sunrise into morning as it flew over the Pacific.
The booster stage of SpaceX's Starship drops away from Ship 42 2:30 after
liftoff on test flight 15 on Nov. 13, 2026. The label on the ship saying S42
(S=Ship) and the reference to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Don't
Panic) is clearly readable. (Image credit: SpaceX)
(FWIW, I noticed within the last week that CW at The Daily Timewaster had a closeup of that ship number and "Don't Panic" sign posted.)
As of now, expecting this to be the full duration flight of 22 hrs. 32 min.s, says they'll be landing around 4:26 PM EST tomorrow. I'll be trying to keep track of it and watch.
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