Just two days away.
[Thursday-morning update]
Here‘s what’s riding on the test.
SPCX hit a new low today. Everyone who bought since the IPO is currently underwater. Hard to know where the bottom might be, but it might be near it, and time to get in.
— Rand Simberg (@Simberg_Space) July 15, 2026
[Friday-morning update]
Well, if it hadn’t scrubbed, it would have flown on the 57th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11. Now it has been rescheduled for the same anniversary of the landing, on Monday.
[Bumped]
Possibly the least ambitious flight for some time, repeating the objectives of the previous flight. But of course, they need to be fully confident in the various stages performance in achieving those objectives before aiming hundreds of tonnes of steel at their only currently operational pad!
Assuming all goes well, I wonder if they can attempt both booster RTLS and ship RTLS on the next flight – would likely require ship to remain on orbit for several hours whilst the booster is removed to a safe distance, assuming it succeeds.
There will be some significant differences from Flight 12 and two will occur very early in flight. Flight 13 is intended to pitch over sooner and more than Flight 12 did. This will reduce gravity losses on ascent at the expense of staying longer and going faster in thicker air which will significantly increase the maximum aerodynamic pressure load at Max Q. The plan is also to stay at full throttle through Max Q which will simply amplify the effects of the shallower ascent profile. Both of these changes are in furtherance of maximizing payload capacity. According to SpaceX’s Rules of Order a motion to increase payload capacity is always in order.
Deploying 20 actual V3 Starlink sats rather than mass simulators is also a significant change from Flight 12. There are a whole bunch of additional boxes to check on this flight compared to the previous one.
Good points all. The planned 33-engine boostback should make the flatter trajectory less painful as far as RTLS fuel requirements.
I suspect the decision to deploy real satellites stems from the original plan for this flight to go orbital – it might have had they been able to test a re-light on flight 12.
I would imagine that the first time they place a Ship into orbit they will have a series of experiments/tests to perform. So keeping it there while the booster is cleared form the pad shouldn’t be too hard.
I hope that Flight 14 sees the first launch and deployment of a full load of 60 Starlink V3 sats. Such a payload would mass modestly more than 100 tonnes and would simultaneously end both the “Starship can’t make orbit” and the “Starship can’t do 100 tonnes to orbit” wheezes from SpaceX detractors. I will readily confess to some anticipatory schadenfreude at the coming discomfiture of the invincibly foolish.
Some of the detractors are impervious to reason on the subject. I assume you are referring to the likes of “pilot error Boeing boy”, and “toxic Dragon” types.
Why, yes – yes I am.
Nice honorifics for both, by the way.
“discomfiture of the invincibly foolish.”
Along with the pugnaciously stupid and the aggressively ignorant.
Yes. All three of those are too often a package deal.
Aborted a very few seconds after ignition. Don’t know why and the next attempt date is TBD.
However I’ve observed (as I’m sure others have) an issue I think they will have to address in order to achieve high flight rates:
Once the water deluge is started they are unable to try for a second launch attempt because the rocket would have to wait around, fully fueled, while they refilled the water reservoir.
They are going to have to come up with a way to have more water available immediately for a second try if the first try is aborted but the issue is solved rapidly.
I believe that is in the works – mainly a matter of adding more water tankage.
Too bad Starship didn’t fly as scheduled, but a new attempt date appears to have been set for Monday the 20th. If the Flight 13 launch could not occur on the 57th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch perhaps it will still occur on the 57th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing.
I suspect long term, with multiple pads you’re looking at a reservoir…
The production launch pads will be within pipeline reach of the local water mains. Boca Chica will soon be relegated to development launches. Five pads each in Canaveral, Wallops, and Vandenburg could do 180 launches a day. Pretty soon a rational country would allow pads inland. I like Jackass Flats, if only for the name, plus entertainment value for Las Vegas. It’s either that, or humanity is likely stuck on Earth for good. As I pointed out in my 1991 novel “Fellow Traveler,” this is it.
There is an inland spaceport at Truth or Consequences, NM.
Not orbital.
I believe the deluge tank farm at Starbase is already hooked to the local water distribution system or at least is in the process of getting that way. Tankage will continue to be necessary because of the surge requirements of a launch and also to keep the water clean – something an open reservoir/pond would not do.
There will, for sure, be at least three Starship launch pads on the Space Coast – one at LC-39A and two at SLC-37. All are currently under construction. There is room for at least three more – one additional at LC-39A on the opposite side of the Falcon Heavy pad from the Starship pad currently nearing completion there and a similar pair flanking the legacy Saturn/Shuttle/SLS pad at LC-39B once SLS is retired.
Vandenberg would probably not accommodate five Starship pads until the Falcons are retired and their two sites can be rebuilt, but at least one Starship pad there is certainly possible fairly soon, I just don’t know if any of this is part of SpaceX’s plan. I suspect it is not.
Wallops is too small for even a single Starship Pad. Just the associated GSE would gobble up more real estate than exists on the entire island and there are already other users with facilities there, particularly Rocket Lab.
I still think the likeliest spot for a massive build-out of Starship production, launch and support facilities is Pecan Island, LA. Well within a decade I can easily see more operational pads there than are at Starbase and on the Space Coast combined.
First thing I watched with my new eyes. I said, “Urk!!” and then it didn’t blow up. There’s an idiot somewhere has long predicted if Starship exploded on the pad, more than a million people in greater Brownsville-Matamoros would be killed. Nothing could convince him 6500 metric tons of methane and liquid oxygen is not the same thing as a 6.5kiloton nuclear weapon. (And, of course, if you did happen to set off a tactical nuke at Boca Chica, people in Brownsville would be looking up, going, “WTF?!” The 18-kiloton nuke detonated over Hiroshima obliterated two square miles. That’s all.)
Invincible innumeracy seems to be standard issue on the Left.
I can’t imagine NASA turning around STS or Artemis with just a single engine swap in 4 days. The first problem would be finding a replacement engine.
The first problem will set setting up a committee of enquiry to decide whether an engine swap is necessary. After the committee returns its findings in a year or so they may decide to start looking for a new engine.
If a Shuttle was on the pad, the fastest they could do an engine swap was three or four days because they had to roll it back. The swaps were done in horizontal processing, and took about four hours to change an engine out. That probably wouldn’t be necessary for SLS because the engines aren’t tucked inside the back end of a Shuttle, but then they also probably don’t have the equipment and tooling at the pad to do an engine swap because they never did engine swaps there during the Shuttle era and it’s very unlikely that they’d thought they’d have a frequent need to do so with SLS.
Btw, these operations were my first experience with fentanyl. Now I see it in a *different* light…
So it’s good stuff?
I’d say so. Guy is cutting up my eyes with a sharp knife, and I’m going, “Oh, cool!” Better than nitrous, anyway.
Btw, I expect the first orbital flight of Starship to amount to abort-once-around. They have two pad-towers at Boca Chica, so Tower B will launch and catch Super Heavy, while Tower A will catch Ship. The towers are far enough apart that a crashing Ship won’t hurt anything (only a small amount of fuel left by then, anyway). Shio is less than half the weight of a Shuttle Orbiter and if breaks up over the US will come down as confetti, but for six engine power packs. The three RS-25s came down whole on Texas, but didn’t hit anything.
I’ve thought about this and wondered similarly – does it have the cross-range to abort once-around?
It seems unlikely that Tower A will be ready for a catch for a few months at least – they could get the chopsticks operational faster, but everything underneath is a construction site – probably down want to aim a giant blowtorch at that just yet.