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Starship's Tenth Flight Test

(www.spacex.com)
364 points metalman | 1 comments | 26 Aug 25 23:22 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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chasd00 ◴[27 Aug 25 00:38 UTC] No.45034091[source]▶
Just saw the splash down. I think this was 100% successful test.
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kersplody ◴[27 Aug 25 00:50 UTC] No.45034176[source]▶
Not quite, but it's a major milestone. Still quite a bit of work to go on the rapid reusability part (burnt flaps, oxidized body, missing tiles, tile waterproofing). Starship might actually deliver payload to orbit on flight 11.
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rlt ◴[27 Aug 25 01:01 UTC] No.45034247[source]▶
They mentioned in the stream they were intentionally stressing the ship on reentry.

But yes, “rapid reusability” is a ways off. I expect they’ll be spending weeks inspecting and repairing ship and booster before reflight for a few years, but they’ll drive it down over time.

TBD how “rapid” the reusability ends up being in the end.

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dotnet00 ◴[27 Aug 25 01:20 UTC] No.45034363{3}[source]▶
The push for rapid reusability seems somewhat at odds with the push for large scale production of ships.

It seems like if they can get boosters to rapid reuse (a much easier goal), and churn out ships at sufficient scale, they can afford to take time inspecting/refurbing each ship as part of a pipelined approach.

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1. paulhart ◴[27 Aug 25 01:29 UTC] No.45034419{4}[source]▶
Their scenario is that the ships are mostly going to be "fuel mules" to ferry propellant to the ship that is destined to go somewhere (i.e. Mars) - so if you want an armada to travel to another planet, you need a much larger fleet of supply vehicles to prepare your armada. Hence the need to mass produce them.