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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. gibolt ◴[27 Aug 25 01:44 UTC] No.45034535{4}[source]▶
Not at odds at all. It doesn't matter how fast you can make them if each one costs $5-10 million. Much better to amortize that over 100+ flights and not waste the booster.

Once the tanker version is needed, a ship ship could go up 5+ times a day. The logistics of backfilling a pad with a new ship is much more involved