SpaceX Starship successfully launched into Space

[elanshin]

Starship's 3rd test flight launch just happened and it successfully flew into space and is now the largest object ever inserted into space (by a large margin). Clean launch, clean hotstage separation, booster did a clean burnback for re-entry and maneuvered in the atmosphere. It did fail to relight it's engines to do a soft landing so it hit the ocean hard.

Starship itself managed to do a full length burn into space and deliberately stopped just short of orbital velocity and did a bunch of tests. Some really cool live video of it as it started re-entry as well as it starting to glow. I'd say this is the first time ever watching live a vehicle glow on re-entry. Likely destroyed during reentry but all in all this was a highly successful mission. We'll likely get more information and data as the SpaceX team processes the data.

I'd say this is a major milestone for future in space.

Grabbed a couple of screenshots from Everyday Astraunaut's re-stream (could rewind back and regrab things on YouTube).

 

[jb747]

I was glued to the TV for this. What an amazing flight. For the booster, getting as far as the landing burn was astounding. You have to remember that for everyone else, the booster is done at staging, so the entire flight after that is something that only SpaceX have even attempted. The Falcons failed initially, and they’re now so reliable that it’s taken for granted that they’ll return. At this rate of progress, they’ll be landing after 4 or 5.

And for the Starship itself, the going up bit seemed perfect, just got to work on the going down. Again, nobody else has even attempted a controlled re-entry of such a large object. Now we just need the heavy hand of bureaucracy to stop slowing them down.

 

[offshore171]

Fantastic stuff.

 

[moa999]

Was a great show, particularly having 4K broadcast back to earth.

Probably going to be a few more before they try the chopsticks. Need to demonstrate some soft sea landings first.

Will be interesting to see whether they try loading some cargo (ie StarLink sats) on the next attempt to properly test the pez dispenser, after all looked like a pretty smooth launch to orbit.

 

[elanshin]

Wow!

IFT-4 today and spaceX has returned and landed the booster with a soft splashdown.

Starship also survived re-entry albeit a bit damaged (stream did not drop the whole way), flipped and landing burn into a soft splashdown too.

 

[moa999]

Absolutely amazing results with that flap copping some serious heat burn and damage.. but it kept on working (reportedly powered by a Tesla motor unit).

Pictures not quite as good as the last one which was rotating badly.. but this one stayed under control before fragments of the flap coated and then broke the camera lens.

 

[offshore171]

Another stunning milestone overnight, with both the booster making a controlled landing, and the second stage "starship" making a successful re-entry from orbital speeds.

 

[elanshin]

With IFT-5 SpaceX has wildly succeeded in their mission and it is insanely impressive to see the mechazilla catch the booster as well as the starship itself land precisely on point in the Indian ocean.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1845507539053826155

 

[moa999]

Watched it live last night. Absolutely amazing.

Will drastically reduce the cost of large loads to space. Bring on Mars.

 

[DejaBrew]

This was supremely impressive!! Say what you might about Musk, you can't deny that what his company has managed to achieve has been phenomenal.