Unbelievable! Watched with my 4 year old, he was full of questions about why the ocean was turning to nighttime, what satellites are, about going to another planet, about the earth being so blue and if we “ever even knew that before”.
This is the same age when I started watching Star Trek (original series). To say it had a profound impact on my interest in science and ethics is an understatement. English wasn't even my first language, but I think I picked up a lot of the themes, and my interest in science, tech and ethical philosophy continues to this day. I actually wrote this bit about introducing children to Star Trek (answer is a bit dated now): https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/6719/what-is-the-r...
Dated indeed, as nobody is interested in Star Trek anymore since they've actively ruined the IP.
Heck, the person spearheading star Trek vision has gone on public records essentially saying he never liked star Trek and that's why he's gonna make it more like star wars....
Take a blanket, drive in an area with minimal light pollution, lay on the ground and watch the sky with your kid(s).
I did that with my grandma as a kid and to this day I don't think I've done anything more relaxing and interesting, it's like watching a fire or waves, it never gets old
So awesome, I hope to have kids one day precisely for this reason! One of my fondest memories is my dad quenching my curiosity (with a drawing, to boot!) of how satellite dishes work when I was 6 or 7.
My kids learning to ride a bike - the moment you release your hand for the first time and they just go and go. When my son learned checkers, and then when he beat me the first time. When my daughter told her first original joke at a family dinner and everyone died laughing.
The moments truly never stop. Every single day they amaze and surprise you, fill you with so much love and joy and appreciation.
One time Bill Gates was asked what gave him joy and without missing a beat he said his children. Nothing is greater, nothing gives you more meaning, nothing is more ultimate than the sacrifice and patience and wonder and fulfillment of having children.
Oh I will. My boy just turned 4, so he’s a little young for video games right now. Maybe 5 or 6? But we played spaceships in the park all evening. Looking forward to gaming age for sure!
Well that's part of what makes this interesting. Some part of it did go boom. Looked like a COPV or something exploded sometime after payload deployment
I can't help but think of one cray thing...This is absolutely amazing to watch. The fact that there are cameras at every stage showing exactly what is happening. Being able to see the curvature of earth all in hi-def. But the entire time I watch this I just keep thinking even with all this proof you still will not convince some people that the moon landings are real and that the earth is not flat. They will say these are just AI videos used to trick people from the truth.
It just amazes me that technologies have come so far that at one end we can really show that the earth is truthfully a sphere but also at the same time technology has come so far one can claim this is just another video created by AI and is not actually true.
Yea, I'm older and remember the shuttle days. It's the video all the way to the ground that amazes me every time (well at least when the orbiter is aligned properly and not turning into a meteor shower).
Only possible through SpaceX Starlink, but technical progress aside they also deserve kudos to be so open to share some of their video streams publicly and not cutting away from explosions or burning flaps.
Blue Origin didn't show with the first New Glenn launch their payload mechanism or reentry mishaps.
It was said somewhere that one of the previous ditches in the ocean. the booster remained a little too intact and floated into Mexican waters creating a navigational hazard. So the idea was also to make sure it broke up on splashdown.
So the starlink simulators its deploying right now are empty platters that will burn up in the atmosphere from what I understand. Next missions they’ll be real statlink sats. Are these different than regular sats? It sounds like they’re able to handle more bandwidth but I don’t know.
Starship will be deploying the next gen v3 satellites, which weigh about 2 tons each. A single Starship launch with 60 of these deploys more capacity than 20 launches of a Falcon 9.
The figures they've been talking of the ideal cost per launch of starship are even more insane. I'm sure some of it is hype farming on Twitter but if they get the cost to less then $1000/kg it would be incredible.
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.
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.
The nice thing about SpaceX’s rapid iteration philosophy (and having Starlink as its first “customer”) is that they can account for engine unreliability by building extra margin into early launches, fly with reduced payloads, collect data on failures, and improve the reliability over time.
A composite overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV) seems to have exploded on the upper stage during reentry. It did significant damage to the rear flap and it made some dents in the engines too.
Are the tiles on Starship going to need replacing after flight like the Shuttle? There isn’t a permanent material that can handle all the heat yet? Serious question, my space expertise is only from KSP.
The intention is to need minimal to no replacement between flights. Part of the purpose of these tests is to figure out how to do that.
The tiles themselves work fine, but how to best mount them? where do you need them? Can you make them thinner? do you need anything underneath? what kind of gap do you need between tiles? Those are the things they're hoping to understand in these tests.
The Shuttle tiles were technically reusable AFAIK. The issue was that they were very fragile and the Shuttle for the most part could not tolerate any heat getting through the tiles (being aluminum), so every flight needed to have a perfect heat shield. Starship is a bit better on that end, as stainless steel is a lot more capable of tolerating heat and I think the tiles are a bit less fragile. Still, would be ideal to figure out how to not drop any tiles.
Would note that Shuttle tiles were never mass manufactured. The Shuttle’s shape meant lots of unique tiles. And its lack of mass production meant each tile was basically an artisanal object.
SpaceX aims to reüse tiles over many flights. But even if some tiles need replacing after each launch, that doesn’t tank Starship per se.
> every flight needed to have a perfect heat shield.
Which is a little easier to do when your craft is shaped like a plane and not a simple cylinder. The loading and positioning were easier to model and then achieve in flight.
The shuttle also flew with repair kits and glue that could be used in a vacuum. The astronauts could perform an EVA and work to replace damaged tiles and there were published plans on how to do so. NASA unfortunately figured out very late that using the Canadarm to image the bottom of the shuttle immediately on achieving orbit was extremely necessary given the icing problems of the external tank.
Remains to be seen. That's what they want, but it's never been done before. (edit: clarity: they do NOT want to replace them after each flight.)
They're currently experimenting with things such as actively cooled tiles (which I presume were installed on this ship, since they were on the last two).
I personally think the likely best case is that they'll have to go over the ship and replace some here and there before launching again.
Even if they don't get to a no replacement....they still already have a massive improvement over Space Shuttle. The Space Shuttle basically every tile was unique, and and the pattern was different between the different orbiters. A good bit of the months of refurbishment of the Orbiter between flights was heat shield repairs. SpaceX has already shown from when they completely retiled one of the ships. they have cut down the time to replace a single tile down to minutes instead of the hours it took with the shuttle. The Tiles are also alot more standardized so they can be more mass produced than shuttle tiles.
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Just wonderful stuff. So excited for the future.
Deleted Comment
Heck, the person spearheading star Trek vision has gone on public records essentially saying he never liked star Trek and that's why he's gonna make it more like star wars....
I did that with my grandma as a kid and to this day I don't think I've done anything more relaxing and interesting, it's like watching a fire or waves, it never gets old
The moments truly never stop. Every single day they amaze and surprise you, fill you with so much love and joy and appreciation.
One time Bill Gates was asked what gave him joy and without missing a beat he said his children. Nothing is greater, nothing gives you more meaning, nothing is more ultimate than the sacrifice and patience and wonder and fulfillment of having children.
Thank me later.
“Let’s go to the moon” comes back at least once a week.
Sincerely hope to be able to take her, one day.
Dead Comment
It just amazes me that technologies have come so far that at one end we can really show that the earth is truthfully a sphere but also at the same time technology has come so far one can claim this is just another video created by AI and is not actually true.
Blue Origin didn't show with the first New Glenn launch their payload mechanism or reentry mishaps.
The booster ditch was super cool, hover then just cut the engines and let it drop.
The economics of Starlink basically require high cadence Starship launches with 50+ Starlink v3 satellites on each flight.
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.
-Elon
The tiles themselves work fine, but how to best mount them? where do you need them? Can you make them thinner? do you need anything underneath? what kind of gap do you need between tiles? Those are the things they're hoping to understand in these tests.
The Shuttle tiles were technically reusable AFAIK. The issue was that they were very fragile and the Shuttle for the most part could not tolerate any heat getting through the tiles (being aluminum), so every flight needed to have a perfect heat shield. Starship is a bit better on that end, as stainless steel is a lot more capable of tolerating heat and I think the tiles are a bit less fragile. Still, would be ideal to figure out how to not drop any tiles.
Would note that Shuttle tiles were never mass manufactured. The Shuttle’s shape meant lots of unique tiles. And its lack of mass production meant each tile was basically an artisanal object.
SpaceX aims to reüse tiles over many flights. But even if some tiles need replacing after each launch, that doesn’t tank Starship per se.
Which is a little easier to do when your craft is shaped like a plane and not a simple cylinder. The loading and positioning were easier to model and then achieve in flight.
The shuttle also flew with repair kits and glue that could be used in a vacuum. The astronauts could perform an EVA and work to replace damaged tiles and there were published plans on how to do so. NASA unfortunately figured out very late that using the Canadarm to image the bottom of the shuttle immediately on achieving orbit was extremely necessary given the icing problems of the external tank.
They're currently experimenting with things such as actively cooled tiles (which I presume were installed on this ship, since they were on the last two).
I personally think the likely best case is that they'll have to go over the ship and replace some here and there before launching again.
Starship's Tenth Flight Test - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45007907 - Aug 2025 (233 comments)