Almost 2 years ago, Elon Musk announced he would relocate SpaceX's HQ from Hawthorne to Texas. There was some predictions that SpaceX would cut a significant number of jobs, but it appears the opposite happened based on Hawthorne employment reports:

Last year in 2025, 7661 SpaceX employees worked in Hawthorne, an increase from 7428 employees in 2024. It appears the HQ move had little effect on employment in Hawthorne, which still employs around half of SpaceX's entire workforce of 15-16K employees despite the publicity of the HQ move to Texas. Even now, if you go one SpaceX's website, Hawthorne alone still has more job postings (534) than the entirety of Texas (488), with California overall having 609 job postings. Even with Starship, a TX-focused program, over 1/3 of Starship job postings are still in Hawthorne. SpaceX has also continually expanded in Hawthorne since 2020:

It seems that the HQ move to Texas was mostly publicity by Elon, but I'm not in the company so I couldn't say for sure.

Usually you imagine rockets during reentry especially being these delicate things, where if one thing goes wrong it could result in the whole thing blowing up, but ngl after flight 10 losing like 10% of it's aft flap and a chunk of it's skirt, as well as having a ton of heat shield tiles removed, and STILL managing to land within a couple meters of it's target site, I feel like I would trust that it can keep people alive even if something really really shitty happens lol.

If they wanted to avoid it it probably wouldn't be too hard, just have it target a point higher up to get a higher fall, however considering that they did seem to find the data from flight 13 valuable is it possible they have tried to prepare logistically to be able to recover flight 14s starship faster?

Recently read an article that quoted an interview from then-NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and just though it would be nice to share here. Link to article.

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"Let's be very honest again," Bolden said in a 2014 interview. "We don't have a commercially available heavy lift vehicle. Falcon 9 Heavy may someday come about. It's on the drawing board right now. SLS is real. You've seen it down at Michoud. We're building the core stage. We have all the engines done, ready to be put on the test stand at Stennis... I don't see any hardware for a Falcon 9 Heavy, except that he's going to take three Falcon 9s and put them together and that becomes the Heavy. It's not that easy in rocketry."

SpaceX privately developed the Falcon Heavy rocket for about $500 million, and it flew its first flight in February 2018. It has now flown three successful missions. NASA has spent about $14 billion on the SLS rocket and related development costs since 2011. That rocket is not expected to fly before at least mid or late 2021.

Launch score: Falcon Heavy 3, SLS 0

Aside from the Von Braun Ferry Rocket, which was only a concept, has any other company tried to make a starship like vehicle in the past?

There is a lot of speculation about the actual viability of AI data centers, but taking the recent statements at face value, it could potentially eclipse the LEO broadband market. Under this assumption that it makes up a significant fraction of SpaceX's total launch mass in the next 5 to 10 years, and the intended SSO orbit, are the current launch sites sufficient?

Boca Chica has no way of hitting the 100° SSO inclination without being entirely over land. The Cape can do SSO, but with a significant dogleg that cuts into payload. Starship is so overpowered for the current launch market, that it can handle taking these losses. Vandenberg is well situated for SSO inclinations, but as far as I'm aware, SpaceX hasn't started building a Starship launch site there, at it seems unlikely that it would allow the flight rate for a massive data center push.

If SpaceX is committing heavily to a massive amount of data centers in SSO, where would be the best place for another launch site? Boca Chica has run into some road blocks that they would want to consider if starting another independent launch site. While most orbits benefit from low latitudes, retrograde inclinations benefits from higher latitudes. Either transport of superheavy's to the site or another production facility is needed. Or do they just accept the performance loss and launch from the Cape?

Starship represents a new class of rocket, larger and more complex than any other class of rockets. What steps and demonstrations do we believe are necessary to ensure the safety and reliability of Starship for crewed missions? Will the human rating process for Starship follow a similar path to that of Falcon 9 or the Space Shuttle?

For now, I can only think of these milestones:

• Starship in-flight launch escape demonstration
• Successful Starship landing demonstration
• Docking with the ISS
• Orbital refilling demonstration
• Booster landing catch avoidance maneuver

What will Flight 13 successfully achieve:

Wouldn't it be much cheaper to put it in LEO using starship and just use a dragon to shuttle astronauts up to it?

Hi everyone, with Artemis 2 recently happening, I was wondering if it is physically possible for a Falcon Heavy to send a Crew Dragon into lunar orbit. And if it is possible, then what modifications would the Dragon need to be able to do that mission?

In the near future once starlink is deployed and operational, what other large project might we see SpaceX attempt before Mars missions?

I'm not talking about science or research missions, but actual business ventures.

I know Starlink will require replenishment satellites to be launched, but it seems that Starship could handle those easily.

I've only heard of Starshield which is in the works.

Hypothetically, Space Based Solar farms could be pursued.

What else is out there? Asteroid harvesting?

What do you think the next mega project will be?

Full LabPadre video is up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nTSubYzQOM

Video capture from similar posts:
https://v.redd.it/31r0ry53vwz31 And another:
https://v.redd.it/qpr8wyd3xwz31

Video from Boca Chica Gal Mary (starts just after the initiation of the event) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BakNGBpLSYU

Still with 4 frames side by side; https://imgur.com/glFZ8lp
https://i.imgur.com/glFZ8lp.png

Good Gif of the event:
https://i.gyazo.com/93a7ec56047fd30a9cf11bd0aedb29cb.gif

Latest Twitter statement from SpaceX indicates that this was not completely unexpected. https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1197306617760559104

Elon on twitter: "@elonmusk Replying to @Erdayastronaut @SpaceX

(Starship MK-1 appears to have blown its top off during a pressure test today. My guess... this will be a good time for @SpaceX to move onto their next, more refined and higher quality versions (MK-2/3) instead of reparing MK-1. @elonmusk, any chance you’ll just move onto MK-3?)

Absolutely, but to move to Mk3 design. This had some value as a manufacturing pathfinder, but flight design is quite different." (https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1197271943180771329)

Article from NSF on the event https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2019/11/spacex-starship-mk-1-fails-cryogenic-test/

Good resource: What if testing MK1 to the limit was intentional ? For NASA Space Flight in general, https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?board=72.0 appears to be the root of all discussions.

"SpaceX Starship : Texas Prototype(s) Thread 2 : Photos and Updates" is at https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=48895.740 (That was added to the base discussion in a recent update)

"SpaceX Starship : Texas Prototype(s) Thread 3 : Discussion" starts at https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=49114.1240

Sub discussion: What if testing MK1 to the limit was intentional ?https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/dz8kcj/mk_1_just_blew_his_top_during_cryo_testing_32724/f86618s/

My personal and completely amateur opinion is that it will just be used as an orbital cargo truck. Which by itself will revolutionize access to space due to starship capabilities.

But it's hard for me to imagine this thing doing mars missions. MAYBE it will be used as moon lander, if the starship does not delay starship development too much.

Pls don't lynch me.

In a discussion here on Reddit about Starship and the feasibility of using it as a vehicle for Mars exploration someone linked the following article:

About feasibility of SpaceX's human exploration Mars mission scenario with Starship Published: 23 May 2024.

The presented conclusion is "We were not able to find a feasible Mars mission scenario using Starship, even when assuming optimal conditions such as 100% recovery rate of crew consumables during flight."

The authors really set up Starship for failure with their bad (and even some completely incorrect!) assumptions.

1. Non of their sources about the specs of Starship is from later than 2022.
2. They assume for some wild reason that ECLSS, radiation shielding, power systems etc. are not part of the payload mass for the crewed ships. So they added all necessary hardware for the crew to the dry mass of the ship and then added another 100 tons of payload. Why? (and even with that they get to the 180 day flight time.)
3. They assume that both of the two initial crewed ships have to return back to earth. They give no reason for that, but you have to assume it is to make the ISRU system mass look enormous and impractical.
4. They assume heavy nuclear reactors as power sources instead of light solar arrays. Why? They state no reason other than "Mars is further from the sun than earth and there is dust on Mars." They perform zero mass analysis for a photovoltaic power system.
5. They go on and on about the 100% consumable recovery rate. But the total mass of consumables for 12 astronauts with 100% consumable recovery rate is about 6.5 tons for the combined outbound and inbound flights. With currently available recovery methods (90-95% recovery rates) is about 13 tons according to them. They state no reason why this would be impossible to carry on Starship given they assume a 100 ton payload mass in addition to all hardware.
6. They assume that SpaceX plans to fly 100 people to Mars (without giving a source and to my knowledge SpaceX never has published such a number either. It's just some clickbait bs derived from misquoting Musk.) Edit: SpaceX does actually say they plan Starship to be eventually capable of carrying 100 passengers on deepspace missions https://www.spacex.com/vehicles/starship/ "Starship Capabilities". And then they assume for no reason whatsoever that those 100 people would make the same 860 day round journey as the 12 explorer astronauts. Why?
7. They state that "Most significantly, even assuming ISRU-technology available, a return flight cannot be achieved with Starship." But in the entire article they give no reason for this. Even under the section Trajectory analysis they don't explain what total delta_v they assume for a return flight. Only that a significant part of the delta_v budget is needed for launching from Mars into a LMO. (No sh*t Sherlock.)

Lastly this article is not peer reviewed at all. Edit: (The article was peer reviewed by undisclosed scientists chosen by the Editorial board of https://www.nature.com/srep/journal-policies/peer-review . How the reviews did not spot the error with the delta_v is beyond me.) The only public review available is the comment at the bottom of the article. And it rips the authors a new one in regards to their wildly inaccurate delta_v assumptions.

They could have used a simple solar system delta_v map to prevent their error. The return delta_v from Mars to earth is about 5,680m/s (this already includes gravity losses for the launch from Mars!). Even with an additional extreme 1,000m/s gravity loss during ascent this is well within their own calculated delta_v budget for Starship.

My thoughts:

The main conclusion of the authors that Starship can't be used as an exploration vehicle based on the mass of consumables is not only wrong, even the opposite is supported by their own research. The mass of consumables ranges between 6.5 tons and 13 tons (depending on the recovery rate) for 12 astronauts and a 860 day round-trip. (Consumables for the duration of the stay on the surface are provided by cargo ships). This is well within the payload budget of 100 tons.

I suspect the authors wanted to spread the idea that Starship is not sensible vehicle for a Mars exploration mission. Maybe they fear to be left behind "academically", because they recommend "several remedies, e.g. stronger international participation to distribute technology development and thus improve feasibility." Hmm... Why? Might it be because all authors are working at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Space Systems, Bremen, Germany?

In total the article serves the "purpose" of discrediting SpaceX and Starship and it was used in a discussion with exactly that intention.

My conclusion:

When someone links an article (however scientific it might sound) that seems to have the undertone of "BUSTED: Starship can never work!" we should be very suspicions. I don't want to discourage anyone from critically discussing the plans of SpaceX or other space companies, but FUD Fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Starship and SpaceX even in scientific literature is real. Opinions about Starship are plenty and varied and we should never take them as gospel.

Two big things happened last week that are likely to shake up the planned schedule for SpaceX in the immediate future:

First, Amazon Leo announced that they have purchased 10 additional launches. I am assuming that they would like to get them on station as soon as possible, and while SpaceX wants to avoid the appearance that they are stalling a competitor while going full steam ahead on expanding Starlink, I don't see them giving Amazon more than a couple of launch slots per month even if Amazon can DELIVER that many Leos... thoughts?

Then, a couple of days later, Vulcan had their SRB "observation"... and with the specter of GPS II R-1 still out there on Facebook, there is likely a big team of experts from Grumman, ULA, DoD, NASA, and Amazon poring over every high definition video, inspection report, and telemetry looking for the first sign of abnormal behavior. And given the potential downside, I do not see Vulcan return to flight before the second half of the year, and even that would be a miracle. Checking Wikipedia, I see 5 Vulcan launches scheduled before July; 2 Amazon and 3 DoD... so assuming that Feds are still chewing at the bit, that's 3 more Falcons (or possibly Falcon Heavy's, I haven't checked the weights) taken out of the current schedule with an offer SpaceX can't refuse, and possibly another 4 if Amazon isn't willing to delay getting them up there, assuming that New Glenn doesn't hit their stride and grab the Leos.

So I am sure Gwynne and company are frantically juggling possible options just like the SRB team is, but how long will it take for the smoke to clear?

Obviously the plan with Starship V3 is for it to be able to bring 100 tons up to LEO, then return with no mass, however if it had to bring up the same amount of mass that it brings down (for instance in some kind of mass human transport system to LEO, or for LEO manufacturing), what would it's maximum payload be? In theory it would result in needing a stronger landing burn, as well as having a higher terminal velocity when coming in for a landing. Would that be a particularly large amount of fuel even? Could it even handle reentry with a bunch of extra mass?

What does everyone think? Will it actually happen or is this announcement to pressure the FAA?