Starship's Tenth Flight Test

https://www.spacex.com/

by metalman • 11 months ago

364 170 11 months ago

spacex.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpmTivdrQiQ

metalman• 11 months ago

starship 10

erulabs2• 11 months ago

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”.

Just wonderful stuff. So excited for the future.

dvt• 11 months ago

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.

monero-xmr5• 11 months ago

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.

whatbutwhy• 11 months ago

qmr• 11 months ago

Go directly to steam and download Kerbal Space Program.

Thank me later.

erulabs2• 11 months ago

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!

hdgvhicv• 11 months ago

Warning. KSP breaks pretty much all sci fi programs when you wonder why the landing shuttle is flying towards the planet it’s going to.

hliyan2• 11 months ago

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...

ffsm8• 11 months ago

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....

madaxe_again• 11 months ago

I always ask mine what she’d like to do after school today.

“Let’s go to the moon” comes back at least once a week.

Sincerely hope to be able to take her, one day.

lm28469• 11 months ago

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

Pigalowda• 11 months ago

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.

jdminhbg• 11 months ago

Yes, they're bigger than the current Falcon 9 rockets can launch and can handle more bandwidth.

decimalenough4• 11 months ago

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.

xeromal• 11 months ago

Wow, that really puts it into perspective

Pedro_Ribeiro• 11 months ago

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.

geerlingguy• 11 months ago

IIRC the v3 sats can do like 1 Tbps of bandwidth thanks to a larger antenna system?

kersplody2• 11 months ago

Next flight should be a mass simulator of at least 100 tons to orbit. This flight was around ~10 tons to almost orbit.

The economics of Starlink basically require high cadence Starship launches with 50+ Starlink v3 satellites on each flight.

Teever• 11 months ago

Isn't starlink a revenue generating endeavor already?

chasd004• 11 months ago

Was cool to see the pez dispenser door start to open and all that vapor get sucked outside.

The booster ditch was super cool, hover then just cut the engines and let it drop.

HPsquared3• 11 months ago

Simulating a chopsticks landing, probably.

ericcumbee4• 11 months ago

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.

decimalenough4• 11 months ago

Everything nominal so far and payload deployment was successful for the first time. Re-entry starts at around T+0:45.

loeg2• 11 months ago

Which is in about 4 minutes.

pixl973• 11 months ago

And it splashed down successfully too.

JKCalhoun2• 11 months ago

Also here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpmTivdrQiQ

JKCalhoun2• 11 months ago

Some kind of failure in the lower engine area.

Figure it's going to burn up on entry?

EDIT: made it. I suppose it was meant to blow up on landing in the ocean? It would have been nice to examine the burned components — but perhaps they had not intended to retrieve it that far away anyway.

ls612• 11 months ago

Sounds like they removed a few too many heat tiles before launch.

pixl973• 11 months ago

It made it, but there was some toastyness on the bottom of the lower flaps. This said, it is less bad than we've seen on the other 2 landings.

mrandish• 11 months ago

They announced before the flight that they intentionally removed tiles from some areas around the lower flaps specifically to get data on what happens when tiles fail, such as how much burn occurs, how quickly and what type. It appears it was successful in showing varying amounts of burn through and damage in the areas that were intentionally left under-protected.

dotnet007• 11 months ago

The walls are 3mm thick steel, they're very likely to buckle and tear when it tips over, the residual methane vapor gets out and there are plenty of sources of heat to ignite it.

They don't claim to have any plans of recovering the wreckage, but they have previously fished up wreckage for study, so it's still possible they decide to do that.

asadotzler• 11 months ago

generally 4mm for the barrel sections, plus all the stringers that add rigidity to that 4mm.

m4rtink2• 11 months ago

Maybe just some part of the construction (possibly even just the strinngers or simply some nook or cranny that is fully eclosed) got presurized or was pressurized for the whole time by just air that could not escape.

That would be fine for the fligt so far - until it started to heat up from re-entry heating. The stainless steel would be still fine if heated to hundreads of degrees, but the expanding gass could maybe make the enclosed volume to rupture ?

Or a mix of methane and oxygen accumulating somwhere and exploding - but that seems less likely to me in a near vacuum environment during re-entry.

dotnet007• 11 months ago

IIRC they have pressure vessels in the lower fins with some of the gasses they need. Maybe one of those was damaged and burst. To me it looked like something blew out the bottom of one of the fins (maybe got too hot) and hit the skirt.

BurningFrog2• 11 months ago

It's not meant to perform well after landing in water, is how I would phrase it.

nuker• 11 months ago

Some kind of failure in the lower engine area.

The girl in NASASpaceflight video linked at top said maybe one of the three oxygen vents blew up due to some kind of buildup. Location makes sense.

jprd• 11 months ago

They did it. Damn.

haberman• 11 months ago

Landed on target in the Indian Ocean! Engines relit successfully and it touched down vertically (and then promptly exploded, which I guess was the plan :)

niteshpant• 11 months ago

I thought it exploded after it landed?

nsxwolf• 11 months ago

That was expected. It’s not meant to land on water.

pengaru• 11 months ago

I thought it exploded after it landed?

It landed on the sea, there was no barge afaik.

decimalenough4• 11 months ago

Well, yes, it landed in the ocean by design and toppled over because that's what happens when you land a 50m tall spaceship vertically in water.

Polizeiposaune• 11 months ago

That's the expected result for this test flight.

bombcar6• 11 months ago

There wa supposed to be an earth shattering kaboom. And there was.

chasd004• 11 months ago

Just saw the splash down. I think this was 100% successful test.

Geee• 11 months ago

Yes, although one booster engine failed at the start. Not a big deal. :)

rlt3• 11 months ago

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.

imglorp• 11 months ago

They said ahead of time they were shutting one booster engine down to test redundancy.

kersplody2• 11 months ago

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.

ericcumbee4• 11 months ago

It accomplished all the goals for this flight. That’s 100% successful

rlt3• 11 months ago

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.

oska4• 11 months ago

What's the need for tile waterproofing ?

jiggawatts• 11 months ago

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.

gpm• 11 months ago

The rear flap was damaged before that explosion, not sure by what.

HPsquared3• 11 months ago

It's interesting to see which parts are critical at each stage of flight. Clearly those parts weren't needed by that point!

chasd004• 11 months ago

Another copv failure? That’s what ripped open the starship during the ground test. Wtf I suspect that sub won’t be making copvs for spacex any longer.

timeninja2• 11 months ago

The hype had this thing already on the Moon by now.

verzali2• 11 months ago

*Mars

testing223212• 11 months ago

“At SpaceX We specialize in making the impossible merely late”

-Elon

decimalenough4• 11 months ago

Successful splashdown! Looks like they nailed all the objectives, and not a moment too soon.

mikewarot• 11 months ago

I'm amazed the thing landed right next to the Buoy, and was seen from the BuoyCam.

gibolt4• 11 months ago

This has happened many times so far. Control to reach a specific landing point is quite good (when things don't go boom first)

enkonta• 11 months ago

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

m4rtink2• 11 months ago

This is definotely on purpose & quite important for the upcomming starship catching for rapid reusability. :)

loeg2• 11 months ago

Dude, they nailed it. Amazing.

chpatrick• 11 months ago

Incredible.

K0balt• 11 months ago

Looks like they hit all the objectives!

Splashdown right next to the buoy!

Awesome to see it all go right.

pram• 11 months ago

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.

dotnet007• 11 months ago

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.

themafia• 11 months ago

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.

JumpCrisscross2• 11 months ago

Shuttle tiles were technically reusable

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.

floating-io2• 11 months ago

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.

ericcumbee4• 11 months ago

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.

apical_dendrite• 11 months ago

[flagged]

gibolt4• 11 months ago

Pretty sure the DOGE intent was good, but real efforts were mostly sidelined for the Trump pony show. Thus the 'fighting' words that followed when the BBB tax cut showed up.

vjvjvjvjghv• 11 months ago

DOGE never tried to do good work. It was a hit and run job to satisfy Musk's ego and get rid of stuff he personally doesn't like. It didn't save much money and didn't create any efficiency.

skywhopper• 11 months ago

You’ve been seriously misled or you’ve forgotten what happened. How did the illegal shutdown of USAID and the waste of billions of dollars of medicine, food, and health care for the poorest folks in the world come from good intentions? How did the irresponsible injection of inexperienced outsiders into the SSA come from good intentions? How is cancelling billions of ongoing federal contracts without cause and withholding payments for work already done an effect of good intent?

mrheosuper• 11 months ago

DOGE is the best example of Dunning-Kruger effect. A bunch of smart kids think they are better than everyone.

dang2• 11 months ago

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait and generally using HN for political/ideological battle? You may not owe $ThatPerson better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

14• 11 months ago

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.

pixl973• 11 months ago

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).

ralfd4• 11 months ago

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.

rkagerer• 11 months ago

Nice! I know they were intentionally stressing the flaps, but saw at least one was on fire again and deteriorating. How big an issue is this and how are they likely to solve it?

pavon• 11 months ago

The damage to the trailing edge of the aft flaps was caused by whatever took out the skirt. You can see they are torn up and sheet metal flapping long before they start to descend and heat up. It is possible they would have held up to the heat if that hadn't occurred. I didn't see any burning through along the flap hinge like in previous flights (although they only showed direct side-on video of two of the flaps).

dang2• 11 months ago

Recent and related:

Starship's Tenth Flight Test - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45007907 - Aug 2025 (233 comments)

rsyring3• 11 months ago

Anyone know the best way to get the SpaceX video from Twitter/X onto Apple TV?

My current method is to screen share from an iPad after starting the video on Safari. Trying to Airplay gave me audio but not video on the TV. But, the screen share has a pretty large letterbox around it, was hoping to get full screen video.

Dig1t• 11 months ago

Yeah Airplay is probably the best option, I had no problems playing it from my Macbook.

rsyring3• 11 months ago

Did you pull it up in Safari and then Airplay it?

That's what I did on the iPad and couldn't get the video. I can try the Mac next time. It's not my fault driver and assumed iPad would be the same.

np1810• 11 months ago

Anyone know the best way to get the SpaceX video from Twitter/X onto Apple TV?

I don't have Apple TV but for videos on X, I download it temporarily to a intermediate server then stream using VLC [1] it's a hassle but I get great watching experience on all platforms. For now, you can stream this on VLC: https://bin.hrzn.pics/0AdLye8

Though I generally watch Everyday Astronaut's [2] coverage on YouTube.

[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vlc-media-player/id650377962

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtUMt0gsqrs

rsyring3• 11 months ago

Thanks. I'd like to find something that works for the live stream too.

irrational2• 11 months ago

The flight test began with Super Heavy successfully lifting off by igniting all 33 Raptor engines and ascending over the Gulf of America.

It took me a moment to remember what the Gulf of America is. What stupidity.

bamboozled2• 11 months ago

Yup

stack_framer• 11 months ago

You're not stupid!

It's a body of water south of Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas.

It used to be called the Gulf of Mexico.

verzali2• 11 months ago

Still is everywhere else.

irrational2• 11 months ago

So, it is surrounded by the least educated states. I guess that explains the stupid name.

maxlin• 11 months ago

Exhilarating to see the V2 finally get its "fourth time's the charm" full success!

My top reason for wanting to visit US has flipped semi-recently to wanting to witness one of these launches. I'd hate for the Boca Chica site to become more secretive as it marches on towards production quality.

chasd004• 11 months ago

The crazy thing is there’s a public road about 200 yards from the pad that also goes right by the front door of the factory. Like you can drive right up to starbase, park, and walk around and see everything. Also, you can go past the pad to the beach and walk up on the dunes and be within 500 yards of the pad and whatever is sitting on it too. I visited a few years ago and was amazed at the scale and how everything is literally right on the side of the road. One thing I didn’t expect, it’s pretty noisy because it’s an ongoing construction site. You don’t think of that when you see the videos.

ralfd4• 11 months ago

The crazy thing is that hopefully in 2-3 years a Starship launch could be as "boring" as a dime-a-dozen Falcon 9 launch today.

bilvar• 11 months ago

Well done Elon! Very excited for the future!

sidcool• 11 months ago

Always an inspiring sight!

Starship's Tenth Flight Test

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