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BREAKING: Starship Flight 15 could launch as early as November 8, with SpaceX aiming to catch both Super Heavy and Starship for the first time
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It appears SpaceX are adapting the pre-assembly skids to the GSE bunker for Pad 1 reconstruction.
Most of the pump farm was pre-built on large frames; these allow whole sections to be finished quicker in more quality-controlled areas for cleaner work and less contamination from dust, sand, and dirt.
For Pad 2, all this equipment was brought in and installed separately.
Pad 1 appears to be slightly different; as we can see in Sanchez, the large LOX and CH4 valve skids (Orange Arrows) are being pre-installed onto two large frames (Green Arrows)
This, plus the associated valve equipment on the ground floor likely means they can now be installed as complete units driven in on SPMT's (Yellow Arrows).
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Here is the next-gen Tesla Roadster development video from the unveil event that they shared exclusively with us.
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In other news, after roughly two months of assembly, the 420-ton bridge crane has been jacked up to the top of the Gigabay.
It’s one of eight bridge cranes that will be installed in the structure. The two larger 420-ton cranes will transfer vehicles between transport and work stands and handle breakover for horizontal transport, while the other six will be used for stacking operations.
12 hour time lapse 🎥: @LabPadre
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Yesterday's bridge crane lift, start to finish. It took not far short of 13 hours for the strand jacks to pull this beast to the top of Gigabay!
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Video of the “jellyfish” spotted during today’s Falcon 9 launch 🚀
The glowing “jellyfish” appears when a rocket lifts off right after sunset or shortly before sunrise. On the ground it’s still dark, but the Sun is already lighting up the upper atmosphere. It catches the expanding exhaust plume high above, turning it into a bright, ethereal cloud with trailing tentacles — a stunning twilight spectacle that can be visible for hundreds of miles.
During the pre-dawn CRS-35 launch on October 13, the Falcon 9’s plume lit up across the East Coast, creating one of the most striking space jellyfish displays in recent memory as it headed toward the International Space Station.
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The most important Starship at Starbase right now isn't on the launchpad. It's already flown.
Ship 40 has become the first Starship to return to its launch site, giving SpaceX something unprecedented: a flown heatshield, Raptors, and avionics to inspect firsthand.
Telemetry tells engineers what happened. Physical inspection helps reveal why.
That distinction matters enormously for rapid reusability and, ultimately, Mars.
The road to making humanity multiplanetary runs straight through solving atmospheric reentry.
Ship 40 came home. Now the real learning begins.
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The first Starship to return to its launch site, Ship 40's journey took it across air, space, and sea. Now that it is vertical alongside three other Starships in a Megabay at Starbase, it will provide first-of-its-kind data on a flown Starship heatshield, Raptor engines, avionics, and more.
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Starship 40’s return to base
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Elon says Flight 15 will try to catch both the booster and the ship.
There is only one active pad, so both catches would happen at the same tower. Booster 22 gets caught first and placed back on the orbital launch mount. Then, nearly an hour later, Ship 42 drops in right above it.
Its landing engines fire downward, blasting Booster 22’s hot-staging ring for the second time. The first time was during hot staging at liftoff.
Can you imagine that?
Elon just dropped a lot of interesting stuff in Tesla Owners Silicon Valley’s X Takeover.
Starship first:
Flight 14’s engine issue was just a small software bug. The heat shield held up well.Flight 15 is aiming for 4 to 6 weeks from now. The plan is to catch both Booster and Ship. If that works, it will be the first time an orbital-class rocket has been fully recovered. Then comes Flight 16. Elon hopes they can actually fly reused hardware.
On Terafab, Elon was very blunt. They are still learning how to make chips. Start with normal equipment, learn the whole process, then build custom machines and push output way higher.
He also explained why SpaceX bought Cursor. They need more training data, great people, and an enterprise sales team that can actually sell AI products.
And his definition of real AI was simple: most robot demos are fake. Give a robot something it has never seen before. If it can still handle it, that is real AI.
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The SHT-SAF (Starship Horizontal Transport - Ship Aft Frame) was moved to Sanchez and has now been attached to Ship 40 after its voyage across the ocean. It looks like a breakover test to get the ship vertical again could be the plan.
The only question I have is how they will attach and lift the forward section of the ships.
As we have seen with boosters where they can attach slings using a grid fin replacement device, the ship has landing hardpoints in a fixed orientation. So, I am wondering if they will use the same type of device bolted to the lift/landing pins (the green device in the render).
The forward section slings according to Grok would only see roughly 40-45% of the total dry mass weight at horizontal and 0 at vertical unless they use them to load it onto the Ship Transport Stand.
Earths reflection on one of the StarLink satellites is amazing. These are all first. Thank you for sharing @SpaceX
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Starship’s PEZ dispenser, likely the largest and most space-efficient satellite deployment system ever flown.
Each Starlink V3 is estimated to weigh around 2 tonnes. It deployed 26 in about 30 minutes, and future Starships could carry up to 60.
If any company wants to build a constellation that can compete with Starlink, its satellites should be designed around a deployment system like this from day one.
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A brand new road to join Milky Way with Massey Way is also imminent - Estimated completion by mid December 🛣️
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Neutron is Rocket Lab’s reusable medium-lift rocket designed to launch large payloads into space.
It uses nine Archimedes engines on its first stage and one vacuum engine on its second, burning methane and oxygen.
It can carry up to 13,000 kg to low Earth orbit.
