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https://x.com/starshipgazer/status/1...275232758?s=61

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https://x.com/NASASpaceflight/status...94077106204821

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Super heavy booster 15-2 performed a static fire test today. It is now expected to roll back to megabay 1 for engine inspections and final pre-launch preparations for upcoming Starship test flight 11.

This was the final static fire test of a Version 2 Booster.

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​​​​​​​https://x.com/vickicocks15/status/19...147089097?s=61
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"For Flight 11, Starship will fly on a suborbital trajectory similar to the flight profile the ship has flown on all of its missions to date. The next flight could happen in October and will prepare SpaceX for the debut of an upgraded Starship/Super Heavy rocket next year.......

"Next year, we step up to another version of both ship and booster, called V3 (Version 3)," Gerstenmaier said in response to a question from Ars. "It also has a new Raptor engine underneath, with more performance than the previous ones. So we'll fly V3 (suborbital) first, and then if that's successful, then we'll probably go orbital after that with the next V3."

That would mean an orbital flight no sooner than Flight 13. This matches a recent comment by Musk, who said SpaceX will likely attempt to catch and recover Starship back at Starbase somewhere around Flight 13 to 15, depending on the outcomes of the next couple of test flights.

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Gerstenmaier also briefly mentioned the results of experiments with Starship's Super Heavy booster on the most recent test flight.

On this flight, the booster splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico just off the Texas coastline after propelling Starship toward space. SpaceX used the flight to put the booster through higher stresses as it came back to Earth, guiding the rocket to a water landing in the Gulf instead of returning it to the launch pad for a catch by the tower's mechanical arms.

"What we were doing there is we're looking at the angle of attack and looking at how well the booster could fly itself to understand how much ability we had to get it back to the tower in the future," Gerstenmaier said.

SpaceX engineers noticed the booster's performance on descent in flight doesn't match predictions from computer models or wind tunnel tests. In ground experiments, the booster encounters unstable buffeting as it slows below the speed of sound.

Based on those results, "[we] should not be able to do what we do with our maneuver coming back with a booster, but we've been able to essentially show through flight that we have more stability than either CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) or the wind tunnels show that we have," Gerstenmaier said.

"So, the big question to the research community is, why are we seeing these differences?" he asked. "We had an inkling that it would be there, but we weren't 100 percent sure, and we were able to do that extremely well."

Gerstenmaier suggested that's a question best posed to universities and government labs. Companies like SpaceX innovate fast, but once they find a workable solution, they move on to something else.

"I get what I call a minimum viable solution," Gerstenmaier said. "I don't really understand why it works, but somehow it works, so we're going to use it, we're going to monetize it, we're going to make it work. You have the chance to help me understand why it works... And you may find out, hey, there's another approach that actually lets it work even better."


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https://x.com/starshipgazer/status/1...181002990?s=61

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