And Starlink 27 flew a core on its 10th flight (B1051). And it launched, and landed. So well done SpaceX!

And Elon Musk was pretty lousy on SNL. Kind of like Wayne Gretzky was so many decades ago. (It was so bad, I still remember it). So he is in good company.

@geoffc Btw, Merlin seems for me like an US Soyuz alternative. Very cheap, very trustable. I am not sure if it is a good idea to leave the construction

@geoffc However, even if we consider that the 4 test flight failures were partially because the Raptors were not enough stable... I think an orbital SS flight needs at least a single, successful Super Heavy test flight. I can't see any trace that it would be even planned.

A Soyuz fan behind me says this: he thinks it is possible as Musk imagines, i.e. reusable superheavy boosts reusable starship cargo. But he believes it can not happen before 2030.

And orbital flight of the SN20 in 2021-07, that is wishful thinking

@peterh Soyu is both the name of the spacecraft and the booster. R-7 is a better name for the booster. Merlin is the name for an engine. Your sentence makes no sense.

@peterh They built BN1 as a pathfinder. Then tore it down. BN2 and BN3 parts are appearing and getting assembled. Is that any trace for you?

BN2 seems to be paused for some reason but lots of BN3 is being built.

@peterh What technologies does your friend think will cause the delay? The Raptor engine will continue being tested on SN's of various numbers until there is a BN to test on. AN orbital flight this year is very likely I would suggest.

What fundamental technology will take that long to develop? Landing first stages? F9 has now done it 83 times, this is just scaling it up, but if anyone has the data and algorithms to handle it, it is Spacex.

@geoffc I do not know. But there were 4 exploded rockets until StarShip went working first time. What do you expect, how many SuperHeavys will explode until also that will work well?

@peterh At the rate they can build them? Proobably 4-5 before the end of the year. :)

But issues on landing SN's was in the flip, after restarting the engines and transition horizontal to vertical. BN's will be vertical the whole time. So that entire problem (Which looks resolved in SN15) is not even an issue.

Honestly, I think that they have the basics of the Raptor and restarts under control now. Each Raptor they fly will give them more experience and mature the design. They are happy to revise on the fly. And the BN's are using two types of Raptors, so maybe there will be another learning curve with the non-gimbal/non-throttable/higher thrust Raptors, but those are technically the simpler design.

The gimballed/throttalable (inner 6) will be much the same as the three flying today, which is maturing nicely.

Catching the booster with the tower, seems insane to me. But so is a flying water tower. So I look forward to having my mind changed and being amazed.

The tower is going up VERY fast. The launch table looks ready to be installed pretty soon on top of the angled pipes. Once that happens, I think we will see a BN on the pad pretty soon. But they first need to finish their GSE tanks, which are moving along. 2 mounted, #3 looks ready to be installed. And the 12m outside caps look like they are starting to be ready as well.

I.e. They are working very very hard, and making very good progress on all the right things.

The GSE for Orbital will itself be a major project that is clearly making great progress. I expect a fair bit of debugging needed in that. But weeks not months. Fueling the upper stage through the booster stage is going to be interesting. In theory should be straightforward, but gonna be tricky I expect.

And BN1 clearly taught them somethin since they switched the LOX/CH4 tanks for BN2/3 and onwards. So they are making great progress. Nothing I see indicates anothe 9 years before a flight. Without evidence that is ulitmatly the claim of ignorance of what is happening in real life.

@geoffc There I see: BN1 dismantled, no more on the picture. BN2 nearly nothing, there is a BN2.1, also nearly nothing. BN3 is in an early stage, roughly like SN20.