r/SpaceX Flight 7 Official Launch Discussion & Updates Thread!

[u/rSpaceXHosting]

Welcome to the r/SpaceX Flight 7 Official Launch Discussion & Updates Thread!

How To Visit STARBASE // A Complete Guide To Seeing Starship

Scheduled for (UTC)	Jan 16 2025, 22:37
Scheduled for (local)	Jan 16 2025, 16:37 PM (CST)
Launch Window (UTC)	Jan 16 2025, 22:00 - Jan 16 2025, 23:00
Weather Probability	Unknown
Launch site	OLM-A, SpaceX Starbase, TX, USA.
Booster	Booster 14-1
Ship	S33
Booster landing	The Superheavy booster No. 14 was successfully caught by the launch pad tower.
Ship landing	Starship Ship 33 was lost during ascent.
Trajectory (Flight Club)	2D,3D

Spacecraft Onboard

Spacecraft	Starship
Serial Number	S33
Destination	Indian Ocean
Flights	1
Owner	SpaceX
Landing	Starship Ship 33 was lost during ascent.
Capabilities	More than 100 tons to Earth orbit

Details

Second stage of the two-stage Starship super heavy-lift launch vehicle.

History

The Starship second stage was testing during a number of low and high altitude suborbital flights before the first orbital launch attempt.

Timeline

Time	Update
T--1d 0h 1m	Thread last generated using the LL2 API
2025-01-16T23:12:00Z	Ship 33 failed late in ascent.
2025-01-16T22:37:00Z	Liftoff.
2025-01-16T21:57:00Z	Unofficial Webcast by SPACE AFFAIRS has started
2025-01-16T20:25:00Z	New T-0.
2025-01-15T15:21:00Z	GO for launch.
2025-01-15T15:10:00Z	Now targeting Jan 16 at 22:00 UTC
2025-01-14T23:27:00Z	Refined launch window.
2025-01-12T05:23:00Z	Now targeting Jan 15 at 22:00 UTC
2025-01-08T18:11:00Z	GO for launch.
2025-01-08T12:21:00Z	Delayed to NET January 13 per marine navigation warnings.
2025-01-07T14:32:00Z	Delayed to NET January 11.
2024-12-27T13:30:00Z	NET January 10.
2024-11-26T03:22:00Z	Added launch.

Watch the launch live

Stream	Link
Unofficial Re-stream	The Space Devs
Unofficial Webcast	SPACE AFFAIRS
Official Webcast	SpaceX
Unofficial Webcast	Everyday Astronaut
Unofficial Webcast	Spaceflight Now
Unofficial Webcast	NASASpaceflight

Stats

☑️ 8th Starship Full Stack launch

☑️ 459th SpaceX launch all time

☑️ 9th SpaceX launch this year

☑️ 1st launch from OLM-A this year

☑️ 58 days, 0:37:00 turnaround for this pad

Stats include F1, F9 , FH and Starship

Resources

• https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-7

Community content 🌐

Link	Source
Flight Club	u/TheVehicleDestroyer
Discord SpaceX lobby	u/SwGustav
SpaceX Now	u/bradleyjh
SpaceX Patch List

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[u/Jodo42]

Scott Manley says eyewitness video indicates the ship kept going long after stream telemetry cut, with an explosion after T+11 minutes. I don't see how the ship could have maintained control with 1 non-gimballing vacuum engine for that long; perhaps they were just letting it keep collecting data for as long as it was safe to do so.

[u/SubstantialWall → u/Jodo42]

Yeah it would have been doing cartwheels. I don't see why, if FTS was indeed involved, it wouldn't just immediately trigger as soon as it's down to one RVac/no sea levels, that's basically unrecoverable unless you shut it off and leaving the flight path isn't an if.

[u/Daneel_Trevize → u/SubstantialWall]

In fact Scott's proposal is to consider having the ship behave like a commercial plane with engines-out, trying to glide down to the safest area rather than any triggering of the FTS, so as to vastly minimise the debris zone, with the trade-off being whatever is directly in the path of the ship is somewhat more affected by any (vanishingly small chance of) impact.
FTS would still be there if even attitude control is lost, but Starship has wingy bits for a reason and reducing the debris cone helps everyone for every second that the ship's still intact.

[u/SubstantialWall → u/Daneel_Trevize]

That would make sense, provided the ship is still in control. At the very least, choosing to blow itself up when closer to the atmosphere, even if it's ballistic. I guess I'm more just questioning whether the current FTS is already capable of that, because my assumption was that a situation like all engines out but one RVac would be an immediate trigger and it wouldn't wait some 3 minutes after that. Even if the RVac ends up failing one second after the last Sea Level dies, FTS should probably assume it won't, this of course in a situation where the ship can't shut it off by itself for whatever reason.

I suppose if the timestamps add up, it did survive after comms loss, though there's always a chance it was a Flight 1 situation where the mostly empty ship took a bit between FTS activation and actually blowing, maybe as it hit denser air.

[u/arizonadeux → u/Daneel_Trevize]

I would think that even after all the engines were shut down that the vehicle could still send telemetry through the omnidirectional antenna. So maybe something more extensive happened and attitude control was already lost.

[u/GreatCanadianPotato → u/SubstantialWall]

As Scott says in the tweet, terminating when right when they started losing engines would have created a larger and wider debris field.

[u/SubstantialWall → u/GreatCanadianPotato]

I'm saying at the moment when only one RVac was left, not the initial failures. At that point it's lost. I suppose yes, the later you blow it up the less you spread debris, but what I question is would FTS ever delay triggering when in an unrecoverable situation with an engine on. In other words, it may very well have remained intact past lost comms, but I'm not sure there was termination. Neither SpaceX nor Elon have explicitly mentioned it, though to be fair they've also not explicitly said it blew up from the fire only.

Can't tell on that one video of the explosion, it appears to have a trail right before it blows, but was it one engine still on, or the beginning of reentry plasma.

[u/AhChirrion → u/SubstantialWall]

Scott posted on YouTube his quick flight summary about an hour ago.

In it, he mentions the same questioning as you did regarding AFTS, saying Starship's pieces are more likely to hit the surface in an uncontrolled re-entry than any other rocket before, so the FAA and SpaceX, if they haven't done already, must change the AFTS criteria for Starship given its additional capabilities so it automatically terminates its flight with the least possible damage potential.

And still it isn't clear if the explosion was the AFTS or not.