LC 34: Ship 40 Towed Home From the Indian Ocean

MaxWelcome back to Landing the Moon.

BlakeGood to be back.

MaxYou look rested. Almost too rested for a week like this one.

BlakeI've been reading recovery logs all week. Not rested.

MaxFair. So we gotta talk about SpaceX towing a busted Starship across the Indian Ocean for over three weeks.

BlakeTwenty-four days, actually, ending at Christmas Island, according to spacedaily.com.

MaxExactly, and I've got questions about why that hull was worth chasing.

BlakeHmm. I've got questions about the receipt.

MaxSkepticism duly noted.

BlakeIt's my whole personality.

MaxThen there's Flight 13, clean 33 engine liftoff, gorgeous re-entry, and Booster 20 did something quieter that nobody's celebrating.

BlakeWe'll get into what actually happened on that booster.

MaxAnd Artemis III, new shape as of February. Isaacman telling spacepolicyonline.com he's extremely confident about 2027.

BlakeAgainst SLS and Orion's history, that's a claim I wanna sit with.

MaxAnd Blue Origin just landed a real shot at that landing contract.

BlakeThat's worth watching closely.

MaxBlake's already got the skeptic voice on.

BlakeI only have one voice.

MaxNoted. We're also grading our own predictions from episode 31 later on.

BlakeAccountability hour, always fun.

MaxSalvage ops, split results, a crowded lunar landing contract, plenty to chew on.

BlakeStart with the ocean. Twenty-four days is a long tow for a rocket that already failed.

MaxIt really is. So what were they actually chasing out there? Okay, so picture this. A hundred and seventy feet of stainless steel just bobbing in the Indian Ocean for 24 days.

BlakeLike a lost buoy nobody claimed.

MaxA very expensive buoy. Ship 40 splashed down after Flight 13 on July 24th, and instead of doing what every other ship's done, tipping over, cracking apart, it just stayed upright, airtight.

BlakeWhich nobody planned for.

MaxNobody. SpaceX didn't even have a recovery plan drawn up.

BlakeSo who's paying for the boats?

MaxMusk confirmed on July 28th they'd try to bring it back. Then Spacecom reported on August 7th he said the recovery was, quote, "Not looking good."

BlakeThat's interesting. So the guy running the company didn't think it would work.

MaxAnd then, wait for it, 11 days later, Spacecom reported it got towed intact to calm water off Christmas Island, August 18th. First upper stage ever recovered whole after going to space. Wow.

BlakeWalk me through the actual logistics, though. Twenty-four days at sea. That's tugboats, fuel, a crew, probably a maritime contractor.

MaxRight. Ars Technica's piece from yesterday says SpaceX flew engineers out just to inspect it. This thing isn't getting reused. Saltwater wrecked the engines, the electronics, and it took more damage tipping over.

BlakeSo we spent three-plus weeks retrieving a rocket that's headed for scrap.

MaxA scrap rocket with a goldmine inside it, Blake.

BlakeGoldmine or very photogenic paperweight? Which Artemis decision does inspecting a corroded hull actually change?

MaxOkay, hold on.

BlakeI'm serious. Does this move a single lunar milestone?

MaxWell, not yet, but the telemetry's the real story. Space.com and CNN both reported the ship kept transmitting data and imagery over Starlink for more than 100 hours while it was just drifting out there.

BlakeA hundred hours of a dead ship phoning home.

MaxBasically. CNN had satellite images back on August 3rd of the whole fleet circling it, trying to figure out how to grab the thing.

BlakeSo we've got an engineering flex and zero programmatic movement. That's the tension I wanna sit in today.

MaxGoldmine or sideshow.

BlakeAnd if it's a sideshow, someone still wrote a check for a three-week ocean tow.

MaxBut here's what's wild. None of this would exist if the descent hadn't gone almost perfectly in the first place.

BlakeSo maybe we back up. What actually happened on flight 13 that made this ship worth chasing across an ocean?

MaxBuilding on that survival streak, flight 13 took three tries just to get off the pad.

BlakeThree?

MaxFirst attempt aborted July 16th, oxidizer turbo pump trouble on four separate engines, then a weather scrub on the 23rd.

BlakeSo the 33 for 33 Raptor light everyone's bragging about was actually attempt number three.

MaxEvery single Raptor across booster and ship lit clean-

BlakeHmm

Max... on that third try. That's the number nobody printed because everyone was staring at Ship 40 bobbing in the ocean.

BlakeFine, but I want the booster number before anyone celebrates.

MaxGetting there. Booster 20, the first stage, only relit 10 of its 13 engines for the landing burn.

Blake10 of 13, and it splashed down how?

MaxHarder than planned. Almost nobody covered it because Ship 40 ate the whole news cycle.

BlakeA booster losing three engines on approach and hitting the water hard isn't a minutia. That's an anomaly.

MaxAgreed, and it matters because that's the exact vehicle SpaceX wants catching on the launch tower arm someday, not swimming.

BlakeRight. The whole reuse pitch depends on that restart being reliable every time.

MaxMeanwhile, on the ship, all six upper stage engines survived re-entry intact.

BlakeAnd the landing burn sequence?

MaxDown-select. Three engines light first. It drops to two, then finalizes on one for touchdown. You shed engines as the thrust need drops, so you're not fighting excess power right before you hit.

BlakeSo the ship nailed its sequence-

MaxYeah

Blake... and the booster came up three engines short.

MaxThat's Flight 13, honestly. Two very different report cards from the same launch.

BlakeAnd one of them barely made the news.

MaxWhich, if the salvaged hull really is the data goldmine I think it is-

BlakeWe should probably figure out what three weeks at sea actually did to it.

MaxSo while Ship 40 is getting toweled off in port, over in Flight 13's data folder, there's this wild detail. Six modified Starlink V3 satellites rode along with cameras just to film the heat shield falling through the atmosphere.

Speaker 3Wait, cameras watching tiles fall off in real time?

MaxYeah, and Spacecom's coverage of Flight 13 flagged it. Some tiles were even painted white on purpose to fake a missing tile pattern for the imagery.

Speaker 3Okay, that's clever, but now you've got a hull sitting in Christmas Island Port. What does it actually confirm that the video didn't?

MaxGround truth. You get to put your hands on the actual tile, compare it against what the camera saw from orbit, and calibrate the imaging model.

Speaker 3Fine. What else?

MaxThe tow itself, dude. Marine radar tracked the Normand Ranger hauling this thing at one to three knots for over three weeks.

Speaker 3Mm-hmm, and a hull that stays sealed through re-entry, a tip-over, and a slow ocean drag is telling you something about margin.

MaxExactly. No ground rig replicates that load history.

Speaker 3Except the loads coming through the nozzle end and the nose, parts the structure was never designed to be stressed from.

MaxSure, but-

Speaker 3And so how much of that tow data actually maps on the flight loads? Genuinely asking.

MaxSome fraction. I won't pretend it's clean.

Speaker 3And saltwater for 24 days contaminates the exact welds and tile bonds you want to inspect.

MaxYeah, that's the asterisk. Ars Technica's piece on the recovery even noted the ocean exposure corrodes the engines and the stainless structure they're trying to study.

Speaker 3Right. So which finding from this whole saga actually changes a design decision on HLS?

MaxStructurally, probably none of them move the needle immediately.

Speaker 3None?

MaxThey validate margin assumptions. That's not nothing. It's confidence, not a redesign.

Speaker 3Confidence doesn't get astronauts to the surface.

MaxIt keeps you from overengineering the next hull.

Speaker 3Or it's a fun exercise that costs a boat crew three weeks.

MaxThat's harsh.

Speaker 3I'm just asking what actually gates the moon landing, because it isn't whether Ship 40's welds held up in the Indian Ocean.

MaxNo, it's not.

Speaker 3So what is?

MaxSo let's tally the scoreboard. 24 days at sea, a tow to Christmas Island, engineers combing over the hull. Which Artemis milestone actually moved because of it? Uh, zero. None. Not one line on the HLS schedule shifted.

Speaker 3Say that again for the people in the back.

MaxNothing moved. The recovery's a structural story, not a lunar lander story.

Speaker 3Then let's talk about what does gate the lander, because it isn't hull salvage.

MaxOrbital propellant transfer, ship to ship, cryogenic-

Speaker 3BGHOST1mhm

Max... in free fall, never demonstrated, not once.

Speaker 3And Starship HLS needs that to work more than once. It needs that to work over and over.

MaxRight. You're not filling the tank with one delivery.

Speaker 3How many deliveries, actually?

MaxUniverse Today's reporting put it somewhere between Five and Fifteen tanker flights per lander. Depends how full HLS needs to be at the top of the stack.

Speaker 3Five to Fifteen. That's not a number. That's a range you'd use if you didn't know the number.

MaxFair.

Speaker 3GAO's own account of the program isn't kinder. Eight of Thirteen HLS milestones have slipped, six months to a year each.

MaxEight of Thirteen?

Speaker 38 of 13. Propellant transfer maturity is sitting right in that pile.

MaxSo while we've been talking hull metallurgy, the actual bottleneck hasn't even had a real test yet.

Speaker 3Which is my point about the Salvage. Impressive tow, wrong bottleneck.

MaxAnd get this, Musk is already talking about catching Ship 41 with the tower arms on Flight 14.

Speaker 3The Mechazilla catch.

MaxExcept to catch it, you have to reach orbit first, which nobody's done yet either.

Speaker 3So the plan is stick two unproven things together and call it Flight 14.

MaxWhen you say it like that.

Speaker 3I'm just repeating it back to you.

MaxLook, hardware in hand still matters. You learn things about a hull nobody's ever pulled out of the Ocean before.

Speaker 3I'm not arguing against learning. I'm asking what NASA actually rewrote because of it.

MaxAnd the honest answer is nothing. The lunar timeline didn't move a single day this week.

Speaker 3Which is exactly why NASA already rewrote Artemis III around that risk months ago, before Ship 40 ever splashed down.

MaxSo building on that GAO number, NASA actually rewrote Artemis III back in February.

Speaker 3Rewrote it how?

MaxIt's a docking demo now. Low Earth orbit Starship HLS meeting a Blue Moon MK2 test article. No boots on the surface.

Speaker 3Wait, Blue Origin's in this mission now?

MaxYeah. NASA opened the lander contract to competitors after the Starship delays. Yahoo News reported that decision. Blue Origin gets a real shot.

Speaker 3So the actual landing-

MaxSlides to Artemis IV, 2028. Universe Today covered the schedule change in detail.

Speaker 3So we just spent four segments on Ship 40, and the mission it's supposedly informing isn't even a landing anymore.

MaxRough timing, yeah.

Speaker 3Meanwhile, Jared Isaacman told Space Policy Online he's extremely confident about a 2027 Artemis III launch. SLS and Orion are stacking, wet dress rehearsals coming up.

MaxWalk me through the math on that. SLS has flown once since 2022. Orion's heat shield issue got waived, not fixed, and that confidence quote is about a rendezvous, not the landing people picture.

Speaker 3Right. The public still hears Artemis III and thinks boot prints.

MaxIt's a docking test with hardware that's never flown together as a stack.

Speaker 32027 is a target on a calendar. Margin is a different question.

MaxAnd Blue Moon's the wild card. If MK2 performs on that demo-

Speaker 3Wow

Max... Blue Origin's suddenly ahead of Starship on the landing contract itself, which means the next fight isn't Starship versus the calendar.

Speaker 3It's Starship versus Blue Origin.

MaxAnd that gets decided by whether Ship 41 even makes it off the pad. Quick gut check before new predictions. Episode 31, I said Booster 20 sticks the catch. Wrong.

BlakeAnd I called a scrub before liftoff. Got that one. Three attempts at turbo pump abort right there.

MaxFine, you get the point. New calls then.

BlakeShip 40's fate first. Towed to Starbase or scrapped near Australia?

MaxScrapped. October tops. That salt-damaged hull isn't worth dragging another mile.

BlakeI'll take the other side. Starbase by January. SpaceX wants that haul for teardown photos, not a dumpster.

MaxThat's a lot of shipping for a photo op.

BlakeWe'll see who's right.

MaxOkay, Ship 41. Marineradar reporting it's already being readied while Ship 40 was still getting towed.

BlakeSo static fire timing. When?

MaxSeptember. SpaceX doesn't sit still, and the pad's clear.

BlakeLate September, early October. History says add two weeks minimum.

MaxFine. Now the real one. Does Flight 14 actually attempt the tower catch this year?

BlakeNo. Orbital propellant transfer isn't demonstrated yet, and that's the gate.

MaxI say yes, December. Ugly, but they try it.

BlakeBook it. We're checking these next time.

MaxOkay, so if you take away one thing from this episode, Elon called Ship 40's recovery not looking good on August 7th, and 11 days later, it's sitting off Christmas Island.

BlakeAnd the question I kept coming back to, does dragging a scrapped hull across an ocean move a single Artemis milestone?

MaxNope. Zero.

BlakePropellant transfer is still the actual gate for HLS.

MaxBut hey, Booster 20 hitting the water hard on 10 engines instead of 13, that's not a footnote either.

BlakeBecause it matters.

MaxRight. All right. If this helped you follow what's going on with Artemis, send it to someone who's still confused about why we're going back to the Moon.

BlakeSubscribe wherever you're listening, and leave a review if you've got a minute.

MaxWe'll be back tracking Ship 41 static fire and whether Flight 14 actually tries that tower catch.

BlakeUntil then, thanks for sticking with us.

MaxSee you next time.