LC 37: Starship's First Real Orbital Shot

MaxOkay, Blake, so get this. No Indian Ocean this time.

BlakeWait, what?

MaxThey're aiming for actual orbit, real orbital insertion, not another arc into the water.

BlakeHuh.

MaxThat's it? Huh? Dude, this is Starship's first shot at doing the thing it was actually built to do.

BlakeI heard you. I'm just not popping champagne over a date on a filing.

MaxOh, here we go.

BlakeEvery one of these has slipped. I got the list.

MaxYou always have the list.

BlakeSomebody has to.

MaxA whole list? You're tracking every slipped Starship date in a spreadsheet somewhere, aren't you?

BlakeColor-coded even. Red for any day now, yellow for pending regulatory review, and there is a lot of red on that sheet.

MaxFair, but this one feels different. They're not doing another lob and a splashdown. They're actually trying to stay up there.

BlakeAnd I'll believe the target date when the countdown clock says so, not before.

MaxNoted for the record.

BlakeWelcome to Landing the Moon, by the way. I'm Blake.

MaxAnd I'm Max. And yes, we are already arguing. This is normal.

BlakeWe're going to get into whether this flight actually changes anything about the risk profile.

MaxAnd whether the whole tower catch attempt is ever actually happening or just permanently a few months out.

BlakeMy money's on permanently.

MaxWe'll see. Okay, so let's talk about what's actually sitting on the pad right now. So here's what's actually bolted together. Booster 21 and Ship 41, both stacked at Starbase right now.

BlakeStacked meaning fueled and ready, or stacked meaning sitting on top of each other looking pretty?

MaxSitting on top of each other. Test-ready. Waiting on a date.

BlakeWhich is September 15th.

MaxSeptember 15th. And get this, Booster 21 already did a 33-engine static fire.

BlakeAll 33 lit at once?

MaxThat's the number SpaceX put out, yeah.

BlakeOkay. That's a lot of engines to trust simultaneously.

MaxAnd this isn't some quiet checkbox exercise. 33 main engines lighting together at once is genuinely one of the harder things to pull off in this business, static fire or not.

BlakeSure, but a static fire is still a controlled test bolted to the pad. It doesn't tell you how those engines behave once you're actually flying through Max Q on ascent.

MaxRight. And the payload isn't a dummy mass this time. It's roughly 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites.

BlakeReal satellites. Real customers in ascent. SpaceX is its own customer here.

MaxExactly. They're deploying their own hardware into their own network. That's a very different bar than a boilerplate tank of water.

BlakeSure, but hold on. Where's this September 15th number actually coming from? Because SpaceX has floated dates before that evaporated.

MaxIt's not just a press release. There's an FCC filing behind it.

BlakeKind of filing?

MaxA special temporary authority filing signed August 21st. It explicitly covers what they call an orbital second stage.

BlakeSo the paperwork itself admits this is different from flight 13.

MaxThat's the language in it, yeah. And the window they're requesting runs from September 15th all the way to March 15th of next year.

BlakeSix months of runway.

MaxWhich tells you SpaceX is hedging. They want the license open in case the date slides.

BlakeSmart, honestly. But a filing with the FCC covers spectrum, not flight safety.

MaxRight. The FAA still has to clear the actual stack to fly.

BlakeSo we've got a satellite count, an engine count, a filing date, none of which is a launch license.

MaxNone of it. It's the strongest paper trail we've had for this vehicle, but it's still paper.

BlakeOkay, so say the FAA signs off and it flies on schedule. What does going for actual orbit change about the risk here versus everything we've watched before?

MaxOkay. Filing paperwork aside, what does an actual orbital insertion change about the risk profile here? Everything, Blake. A suborbital hop, you're up, you're down, splash in the Ocean 45 minutes later. Orbital means the Ship has to survive a full trip around the planet before it even thinks about re-entry.

BlakeSo more time for something to go wrong.

MaxWay more. Longer coast phase, more thermal cycling on that heat shield, and now you've got an actual deorbit burn instead of just falling back into the drink.

BlakeAnd nobody's flown that deorbit burn on this vehicle before.

MaxNope, not once.

BlakeGreat.

MaxBut here's the thing that actually matters for NASA. This would be the first time the whole Starship stack has actually completed a full orbit across 13 integrated launches. 13 tries, and it's never happened.

Blake13.

Max13.

BlakeThat's not a small number for a vehicle that's supposed to be landing astronauts.

MaxIt's not. And even with the FCC paperwork sitting there signed and dated, the FAA still has to actually clear the stack before this thing leaves the pad. That's a separate box, and it hasn't been checked yet.

BlakeDifferent agency, different clock.

MaxDifferent clock entirely.

BlakeAnd "hasn't been checked yet" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

MaxIt is, but that's the FAA's process. Not ours to rush.

BlakeFine. Now, walk me through why they're doing this with satellites riding shotgun instead of a dummy payload.

MaxBecause it's Starlink, and Starlink needs the lift. The constellation's sitting at roughly 13,000 satellites launched total, with something like 11,000 of those actually working right now.

Blake11,000 working out of 13,000 launched?

MaxYeah, that gap's not nothing, but it's a side conversation. Point is, this rocket isn't flying empty for a test. It's flying with real customers riding on the outcome.

BlakeSo if it fails, it's not just an engineering black eye, it's an operational one.

MaxBingo.

BlakeSo if it fails, it's not an abstract program milestone slipping, it's actual customer satellites that don't make it to where they're supposed to be.

MaxRight. And that's a very different kind of headline than test flight anomaly.

Speaker 3All right, so orbit's the real gate. Deorbit burn's never been tried. FAA hasn't signed off. That's a lot of firsts stacked on one flight.

MaxIt is. And speaking of things that keep sliding, remember when the tower catch was supposed to already be happening by now?

Speaker 3Dryly. Vaguely.

MaxOkay, so Musk actually addressed this directly. He posted that the catch attempt, the one people thought was happening in late August, is pushed to a few months out.

Speaker 3Vague o'clock. What's the actual holdup?

MaxHe named FAA approval specifically as a factor this time, not just we're not ready, an actual regulatory gate.

Speaker 3That's different from the usual excuse.

MaxRight. And get this, he also said reflight of a ship could happen by the end of this year or early next.

Speaker 3Wait. Reflight? As in reusing a ship that's already flown?

MaxThat's what he's implying, yeah.

Speaker 3End of this year or early next covers a five-month window depending which end you land on.

MaxSure, but for a program that's never landed a ship intact, even naming a window is new.

Speaker 3Or it's the same elastic timeline in a new outfit.

MaxOh, fair.

Speaker 3Though to be fair, naming FAA approval specifically is at least a more honest excuse than we're still testing.

MaxYeah. Blaming a regulator is a lot more credible than blaming vague internal readiness.

Speaker 3So for flight 14 specifically, no catch attempt at all.

MaxNone. No tower catch planned for this flight. Booster comes down however it comes down, ship does its thing, and that's it.

Speaker 3So the catch storyline just sits there, frozen.

MaxFor now, yeah.

Speaker 3Frozen storylines are the worst kind for a weekly show, by the way.

MaxTell me about it. We'll just have to wait it out with everyone else.

Speaker 3Okay. Then I wanna be honest with the audience about what we're actually watching for on the 15th.

MaxGo for it.

Speaker 3Because if it's not the catch, and we've already covered the hardware and the orbital risk, there's got to be a reason this specific flight has NASA's attention.

MaxOh, there absolutely is.

Speaker 3So if the catch isn't carrying this episode, what is? Because I don't think we're watching September 15th because SpaceX wants to prove a rocket can go around the planet once.

MaxYou're closer than you think.

Speaker 3There's a bigger reason NASA cares about this exact date, isn't there?

MaxThere is, and it's the whole reason we've been tracking this program since the early episodes.

Speaker 3Because this flight isn't just a stunt demo, it's the actual gate for Artemis III.

MaxWait. Walk that back for me. Gate how?

Speaker 3SpaceX's HLS contract, that's the human landing system deal with NASA, requires an uncrewed demo landing on the moon, and before that, a propellant transfer in orbit. An analysis of NASA's HLS contract lays it out plainly.

MaxShip-to-ship? So one Starship just hands gas to another Starship? In space.

Speaker 3Liquid methane and liquid oxygen both. Two vehicles, one transfer, zero gravity.

MaxThat's not exactly topping off at a gas station.

Speaker 3No, it's not. You're talking about keeping two cryogenic propellants stable and flowing between two spacecraft while both are in free fall hundreds of kilometers up. Nobody's demonstrated that at this scale, ever.

MaxSo it's not just plumbing, it's plumbing that has to work with zero gravity settling the fluid in the tank.

Speaker 3No. And here's the part that should worry you more than the transfer itself.

MaxGo on.

Speaker 3The Wikipedia page on the propellant transfer demo says HLS needs roughly ten tanker launches just to refuel one lander before it can even attempt the lunar surface.

Max10. 10 separate successful flights before the crew ever climbs in.

Speaker 3Right. Not one clean mission. 10.

MaxSo every one of those 10 depends on this rocket actually reaching orbit reliably.

Speaker 310 launches, 10 separate chances for something to slip, and none of them can happen until this vehicle proves it can even reach orbit reliably.

MaxAnd any one of those 10 slipping pushes the whole chain back, not just that one tanker.

Speaker 3Which brings us back to September 15th.

MaxBecause if Ship 41 can't get to orbit-

Speaker 3Then there's no transfer demo, no tankers, no refueling architecture. Nothing.

MaxThe whole HLS chain just stalls at step one.

Speaker 3This show has been circling this since we first covered the refueling runway.

MaxRight. Way back.

Speaker 3And it was always theoretical, a someday problem.

MaxAnd now it's a September problem.

Speaker 3Exactly. This flight is the hardware gate, not the catch, not the satellites, whether this thing can complete an orbit at all.

MaxBecause you can't demo transferring propellant between two ships if neither ship can stay up long enough to try.

Speaker 3That's the piece people keep skipping past.

MaxIt's such an easy detail to bury under orbital test flight, but it's the whole ballgame for the lunar lander piece.

Speaker 3It is. And NASA's own deadline pressure doesn't care how quietly that detail got buried. Artemis III still needs it soft.

MaxOkay. That's genuinely heavier than I expected going into this.

Speaker 3It should be. Artemis III doesn't move without this working.

MaxThat's a heavier sentence than I wanna sit with this early in the show.

Speaker 3Welcome to the Actual Stakes, Max. This is why we keep coming back to this program.

MaxAll right, but before we spiral into total doom here, let's check the actual track record on the payload side, because Starlink V3 isn't exactly untested cargo.

Speaker 3No, it isn't. And that record might tell us something the rocket's record can't.

MaxOkay, so before we get to the calendar math, Flight 14 isn't the first time they've tried to get satellites up there.

Speaker 3July 24th, Flight 13.

MaxRight. And get this, the booster came down hard in the Gulf, basically wrote itself off on splashdown.

Speaker 3Wrote itself off.

MaxRough landing, let's say. But Starship itself deployed every single satellite it was carrying, full payload, clean release.

Speaker 3So the dispenser mechanism already works.

Speaker 4Exactly. That's my point. The part everybody's nervous about, will the thing actually let go of the satellites in the right orbit, is already checked off.

Speaker 3Sure. Checked off for a suborbital arc that ends in the ocean 40 minutes later.

Speaker 4A working mechanism's a working mechanism, Blake.

Speaker 3Deploying hardware on a track you've flown before isn't the same test as deploying it after a burn that's actually inserting you into orbit. The reentry profile is different. The timing to the deploy window is different.

Speaker 4Fine. Fine, I'll give you that one.

Speaker 3I'm not trying to take away the win, by the way. A clean deploy is a clean deploy.

Speaker 4I'll take the compliment even if you took three lines to get there.

Speaker 3So the satellites themselves, what's actually going up this time?

Speaker 4Roughly 20 operational Starlink V3s again, same rough head count as Flight 13.

Speaker 3Same number, different mission entirely.

Speaker 4Right. And that's kind of wild when you sit with it. The payload is almost a non-story. It's the exact same job the ship already proved it can do.

Speaker 3Which means if this flight goes sideways, it's not going to be the satellites that killed it.

Speaker 4No way. It's gonna be the booster or the reentry or something upstream of deploy.

Speaker 3Which honestly makes tonight's watch party easier. We know exactly which parts of the flight to hold our breath for.

Speaker 4Agreed. Yeah, stage sep and orbital insertion. Everything after that is just satellites doing what satellites do.

Speaker 3That actually simplifies how we should watch this thing live.

Speaker 4Meaning?

Speaker 3Meaning once we see stage separation clean and the ship stable in orbit, the satellite drop is basically a formality at that point.

Speaker 4The hard part's already over by the time we get to the fun part.

Speaker 3So let's land this. What does a clean shot or another booster loss actually mean for the calendar NASA is working against?

Speaker 4So here's what's actually on the table. A clean insertion gets NASA a real data point toward propellant transfer. Another booster loss just adds a line to the list of things they have to explain away before Artemis III.

Speaker 3Binary outcomes, I love it and I hate it.

Speaker 4It's not binary in practice though. Even a clean orbit doesn't get them a transfer demo tomorrow.

Speaker 3Right. Right. That's still down the road.

Speaker 4But it's the difference between NASA saying the vehicle can reach orbit versus NASA saying we don't actually know yet.

Speaker 3And if it's another loss?

Speaker 4Then every schedule slide with Artemis III on it gets an asterisk again.

Speaker 3There's already like six asterisks on that slide.

Speaker 4Seven after September.

Speaker 3Ouch.

Speaker 4Somebody's gonna have to make a slide just to track the asterisks at this point. We might need a bigger font.

Speaker 3I'm volunteering to design it. I'll even color code it like your delay spreadsheet, red for still not scheduled.

Speaker 4I'm serious though. This isn't a side quest anymore. Whatever happens on this flight is the evidence NASA has to work with.

Speaker 3No spin, no press release language, just did it reach orbit or did it not?

Speaker 4Exactly. And I don't think either outcome resolves anything by itself. A win still leaves the transfer demo unscheduled. A loss just makes people ask louder questions about dates nobody's confirmed.

Speaker 3Okay, but you have to admit, a clean shot changes the conversation. Suddenly it's not can this thing fly, it's when's the tanker?

Speaker 4I'll admit that much. The tone shifts even if the calendar doesn't.

Speaker 3See, that's all I wanted, a little optimism.

Speaker 4I said tone, not timeline.

Speaker 3I'll take tone. Tones are start, and starts count for something around here.

Speaker 4Don't get used to it. I reserve the right to revoke the optimism next week.

Speaker 3Fine. Fine. I'll take it.

Speaker 4What I keep coming back to is this: nobody in this chain gets to just wait and see anymore. NASA needs a result out of this specific flight.

Speaker 3Not a vibe, a result.

Speaker 4Right. It's kind of wild that a single flight carries that much weight for a program this size. That's the program we've got though. Every flight either buys confidence or costs it. There's no neutral outcome anymore. Okay, so before we let you go, I think it's time. Predictions on the record.

Speaker 3Actual predictions, numbers and everything.

Speaker 4Numbers, dates, your reputation on the line, all of it.

Speaker 3All right. I've got mine ready.

Speaker 4Ooh, I cannot wait to hear this. All right, Blake, on the record, September 15th, clean orbit or another fireball?

Speaker 3I'll take the boring answer. Orbital insertion happens, the booster splashdown goes hard again.

Speaker 4Wait, you think they stick the hardest part and still botch the landing?

Speaker 3Insertion's software and timing. Recovery's the part they haven't proven even once. I'd bet on a gap between those two.

Speaker 4Okay, counter. I say the booster comes down soft in the Gulf, no catch attempt obviously, and the ship makes orbit, full clean sheet.

Speaker 3Optimist.

Speaker 4I contain multitudes. And second prediction, tower catch talk slips again before Thanksgiving. Somebody at SpaceX says early next year out loud within a month.

Speaker 3Put me down for that too. That one feels less like a bet and more like a certainty.

Speaker 4Fair.

Speaker 3We'll pull both of these up next episode word for word and see who's got egg on their face.

Speaker 4Loser buys the other a Starlink dish.

Speaker 3Deal.

Speaker 4I'm already picking out the model number.

Speaker 3Don't get ahead of yourself. September 15th hasn't happened yet.

Speaker 4All right. That's the show. If you know someone who still doesn't get why we're chasing the moon again-

Speaker 3Send them this one. It's a decent primer

Speaker 4... and hit subscribe so you don't miss whatever September 15th actually does to these two predictions.

Speaker 3Genuinely curious which of us is more wrong.

Speaker 4It's going to be you.

Speaker 3We'll see about that.

Speaker 4That's the whole show right there, neither of us backing down.

Speaker 3We'll see.