Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

A SpaceX chartered ship called Armada 86-03 has taken up position in the Flight 14 landing zone in the Pacific off Chile

5:34 Central - last trucks leaving tank farm area. They may have had a minor problem with the CH4 side. Pad is clearing. Weather good. They are patrolling the range offshore to make sure boats stay away.

5:44 Central - SpaceX just announced that they have pushed launch time back 30 minutes

6:57 AM Central - Go for propellant load

7:47 Central - T - 1 minute - No issues, propellant load complete

Launch looked great, one booster engine out during ascent, staging good.

Boostback lost a second engine. Landing burn appeared to be good. Soft booster landing in the Gulf.

Ship lost an Rvac engine. At first it appeared that they wouldn't attempt orbit because of the engine-out, but Elon told them to go anyway and they conducted the orbit-insertion burn and orbit insertion was good! The largest object ever put in orbit is up there! Not without drama though.

They are deploying the huge v.3 Starlinks, each one weighs 2 tons

All 26 of the big Starlinks are deployed

They just announced that they plan to deorbit it early in the Pacific contingency zone near Hawaii because of the iffy engine situation

Completed one orbit.

Successful deorbit burn about 2/3 way through the second orbit.

Successful reentry

Landing right on target near Hawaii, but S41 exploded when it toppled over...

View from one of the v.3 Starlinks looking back at S41. (No, S41 doesn't have Peyronie's disease, it's distortion caused by a fisheye lens.)

Photo showing booster B21 doing it's dawn landing burn over the Gulf near shore



Deploying one of the huge (more than 20 feet across and 2 tons in weight) Starlink v.3 satellites in orbit. These Starlinks are too big for Falcon 9 to carry and each one is ~10x the bandwidth of the v.2 mini's that the Falcons carry. Today's flight deployed 26 of the v.3's, which is the rough equivalent capacity of 260 of the older Starlinks! A major upgrade!



Plasma flow during orbital reentry





Rockets make a distinctive crackling sound on ascent. I'm told that it's shock waves produced by the rocket engines expelling exhaust at supersonic velocity. Mini-sonic booms. And you can actually see it here in a photo that Mauricio took as Flight 14 passed in front of the Sun. We are actually seeing sound!

---

(Sep 12, 2026 07:06 AM)Yazata Wrote: [ -> ]A great photo by Carlos Nunez of a big titanium (!) sculpture of Prometheus being constructed in an empty lot at Starbase by a crew of Frenchmen from Atelier Missor. Unknown where it will finally end up, but I hope that SpaceX can find a place of honor for it somewhere. Prometheus is kind of the spiritual personification of what SpaceX is trying to do. Aptly, Carlos' photo captures booster B22 (the Flight 15 booster) in the distance at the Massey's test site where it is undergoing its cryogenic proof tests.

https://www.ateliermissor.com/

Atelier Missor says,

"We once had a dream — of a beautiful future.
But somewhere along the way, we forgot it.
It’s time to dream again.
It’s time to build the future we dreamed of."

That captures what SpaceX is, human dreams and striving being given tangible, material form. It's why I find it so moving.

And fittingly, Atelier Missor raised their Prometheus statue last night, before the Flight 14 launch. It's a really good statue and I hope that a suitable place is found to display it.

Today Mauricio found a tile along Boca Chica beach that Ship 41 shed during ascent. He photographed it and then contacted SpaceX.



They told him to record where he found it and then bring it in.



And SpaceX's Dan Huot says, "Mega thanks to Mauricio, these were some experimental tiles so it's awesome for our heat shield team to get them back for study."

As Lars Blackmore says during the "Holy Grail of Rocketry" video, requirement number one for the tiles is that they remain attached during all the vibration and acoustic energy of launch. So it's definitely something that their engineers are paying attention to. Presumably the tiles have identifying numbers or markings. It's probably very helpful to know where on the vehicle this one detached from. And to know that the vehicle successfully reentered without a tile in that particular location.

And SpaceX, which initially (and probably inadvertantly) left Mauricio off the list of accredited media for the launch (they later added him to the list) rewarded him with gifts of stuff like mission patches and some collector's items flown on previous Starship flights.

Way to go, Mauricio!

(Sep 29, 2026 02:32 AM)Yazata Wrote: [ -> ]

Beautiful launch.

Atelier Missor says "We took a break from work to go have a mystical experience."

New photograph from SpaceX, from a camera on one of the new V.3 Starlinks, showing S41 in the distance deploying four more of the Starlinks. The blue surfaces that looks like cellphone screens are actually solar panels that unfold.

Ship 40 aboard Forte is passing Jamaica, on schedule to arrive at the Port of Brownsville on Wednesday morning.