BFR Developments

[Yazata]

There's a chance that 38 won't survive reentry.

Sets of 4 tiles have been intentionally left off multiple places on the ship to help determine how well it can tolerate lost tiles in various locations. Some of the locations have various tile backing materials like kaowool and a SpaceX proprietary ablative. (These have proven reasonably effective on earlier flights, to save the ship at least, maybe not for reusability.) Other missing tile locations are just bare steel.

I guess that this last V.2 prototype ship before they move on to the new and improved V.3 (hopefully) more operational ships, was considered expendable enough for a little possibly destructive testing. Whatever happens, it should give SpaceX needed data.

(Photo by Starship Gazer)

I counted 76 missing tiles in this photo, and I'm sure there are more.

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[Yazata]

SpaceX says Flight 11 on track for launch at 6:15 PM Central (7:15 PM Eastern, 4:15 Pacific).

https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1977792094124331017

Pad almost clear. They blocked the road by plopping a ship transport stand on the road. It's a huge thing, takes up both lanes. Two helicopters are doing security flights.

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https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/jGUw41G4Jf0

[Yazata]

Go for propellant load.

New t - 0 time 6:23 PM

t - 6 minutes - boards are all green

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Good launch! All 33 raptors running

Good stage sep

Good booster landing burn

Good ship ascent burn

Good orbit insertion

Good payload deploy

Good in-space relight demo

Survived reentry - despite missing tiles

Good landing burn

They nailed all test objectives - successful flight!

[Yazata]

(SpaceX drone photograph of yesterday's flight)

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(Tracking camera photo by the extraordinary Andrew McCarthy)

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(Photo from a remote camera by Andrew McCarthy)

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(SpaceX onboard photo showing light from open cargo bay door on night side of Earth)

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(SpaceX onboard photo showing test of using flaps to control precise landing location during reentry.)

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Landing in the Indian Ocean northwest of Australia (SpaceX photo)

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Little SpaceX video introducing the Bakery in Florida. This facility employs some of the old NASA tile guys from the Shuttle days and it has already manufactured more heat shield tiles than were manufactured during the whole Shuttle program. They produce about 1,000 tiles/day and are looking to scale to 7,000 tiles/day.

https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1977876939508691351

[Yazata]

Comparison of ships at landing for Flights 10 and 11. Both have the orange and white tile discoloration, but far less yesterday on Flight 11. It isn't totally unexpected, given all the intentionally missing tiles and the new "crunch wrap" tile gap filler.

SpaceX photos, comparison by Frontera Espacial.

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[Yazata]

Flight 11 in space - peaceful

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Flight 11 during reentry - less peaceful

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(All SpaceX photos)

[Yazata]

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/-Yu3jA-fT1c

[Yazata]

They have started demolishing the old Pad 1.

The 'chopsticks' rocket catching arms are getting a lot of attention. The new arms will be shorter (less mass, move quicker and be more controllable) but it still isn't clear if the existing arms will be removed and replaced, or cut shorter in place.

Hungry excavators were having a feeding frenzy tearing down the protective berm protecting the Pad 1 tank farm from rocket blast.

And they pulled out the large heavy-duty LOX cryo pumps. They have been made redundant by the bank of new pumps at Pad 2. It's believed that the Pad 2 pumps will end up serving both pads. The Pad 1 pumps are still perfectly good pumps though, so it's speculated that they will be donated to the new Starship pads being built at Cape Canaveral.

(Photos by Travis Sorensen)

A complete pump, minus its housing. Motor on top, impellers below.

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Collected pump motors on pallets for shipping out:

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[Yazata]

The Pad 2 launch mount and flame trench, nearing completion. They plan to rebuild Pad 1 to this design. Another pad just like this is currently under construction at Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, while two more are planned at SLC 37 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. For a total of five Starship launch pads. (There might be even more in the future at Cape Canaveral and maybe Vandenberg as well.) Given that Starship's lunar and interplanetary ambitions depend on orbital refueling, the Starship launch cadence is going to be very high in a few years. Today a Starship launch is a special event, in the future they will happen every few days.

(Photo by Mauricio of RGV Aerial Photography)

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[C C]

https://www.scivillage.com/thread-6544-p...l#pid77684

The original reason for doing without a flame trench never made sense, anyway. Since it wouldn't be the powerful 1st-stage booster blasting off from Mars. And one glaring lack of testing the Starship spacecraft so far is having it land on and lift-off from a dusty, rocky terrain similar to the Martian landscape. How they'll acquire permission for that in some desert might itself be a challenge. Also difficult to imagine that there won't be unexpected problems and effects from the debris that could require significant redesign.

https://spaceexplored.com/2025/07/28/the...ad-a-and-b

EXCERPT: In what was one of the most called-out items during the construction of Pad A, Pad B will see the community’s wish for a flame trench.

During the early days of Starbase’s construction, the theory for Pad A’s construction was that Starship wouldn’t have a launch pad on Mars, so it couldn’t have too nice of a pad on Earth. Pad A was just a simple stand that allowed some space for the Starship’s Raptor engines to fire beneath it.

That simple design of just a flat concrete pad beneath the launch mount came to an end after Starship’s first fully integrated launch. The after-launch effect on the ground left a massive crater, with large chunks of concrete being flung into the protected dunes and the Gulf of Mexico. Afterwards, SpaceX added a water-cooled steel plate beneath the pad for some added protection.

Pad B will feature a dedicated flame trench and diverter, similar to what has traditionally been seen at most launch pads. The work to excavate the ground needed for the trench has constituted the bulk of the work to build Pad B so far, given Starbase‘s difficult terrain.