Starship Flight Test #2 | Starship got to Space for 1st Time!!

YouTube - NASASpaceflight to watch live - they will be live all night (is actually live now at 11 PM CST on Friday night)

SpaceX will live stream it on X/Twitter when it's time for launch



7 months after the SpaceX's S24/B7 made history as the largest rocket to ever fly with the 1st integrated flight test, it's time to make history again with the 2nd Starship integrated test flight featuring Starship S25 and Super Heavy Booster B9

There are several significant changes from the 1st flight, but the flight pattern remains the same... launch from Boca Chica, Texas in a ESE direction over the Gulf.

If all goes even better than well... the booster will make a "soft" landing in the Gulf, testing its landing "hover" sequence for the 1st time for when it becomes time for the chopsticks to "catch" the booster as is currently planned to happen 1 day, after it has done its job and will be sunk

then the Starship will crash land in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Hawaii... and since SpaceX apparently has the data it wants from flip & burn... it will just belly flop in the ocean... no flip & burn planned

Main changes from 1st test:

1) the water deluge system... no more Raptor fire straight onto concrete... hopefully no more flying concrete from under the OLM (the below gif is from a test where it was only at a fraction of its power... it can shoot out more water faster than this)



2) fire suppression on the underside of the booster to help prevent what we saw in the 1st test as fire engulfed the engines (where fire wasn't supposed to be) which led to engine failures

***OF NOTE - B9 still has hydraulic thrust vector control system (TVC... basically what gimbles or moves the engines around to steer the rocket)... electric TVC will come in a later booster***

3) hot staging at the time of stage separation... basically the Starship engines ignite while the booster is still attached to get rid of it instead of the booster falling away 1st then Starship engine ignition... below is a photo of a Russian N1 rocket using hot staging



4) a more robust flight termination system (FTS) which should actually destroy the rocket if need be... which was 1 of the failures of the 1st test as the FTS did not immediately destroy the vehicle in the 1st test

***Friendly reminder... this is a TEST flight... fulfilling the flight profile is not the goal... the goal is getting further than the 1st test flight and getting more data to improve even more for the next flight

or... in the immortal words of Adam Savage of the "Mythbusters"...