Exactly, they’ve reached feature parity with large expendable launch systems so they can piggyback paying customers with a high risk threshold (starlink) on flights they’d be doing anyways. Given their cadence this phase won’t last long, they’ll likely achieve at least one successful landing next flight.
They have also been eager to launch version 2.0 starlink satellites, but they don't fit in the falcon fairing. The first couple batches of those would be test articles as well, so I'd be surprised if the next starship launch doesn't a few on board.
They've been launching a version of the v2 sats that do fit in the Falcon 9 fairing and supposedly have all the functionality of the larger versions. The issue is that F9 can only carry ~24 of those at a time, which slows down the pace of expansion a lot.
Yes this would all be true, if it were true. It is likely to become true at IFT-4 but they are very demonstrably not quite where you say they are.
This was still a suborbital flight and they cannot do much of anything that is commercially practical on suborbital flights (like launch satellites, even if they raise their apogee). They appear to have not had good control authority in coast and reentry. They did not do a relight/deorbit burn test that is likely an obstacle to tackle before they can make orbital flights. I assume we'll get some confirmation about these things soon enough, but please, you can be optimistic without being hasty.
> This was still a suborbital flight and they cannot do much of anything that is commercially practical on suborbital flights
If they had flown a slightly steeper ascent and burned for a little longer (possibly a minute if not less), they would have ended in a stable orbit. Not doing that was intentional.
They do not need engine relight capability to reach orbit - plenty of orbital rockets exist that cannot relight their final stage.
Yes, but the point was that they can't launch starlinks or just about any commercially meaningful payload until they are reliably in orbit, and they can't reliably get into orbit until they demonstrate at least one relight, because they need to reliably re-enter the atmosphere for the reusability tests.
So they are at least one more launch away from launching starlinks.
> commercially meaningful payload until they are reliably in orbit,
Which then can do without a relight.
> and they can't reliably get into orbit until they demonstrate at least one re-light
And part of testing deorbit/landing capability includes testing that they can relight the engine.
So they could launch the next one with Starlinks (possibly test articles of those as well since no full-size V2 satellites have been laucnhed yet). Get it into orbit and include a deorbit burn/re-entry as part of the flight plan. If the latter part somehow still does not work out ... they still got Starlinks into orbit. And they now have more data to fix it on the next flight. They already have several vehicles lined up for static fires and flight tests.
They won’t put starship into orbit until they can test relight. They won’t risk, nor would they be allowed to risk putting it up there without a demonstrated ability to bring it back down in a controlled manner.
They can test relight, but my point was that they wouldn't do it with Starship in orbit, because if it doesn't work, then they have no idea where it's coming back down. But maybe that's not as much of a problem as I had assumed given what's stated in the FCC application.
> They do not need engine relight capability to reach orbit - plenty of orbital rockets exist that cannot relight their final stage
I’m sure they will have this thing plez dispensing cybetrucks all the way to mars in short order. But I’m also pretty sure that the FAA and whoever SpaceX buys their insurance from are gonna need pretty good assurance that they can control where that thing comes down. Expendable orbital stages are designed and engineered for safe end of life operations and uncontrolled reentery. Starship is not.
> They do not need engine relight capability to reach orbit - plenty of orbital rockets exist that cannot relight their final stage.
I don't think SpaceX is interested in having uncontrolled Starship re-entries. It's large enough that (even without a heat shield) debris will very likely make it down to surface.
