SpaceX Starship’s Eleventh Flight Liftoff , Good Booster Soft Landing

The eleventh flight test of Starship is preparing to launch as soon as Monday, October 13. The launch window will open at 6:23 p.m. CT. It launched.

Goals of Starship Flight 11:
** Good** Test new Super Heavy landing burn configuration
** Good** — Gather data for next-gen booster dynamics
** Good** — Stress-test Starship heatshield with missing tiles
**Good** — Deploy 8 Starlink simulators on suborbital trajectory [Door open and smooth deployments]
**Good** — Attempt in-space Raptor engine relight (about 37-38 minutes into the flight)
**Good** — Practice banking maneuvers and subsonic guidance for future RTLS

They have removed a lot of key tiles with only bare metal below. This could cause loss of vehicle, but they want to understand the limit when tiles are lost.

As is the case with all developmental testing, the schedule is dynamic and likely to change, so be sure to check in here and stay tuned to our X account for updates.

There are new grid fins for Starship V3.

There will be new V3 raptor engines.

They are setting up to mass produce tiles for 10 Starships per month.

The upcoming flight will build on the successful demonstrations from Starship’s tenth flight test with flight experiments gathering data for the next generation Super Heavy booster, stress-testing Starship’s heatshield, and demonstrating maneuvers that will mimic the upper stage’s final approach for a future return to launch site.

The booster on this flight test previously flew on Flight 8 and will launch with 24 flight-proven Raptor engines. Its primary test objective will be demonstrating a unique landing burn engine configuration planned to be used on the next generation Super Heavy. It will attempt this while on a trajectory to an offshore landing point in the Gulf of America and will not return to the launch site for catch.

Super Heavy will ignite 13 engines at the start of the landing burn and then transition to a new configuration with five engines running for the divert phase. Previously done with three engines, the planned baseline for V3 Super Heavy will use five engines during the section of the burn responsible for fine-tuning the booster’s path, adding additional redundancy for spontaneous engine shutdowns. The booster will then transition to its three center engines for the end of the landing burn, entering a full hover while still above the ocean surface, followed by shutdown and dropping into the Gulf of America. The primary goal on the flight test is to measure the real-world vehicle dynamics as engines shut down while transitioning between the different phases.