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I imagine that they will be their own first customer - putting Starlink satellites into orbit while they are gaining confidence in the reliability of the system
by Isamu 2y ago
I imagine that they will be their own first customer - putting Starlink satellites into orbit while they are gaining confidence in the reliability of the system for external customers.
They have to prove out the landing of the second stage, either with another catch or with landing gear, which they need for the lunar lander anyway.
- ericcumbee 2y agoI think that has always been the plan. the V2 starlink sats were designed to fly on Starship. When Starship wasn't coming along as planned they shoe horned the guts of the V2 on to a smaller sat that became the V2 Mini.
- norman784 2y agoIf Im not mistaken, they already delivered a payload in one of the previous flights, because they cut the transmission for a while and didn’t show the payload bay like one previous flight.
- oceanplexian 2y agoI’m not sure they are, if only because of the altitude. They only took Starship up to 200km, Starlink are nearly double that so while they do have thrusters that’s quite the distance. Starship is not really in a true orbit, I forget the exact terminology but the trajectory is designed to re-enter regardless of what happens with the the flight.
- ViewTrick1002 2y agoIt is in an suborbital trajectory but with enough energy to be equivalent to reaching orbit. Think of it as instead of thrusting perpendicular to gravity for the most optimal energy usage Starship instead points its nose up gaining more altitude but now lacks the speed to miss earth as it comes down.
- m4rtink 2y agoThey actually made use of this this flight again - eq. they still did not perform a deorbit burn this flight & let the trajectory to pull them down to the atmosphere.