SpaceX’s Starship V3—still a work in progress—mostly successful on first flight

SpaceX has more to prove before flying Starship all the way to low-Earth orbit.

See full article...

 

[BrangdonJ]

There is almost nothing that could conceivably happen on or to earth that would make it LESS habitable than a planet like Mars. [...]

Thriving on Mars will be challenging, but we have some time to meet those challenges. It might take, say, 100 years. The idea is for Mars to become a going concern, so that it just continues on its own whatever happens to Earth. Meanwhile if the Earth situation changes rapidly — for example due to asteroid strike, pandemic, nuclear war, biowar, nanotech grey goo, or whatever future disaster, man-made or natural, we can barely imagine today — we may have very little time to adapt. And while any single event may not itself make us extinct, it may knock us far enough back that the next one does.

 

[compgeek89]

Thriving on Mars will be challenging, but we have some time to meet those challenges. It might take, say, 100 years. The idea is for Mars to become a going concern, so that it just continues on its own whatever happens to Earth. Meanwhile if the Earth situation changes rapidly — for example due to asteroid strike, pandemic, nuclear war, biowar, nanotech grey goo, or whatever future disaster, man-made or natural, we can barely imagine today — we may have very little time to adapt. And while any single event may not itself make us extinct, it may knock us far enough back that the next one does.

That is the point most people don't pay attention to. In the steady state, earth, no matter what we likely do to it (other than nuclear war), will be a better environment than Mars. But, short term (centuries) shocks to the system of earth can kill us off or set us back to cave dwelling nomads.

The most common types of those shocks (asteroids and comets and mega volcanos) are fairly common and the only real way to ensure civilization survives is having it in 2 places so humanity on earth can be supported and re seeded from the outside if some massive shock occurs.

These things aren't common, but there is evidence that it may have happened as recently as 10k years ago. That is a drop in the bucket in time.

 

[ZenBeam]

I got the impression that it was an early trial of a long-term capability. They may be planning ahead for when Starship is crewed, and when aborting to orbit for rescue by another Starship is an option. They may also be remembering when the Space Shuttle's tiles were hit by a chunk of ice, and they could not easily inspect the damage. They would rather not be in that situation again.

Maybe it was just too easy of an opportunity to pass up. Starlinks are maneuverable, have excellent communication access, they're already launching the same size and mass. The capability was just sitting there almost fully developed already. Adding a couple lights and cameras is cheap and easy. If anything unexpected came up on this or a future test flight, being able to take a quick peek could be invaluable.

Also, just using them publicly becomes a massive free advertisement for the capability. Some potential customer they don't even know about could see this, and think "That's exactly what we need!"

 

[cbreak]

Not like any of this matters, rocket launches are less than 10% of SpaceX's business apparently...

 

[compgeek89]

The issue with this narrative is that it implies added value for humans to prioritise survival of the species on another planet at the expense of people living here and now.

I don't think it does at all. earth will always (at least for as far as anyone can predict) be the best location for people to live.

Taking out fire insurance doesn't mean I want to torch my house...

I DO wish we would spend a lot more resources on mapping near earth asteroids and comets and developing more robust defenses against them in case we detect something on a collision course

 

[Henrik Mikael Kristensen]

Such comparisons are not entirely flattering. StarShip has been launched 12 times, and has not completely succeeded once, and looks set fair for a few more iterations yet. Saturn V - a similarly large rocket (albeit one with different goals - but pretty novel in its day) was far more successful. Why? NASA then had a firm belief in proper systems engineering, design analysis, etc, and pretty much nailed it. Also, Blue Origin did things the traditional, studied way and pretty much got it right first time. Elon Musk seems to think that you can dispense with systems engineering and design analysis - at least to a large degree - and iterate one's way to success. It's not really working out well for SpaceX...

Apollo was "successful" through brute force and money, but it would not have worked out as a long term solution without significant redesigns to Saturn. Saturn contained many brute force solutions that could never become economical with just minor redesigns.

It wasn't any more "systems engineering" than any other project that acted under a time limit, and had to compromise to get humans to the Moon.

They had simply gotten to a point, where the booster could be manufactured in a small volume and be just good enough for throwing humans to the Moon every few months.

As a long term solution, everything would have had to be redesigned. Those machines, despite their success, were super dangerous to fly, and there surely would have been incidents, had there been more flights.

As for Blue Origin, their solution is perfectly valid, but not built for volume. It's simply a continuation of old space.

The intent of Starship is to have a stand-by super heavy lift capability for the next 30-50 years on a fleet of ships that are based around a common chassis, like how you'd build any sensible truck.

Starship will fly 1000x more mass into space than Apollo ever did, simply because everything around Starship is designed for this purpose.

Imagine the foundational space hardware that will be up there by that time and what that hardware will do for what comes after.

Think long term.

 

[PsychoArs]

It'd be nice if Ars would step up moderation of completely useless comments on the SpaceX articles, the people who have nothing better to do than make comments which contribute nothing because Elon Bad are really tiresome.

If Epstein invented the cure for cancer, comments saying "too bad he was a kiddie-diddler" would never be tiresome or be useless.

People can be responsible for both good and bad things. But it's not straight math. You don't get points for actions and as long as your "good things" points outnumber your "bad things" points it's all okay. You carry the stain of the bad things forever, if they are of a certain magnitude or quantity. Elon Musk is not a rehabilitated individual. Reminders of his nature are inevitable and important whenever his good actions are discussed, to ensure they are not forgotten, ever.

If you are at no risk of forgetting his flaws, it is part of your burden in life to bear the stream of reminders for those who are.

 

[TimeToTilt]

Whatever is living on earth at that point will have had more time to evolve than from bacteria to human.

You would not recognise it.

I mean you aren't wrong in the technical sense, but only because the person you are responding to talked about the earth being enveloped.

The earth has (cosmic scale) very little time left of being inhabitable but complex life. We are closer to the end of complex life than we are the beginning of the dinosaurs. 150 million years maybe 500 at most before complex life can't exist here in any quantity.

I'm not sure that changes how relevant today's time frame is lol, but I think it's interesting because the planet is toast way before red giant phase.

 

[NopeNopeNope]

I threw up in my mouth, just a little bit, at the "USA" chant.
Makes me really want to root against them.

As a brit, I long for days past when we had a little of something approaching the national pride that existed in my youth. Europeans have been pummelled into hating their nations over the past decades, it's horrendously depressing.

Look back at one of those chants, and look at the people doing them - a multi-racial, multi-cultural group allied to a common cause. Being proud of your (western) nation is not some white supremacist shit, no matter what nonsense your 'progressive' teachers indoctrinated you with.

 

[Matte_gb]

The issues that have been described here will be resolved, and my own view is you always leanr more from what goes wrong than what goes right. So on that basis, a very good flight.

 

[eyesoars]

The issue with this narrative is that it implies added value for humans to prioritise survival of the species on another planet at the expense of people living here and now.

Just like chewing gum prioritizes gum at the expense of walking.

Mars is a fun long term project for science and exploration but it can’t happen until we resolve the very real social and economic challenges here on Earth.

So Columbus shouldn't have sailed to the new world (I could maybe agree with this) until the old world's social problems were resolved in full?

Wait, what?!

In other words, MechaHitler and its sugar daddy are currently detracting from space exploration as a goal.

Because making space launch an order of magnitude cheaper (or worse, three) severely impairs sending probes throughout the solar system.

For (presumably) being human, there seems here to be a severe failure to recognize the human condition.

 

[enoch2001]

I guess you could argue NASA paid for it, but by that logic NASA has never sent anyone to space, US citizens have since they pay taxes which fill NASA's pockets.

And by that logic, you could argue that SpaceX/Elon Musk did not send anything/one to space - the investors that fill SpaceX/Elon's pockets did. But yeah, let's not be pedantic.

 

[gewesp]

It's kind of silly to use the threat of climate change as an argument for settling other planets. No matter how bad climate change gets, the easiest planet to survive on is going to be this one. Antarctica is easier to settle than Mars. It has significantly more sunlight than Mars, and provides easy access to water and oxygen. And it's relatively warm, compared to Mars. If we can't survive on a climate-changed Earth, Mars is much harder.

The amount of stupidity some deranged individuals possess to downvote a comment which so obviously makes sense is mindboggling.

 

[Deranged]

That is the point most people don't pay attention to. In the steady state, earth, no matter what we likely do to it (other than nuclear war), will be a better environment than Mars. But, short term (centuries) shocks to the system of earth can kill us off or set us back to cave dwelling nomads.

The most common types of those shocks (asteroids and comets and mega volcanos) are fairly common and the only real way to ensure civilization survives is having it in 2 places so humanity on earth can be supported and re seeded from the outside if some massive shock occurs.

These things aren't common, but there is evidence that it may have happened as recently as 10k years ago. That is a drop in the bucket in time.

If we are set back to cave dwelling nomads, that STILL makes earth an infinitely more habitable planet than Mars.

 

[compgeek89]

If we are set back to cave dwelling nomads, that STILL makes earth an infinitely more habitable planet than Mars.

True. But without the knowledge to recover, we are looking at a 10k year recovery timeline. With the knowledge and bootstrapping, we are looking at rapid civilization recovery.

 

[VelvetRemedy]

So Columbus shouldn't have sailed to the new world (I could maybe agree with this) until the old world's social problems were resolved in full?

Wait, what?!

Yes, actually, considering the amount of hell he unleashed on the Americas over a multi-century period, largely because Europe had not figured its shit out on topics like slavery and imperial expansion.

 

[vanzandtj]

I think the flip manoeuvre was the issue. It seemed to flip sideways instead of up (relative to camera view) like the previous starship flights. The booster then falls away with engines partially relighting and subsequently shutting down. I’d say they must have been sucking gas at this point.

I agree - I expect the propellants were sloshing violently.

I would like to see someone build a transparent scale model with partly filled tanks and record what happens when it's subjected to that post-separation flip maneuver. LOX has a really low viscosity - 1/5 that of water at 90K but more like 1/2 that of water at 77K. They might use methanol or acetone with a little dye. Replicating the internal structure of the tanks would be important. We know about downcomers. Do they have slosh baffles? One point of hot-staging is to keep the propellants settled by keeping both stages under acceleration, so it shouldn't be necessary, for example, to perform the experiment aboard the "vomit comet". The video would be interesting.

I expect SpaceX will find a way to slow down the flip, and maybe wait longer for the propellants to settle before relighting most of those engines.

 

[vanzandtj]

I don't quite understand why this is important for flight decision making. As diagnostic data for confirming why a ship was lost, sure, yes, that's still quite useful. But if the Ship is going to be lost, it's not like there's some rescue plan that will save it for less than the cost of just manufacturing a new one, and the way that landings work, they aren't targeting the launch site until they've confirmed engine relight, so if it fails it will crash into the ... oh, hmm, I see. It's only the booster that reenters from the oceanic direction. The ship arrives at Boca Chica from the East, meaning that it fundamentally has to pass over a lot of populated land (even if it dodges major population centers).

So I guess if the inspection shows that Starship is missing enough heat tiles to have significant risk of failure during reentry, they are going to target open ocean to reduce the risk of it failing over land? It's not about reducing the risk of losing a Starship. It's about reducing the risk of a Starship failure scattering debris over land. I wonder what the decision threshold will be. Is a 1% chance of failure over land enough to dump a 99% survivable Starship in the ocean?

If they see damage, they might adjust their re-entry trajectory (shallower or steeper), or wait another orbit or two to reduce the necessary cross-range divert. They might adjust the Starship's attitude (shifting the damaged area a bit leeward) during the early part of re-entry (when temperatures are highest, but before there's significant drag/lift). If they have propellant to spare, they could use some to reduce their re-entry velocity. If nothing else, they could learn enough to improve the next version Starship.

 

[Steven N]

This launch was an achievement for the United States and its engineering prowess, that's simply a fact. I disagree with lots of governments, but I wish the best for the Chinese, Russian, or North Korean people, and cheer on Soyuz launches and China's manned spaceflight program as well. All of those wins in peaceful spaceflight are wins for humanity. I'm certainly not going to complain about Russians or Chinese celebrating their country at these events.

If you're so far gone with your disgust towards current policy that you're willing to root against 350 million people, I don't know what to say. I imagine you can differentiate between benign and malicious policy in other countries. So why is America singled out for such reflexive hatred? If you're so far gone with your disgust towards current policy that you're willing to root against 350 million people, I don't know what to say. Would you also get upset when people cheer on China's HSR by waving Chinese flags? Or do you recognize that's a human achievement that benefits everyone?

Better get used to it, because the way the ones that were chosen by the people in the USA to be their representatives are behaving, that acronym is well on its way to be associated with nothing but negativity.
That’s what you get when said representatives are making sure the world as a whole is economically, socially and environmentally (to name a few) becoming a worse place.

 

[VelvetRemedy]

Sooner or later the time comes to leave the cradle.

Ignoring the fact that lines like this and "BECAUSE WE CAN!!!" aren't exactly making a strong case for spaceflight as an economic or practical priority - what makes you think that "leaving the cradle" means "setting up colonies in dead hellish rocks" rather than "figuring out how to thrive in our own home in a sustainable manner that promotes the dignity of the human person and doesn't depend on constant expansion"? Maybe a mature humanity says "this is good, and this is enough" rather than a bunch of sci-fi-brained nonsense about frontiers.

 

[Shavano]

That is the point most people don't pay attention to. In the steady state, earth, no matter what we likely do to it (other than nuclear war), will be a better environment than Mars. But, short term (centuries) shocks to the system of earth can kill us off or set us back to cave dwelling nomads.

The most common types of those shocks (asteroids and comets and mega volcanos) are fairly common and the only real way to ensure civilization survives is having it in 2 places so humanity on earth can be supported and re seeded from the outside if some massive shock occurs.

These things aren't common, but there is evidence that it may have happened as recently as 10k years ago. That is a drop in the bucket in time.

Claiming asteroid impacts or volcanoes capable of wiping out human civilization are common is complete nonsense. The latter claim of a major extinction event "may have happened" 10k years ago is -- show your evidence.

If you're concerned about humans getting knocked back to the paleolithic, you're not considering the ways humanity could be made more resilient on Earth.

That doesn't mean I don't think space exploration is good. It's just somewhere between a mistake and a lie to say it's about long term survival of the species.

 

[Cloudgazer]

If we are set back to cave dwelling nomads, that STILL makes earth an infinitely more habitable planet than Mars.

Sure - that is unquestionably true. It's basically inconceivable that Earth could become less habitable than Mars at least for several hundred million years.

And that's a really good reason why the Moon should be the target for colonization, because the benefits of colonization cannot be 'a backup civilization' in that sense. Instead what we need are space based projects that can enrich life on earth, or that can reduce the environmental footprint of humans on earth while still allowing for improving living standards.

The science opportunities alone make the Moon interesting as a site of permanent habitation akin to say Antarctica. And unlike Antarctica the moon can be opened to commercial exploitation without risking damage to one of the last (mostly) pristine ecosystems we know of.

Mars was always a dumb idea. Elon seemingly was focused on it because it is cool. It's good to see SpaceX increasingly moving away from talking about it.

 

[danielravennest]

we know that the sun will one day expand and envelope the earth,

Not necessarily. Yes, the Sun will expand, but the Earth could be moved before that happens. Every asteroid that flies past Earth changes it's own and the Earth's orbit. Since the Earth is much more massive, it's orbit doesn't change much.

But we could intentionally send asteroids past Earth to add orbital energy, then reset the asteroid path with a flyby of one of the giant planets. Repeat lots of times and you can move Earth farther from the Sun so it can survive the Red Giant stage of the Sun.

 

[Barleyman]

Airliners have plenty of emergency landing and early flight abort modes and options. Starship has none: either both the ascent and landing are 100% successful, or it's a 100% fatality event.

Eh. F12 was not 100% success but came down in designated spot all the same. They've got engine out capacity and in general it's been shown to be remarkably resilient to combat damage.

It's the landing that has to be perfect or everyone on board would die, so presumably you'd have to have backup landing sites in Africa and Pacific to make it more resilient of "fail to reach orbit" style mishaps.

 

[nitpicker357]

I don't think it does at all. earth will always (at least for as far as anyone can predict) be the best location for people to live.

Taking out fire insurance doesn't mean I want to torch my house...

I DO wish we would spend a lot more resources on mapping near earth asteroids and comets and developing more robust defenses against them in case we detect something on a collision course

I actually respectfully disagree with your last sentence about increasing emphasis on impact defense. IMO, detection is improving quite well, with a US congressional mandate, and, for example, the whatchamacallit Vera Rubin Observatory / large synoptic survey telescope now online. We are starting to detect random rocks before they hit atmosphere. There's been no need to do anything about the quick detections, and no real capability, but the trend is good. Similarly, DART was a good first test for deflection. While I want ready deflectors and better data, they are coming. Fixing our domestic disaster should be prioritized. I'm very definitely a why-not-both-er, but deflection plans should probably be based on ... Starship. So hang a moment? It'll be fine, unless it isn't.

 

[YetAnotherBoris]

Ignoring the fact that lines like this and "BECAUSE WE CAN!!!" aren't exactly making a strong case for spaceflight as an economic or practical priority - what makes you think that "leaving the cradle" means "setting up colonies in dead hellish rocks" rather than "figuring out how to thrive in our own home in a sustainable manner that promotes the dignity of the human person and doesn't depend on constant expansion"? Maybe a mature humanity says "this is good, and this is enough" rather than a bunch of sci-fi-brained nonsense about frontiers.

You are arguing broadly against expansion and in favor of steady-state stagnation. Stagnation is not "thriving". Sustainability and dignity are important and valuable, but don't preclude exploration and expansion. A fundamental drive of the human condition is to seek and revel in novelty. That isn't "sci-fi brained nonsense": it's quintessentially human nonsense.

All that said, it is IMHO rather hilarious that off-world colonization is championed by some of the most dogmatic, absolutist, utterly toxic capitalists and libertarians.

An off-world colony is a money pit: it'll never produce a return on investment the way colonies on Earth used to do. And it would have to scrape by in such extremely harsh and unforgiving surroundings, that individual initiative and independence of action would largely have to fall by the wayside. It'll have to be an extremely hierarchical system, highly regimented, harshly disciplined, and run like a military in perpetual active-mission deployment. And life in such a colony would be pretty much like life in a submarine that never, ever surfaces.

So what the uber tech bro billionaires are effectively advocating for, is an essentially socialist project with a perpetual and irrevocable commitment to anti-capitalist, anti-libertarian principles and concepts of operation. Good stuff

 

[jbode]

Because we won't survive over any reasonable time as a species unless we get off the planet in quantity, and we cannot afford to lose momentum (as we already did once in the 20th). Of course it's fun too. But the important thing is not to die off as a species because we were too lazy, distracted or stupid to do hard things.

Yeh, several pages late. Too bad.

Unless there is a literal Earth-shattering kaboom, or we somehow engineer a plague with a 100% mortality rate and a R₀ of 100, we're not going anywhere. There won't be 8 billion of us by the time the shouting's over, but we won't go extinct. Even with the worst projections of climate change some people (on the order of a few hundred million) will survive; the planet's surface will not be rendered completely uninhabitable. Life may suck for those few hundred million people for a few thousand years, but they'll be here.

By the time the Sun goes red giant we'll be long gone whether we stay here or go to other planets. Our daughter species, their daughter species, etc. etc., will long since have died out.

So this isn't about survival as a species. Survival as a culture, yeah, okay, maybe, but that culture won't survive more than a few decades. Living in tin cans will require cultural changes, everything from what and how we eat to handling the dead.

 

[YetAnotherBoris]

Yeh, several pages late. Too bad.

Unless there is a literal Earth-shattering kaboom, or we somehow engineer a plague with a 100% mortality rate and a R₀ of 100, we're not going anywhere. There won't be 8 billion of us by the time the shouting's over, but we won't go extinct. Even with the worst projections of climate change some people (on the order of a few hundred million) will survive; the planet's surface will not be rendered completely uninhabitable. Life may suck for those few hundred million people for a few thousand years, but they'll be here.

By the time the Sun goes red giant we'll be long gone whether we stay here or go to other planets. Our daughter species, their daughter species, etc. etc., will long since have died out.

So this isn't about survival as a species. Survival as a culture, yeah, okay, maybe, but that culture won't survive more than a few decades. Living in tin cans will require cultural changes, everything from what and how we eat to handling the dead.

I'll go further, and claim with confidence that our ultimate daughter (or at worst, great-great-...-great-granddaughter) species won't even be biological. It's rather obvious where it's all eventually headed: the long-term future, and especially the future in space, belongs to intelligent machines.

 

[VelvetRemedy]

I'll go further, and claim with confidence that our ultimate daughter species won't even be biological. It's rather obvious where it's all headed: the long-term future, and especially the future in space, belongs to intelligent machines.

What an absolutely horrifying prediction.

 

[odikweos]

Yeh, several pages late. Too bad.

Unless there is a literal Earth-shattering kaboom, or we somehow engineer a plague with a 100% mortality rate and a R₀ of 100, we're not going anywhere. There won't be 8 billion of us by the time the shouting's over, but we won't go extinct. Even with the worst projections of climate change some people (on the order of a few hundred million) will survive; the planet's surface will not be rendered completely uninhabitable. Life may suck for those few hundred million people for a few thousand years, but they'll be here.

By the time the Sun goes red giant we'll be long gone whether we stay here or go to other planets. Our daughter species, their daughter species, etc. etc., will long since have died out.

So this isn't about survival as a species. Survival as a culture, yeah, okay, maybe, but that culture won't survive more than a few decades. Living in tin cans will require cultural changes, everything from what and how we eat to handling the dead.

You have absolutely no idea whether that's true, because there is no way you could have any sort of experience. Unless you're God and you happened to have observed many intelligent species rise and fall. Otherwise, we should err on the side of conservatism and hedge our bets.

 

[odikweos]

I'll go further, and claim with confidence that our ultimate daughter (or at worst, great-great-...-great-granddaughter) species won't even be biological. It's rather obvious where it's all eventually headed: the long-term future, and especially the future in space, belongs to intelligent machines.

I think you're probably right, but the more interesting idea is that we may become the machines ourselves (transmigration) rather than just knuckling under to toasters. The devil's always in the details.

 

[Unstablefan]

You can actually watch an engine RUD on the booster during the flip maneuver. The booster had flipped around enough for the ship's camera to catch it. It took out a significant number of its neighbors.

Unfortunately this means their removal of engine shielding might not be wise. V2 with its engine shields may have been able to survive such an engine RUD.


View: https://x.com/DJSnM/status/2058030864379129921

I don’t agree with this. The right fix is to stop engines from blowing up - if engines blow up often enough that it’s worth having extra mass to shield engines, the platform is a failure.

 

[The Lurker Beneath]

I mean you aren't wrong in the technical sense, but only because the person you are responding to talked about the earth being enveloped.

The earth has (cosmic scale) very little time left of being inhabitable but complex life. We are closer to the end of complex life than we are the beginning of the dinosaurs. 150 million years maybe 500 at most before complex life can't exist here in any quantity.

I'm not sure that changes how relevant today's time frame is lol, but I think it's interesting because the planet is toast way before red giant phase.

That seems a low figure. If technologically advanced successors to humans are living at that time, they should surely be able to sequester enough CO2 to put the runaway greenhouse nearer to its old estimate of a billion years or so - if they even have to. Of course it's unlikely that anything can be done about the Sun. Without a runaway greenhouse, life should at least be tolerable at high latitudes.

A more fanciful option would be arranging asteroid fly-bys in such a way as to boost Earth's orbit further from the Sun, but a species capable of this would probably also be capable of colonising distant planets and moons.

As you say, even 150 million years has no immediate relevance.

[Edit: space parasols are another cooling option that aren't outside the bounds of credibility.]

 

[YetAnotherBoris]

What an absolutely horrifying prediction.

And what's so "absolutely horrifying" about it? We are intelligent machines too, but based in biochemistry as our fundamental substrate. Biochemistry is fine for [contemporary] Earth surface, but the farther you get from Earth's surface or the contemporary environmental norms, the less suitable and sustainable biochemistry becomes. A space-dwelling civilization would highly benefit from adopting a more robust and more versatile substrate.

 

[fedeng]

I'd add that another successful thing that had me a little worried was stage separation itself. This was a completely new previously untested strategy and it went very well, considering the vehicles actually separated, and that the ship did not destroy the booster.

It was also very contrasting to see the quality of video transmission (not only the amount of pixels, but the camera direction etc) here vs the Artemis mission which was, in my opinion, very bad.

Finally, I think patience is required for this program. The perceived urgency is only due to the political need to get to the moon soon, but in light of the massive system they are designing with the transformative capabilities it will provide, I'm sure it will be operational in five to ten years and the hiccups and half a year delays brought about by technical challenges will be insignificant in hindsight.

 

[LuvEngineering]

Ah, that i didn’t know, interesting. But i was rather referring to that despite losing one sixth of its thrust, starship seems to have been able to compensate? Or should we perhaps under that with all vac engines functional, it would’ve gone event higher initially?

I don’t know what the throttle settings are for each moment of flight. If they weren’t full throttle to launch 40 tons to this trajectory, then they can throttle up the remaining five. They lost one sixth of the engines, but maybe not one sixth of the thrust.

The booster is even less sensitive to an engine out. Losing one engine is about a 3% loss. Each of the remaining 32 engines would need to throttle up about 0.1% to compensate.

 

[NetMage]

If you are at no risk of forgetting his flaws, it is part of your burden in life to bear the stream of reminders for those who are.

No, there is the ignore function to take care of that. Goodbye.