IFT-4 is now completed

6/8/24:

This looks authentic. ( YES!) Everything's fake these days. The last part was tacked on and is available everywhere by now. The first part of the video shows the booster landing near a buoy. Not to be confused with goyle.





end update of 9:02 AM, 6/6/24 post:

6/6/24, 9:02 AM Central



After a successful launch, SpaceX's Starship went to orbit and appears to have had a mostly soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean as planned. There were no holds in the launch, and it took off right on schedule.

The launch itself was fairly smooth, however one engine went out shortly into the flight. The booster performed well in all of its planned aspects, and may also have had a soft landing in the Gulf of Mexico as planned.

First indications are that it was a very good test, but not everything was perfect. There was heat damage to the Starship before splashdown in the Indian Ocean. After losing the video for over 20 minutes, reacquired video showed a good performance most of the way. However, damage became noticeable and continued at an accelerated pace till shortly before splashdown. There were additional intermittent loses in video on the way down, but the video was reacquired until the end of the flight---drawing cheers from onlookers. It was not clear from the video if the engines fired as expected, but there were other indications that it did fire off as expected.

All in all, a very good show. Congrats, SpaceX.







2:57 PM

Nice job on the highlights from Scott Manley.

I started to do something along these lines, but it isn't as good as this, so forget it.