Comment by XorNot
2 days ago
Starship is starting to be a very long and not so cheap project though that doesn't seem to be making significant iterative improvements - Rockets are still exploding regularly where you'd expect them to have moved beyond that phase.
Sorry, what? Starship 11 proceeded with a totally nominal ascent, orbit, descent, and powered landing that would end up with it standing on the ground, were it not deliberately landed into water.
What SLS currently has achieved had been achieved by Falcons and Dragons years ago, only way more cheaply and successfully.
No matter what we may think about Mr Musk, SLS is dead end.
I'm 99% confident Starship 11 was actually a sub-orbital test so you can't credit it for successfully entering orbit (my memory is confirmed by Gemini but caveat emptor).
Because when you're testing you put your rocket in an orbit that makes it reenter, but you can still show it has the performance to do it.
They still need to show they can reliably relight the engines to deorbit. They're actually very good citizens there. Prove you can deorbit before putting anything in orbit
They did reach orbital velocity though. If they'd aimed slightly differently they would have attained orbit, and reentry was as difficult as if they had done that.