I think they had to de-stack anyway due to FTS and a need to repair a tile etc. that fell off. Hopefully the booster doesn't need to roll back as well, as Friday is still plausible.

To get to 1,000 starships/year this is more an industrial program than a rocket one.

Starship V3 Wet Dress Rehearsal complete on Pad 2. Over 5,000 tonnes of propellant loaded in a flight-like countdown.

Raptor 3: 280 tf at 330 bar, 1,525 kg dry mass, TWR ~184.

No external heat shields. Integrated cooling. Welded manifolds. Direct ignition. No bolted joints. No… pic.twitter.com/ZN68kJcsJl

— Lacey (@LaceyPresley) May 11, 2026

The progress to date is amazing.

fullback44 said:

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So are people thinking this Friday May 15th is going to be a launch? Was wanting to make this launch for the first time and now I have a personal family matter I need to attend this Friday... maybe it will get delayed a few days?

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SpaceX should announce an official date for launch tonight or tomorrow.

Right now it looks like Friday is the most likely attempt but that could certainly slip to Monday.

Yes they were planning to de-stack. Ryan on NSF thought that Starship was going to get a new raptor as well so a trip to Massey's will be in order and a Friday launch would be really tight but I'm not sure why he thinks that.

I realize I'm getting ahead of myself here, but do we have any indicators as to when the next launch might be? I really want to get down for one and would like to start the ball rolling on planning a trip once that information is known....

Tailgate88 said:

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I realize I'm getting ahead of myself here, but do we have any indicators as to when the next launch might be? I really want to get down for one and would like to start the ball rolling on planning a trip once that information is known....

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Yes right now its may 15th

PJYoung said:

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Tailgate88 said:

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I realize I'm getting ahead of myself here, but do we have any indicators as to when the next launch might be? I really want to get down for one and would like to start the ball rolling on planning a trip once that information is known....

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Yes right now its may 15th

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TyHolden said:

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Starbase is now an incorporated city in Texas. Elon has his own city.

Voters approved it in May 2025.

SpaceX is launching reusable rockets and building rocket factories there.

— Barrett Linburg (@DallasAptGP) May 9, 2026

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Now buy Gibbons Creek outside BCS.

(Rumor has it they might already have).

techno-ag said:

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TyHolden said:

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Starbase is now an incorporated city in Texas. Elon has his own city.

Voters approved it in May 2025.

SpaceX is launching reusable rockets and building rocket factories there.

— Barrett Linburg (@DallasAptGP) May 9, 2026

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Now buy Gibbons Creek outside BCS.

(Rumor has it they might already have).

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I had about 10 people contact me today from Austin asking about it. It's beginning to become mainstream.

NOTAM just changed to May 19th. Read that they may have had a sensor failure during the SF that caused an early shutdown on one or more of the engines.

https://www.sealagom.com/navarea/4/

Like a month and a half away. Depending on rate of deployment of the rest of the world.

Yep May 19th now.

Starship Flight 12: Ship 39 rolling back.https://t.co/e3xbqPnwZ5 pic.twitter.com/rWQekjY8oc

— NSF - NASASpaceflight.com (@NASASpaceflight) May 12, 2026

Musk named the one remaining bottleneck.

"It's having the heat shield be reusable. No one's ever made a reusable orbital heat shield."

The shield does two impossible jobs.

"It's gotta make it through the ascent phase without shucking a bunch of tiles, and then it's gotta come back in and also not lose a bunch of tiles or overheat the main airframe."

40,000 tiles per ship.

Musk reframed the consumable problem through brake pads:

"Your brake pads in your car are also consumable, but they last a very long time."

The shield must consume slowly.
It must not require inspection between launches.

Musk on the current state:

"We have brought the ship back and had it do a soft landing in the ocean. But it lost a lot of tiles."

A soft landing is not reusability.

The bar is daily launches. One ship. Many flights.

Musk, on the gap that's left:

"You can't do this laborious inspection of 40,000 tiles type of thing."

The first reusable heat shield in history is the last gate to Mars.

High-cycle, reliable engine reflight without replacement, refurbishment or laborious inspection is about the same degree of difficulty as a rapidly reusable heat shield.

And then there are thousands of smaller challenges throughout the primary structure.

This is a crazy hard…

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2026

Here's some Terafab porn for you guys...

And a TERAFAB on earth.

Well thats one of the biggest pictures i've seen so far. pic.twitter.com/KowRV9D3Rd

— Renee Aluste (@ReneeAluste) May 12, 2026

Obviously the key here is asbestos, hence the reference to brake pads.

But man... crazy to think where we are and the distance still yet to go to get this into an "everyday" thing.

https://x.com/_MaxQ_

PJYoung said:

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Yes they were planning to de-stack. Ryan on NSF thought that Starship was going to get a new raptor as well so a trip to Massey's will be in order and a Friday launch would be really tight but I'm not sure why he thinks that.

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I guess Ryan knows what he's talking about.

STARSHIP FLIGHT 12: A Ground-5,000ft Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) has been placed above the Massey's Test Site.

This only occurs when Ship Engine Testing is on the table. Ship 39 could head the wrong way down Highway 4 for more pre-flight testing.

🗺️ @NeedPizza42 https://t.co/OYCZafzy3K pic.twitter.com/56QN6utbWU

— Ryan Caton (@dpoddolphinpro) May 12, 2026

I get where he is coming from on the heat shield and the brake pad analogy. I know he is a smart guy and employs lots of smart people. I wonder if they have considered a replaceable shield like in olden times where brake shoes could be replaced quickly while the removed brake shoes got processed and re-lined at a factory. Build up a cache of heat shields and process to inspect and repair them while the craft itself gets a rebuilt shield quickly installed for the next flight. Someone probably already ran that idea through

SpaceX has just received FCC approval to acquire ~65 MHz of nationwide spectrum from EchoStar for the company's next-gen direct-to-device @Starlink Mobile service.

The FCC says the deal gives SpaceX “exclusive-use, contiguous spectrum nationwide” for direct-to-phone connectivity… pic.twitter.com/JHiLdbq2cI

— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) May 12, 2026

I keep thinking that the ultimate solution is a spray on ablative layer.

Mathguy64 said:

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I keep thinking that the ultimate solution is a spray on ablative layer.

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That's what I was thinking. Ditch the tiles somehow.

Mathguy64 said:

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I keep thinking that the ultimate solution is a spray on ablative layer.

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Anything that you can spray on as a semi-liquid and let dry in place is going to have a hard time being thick enough to withstand the heat without bubbling up/buckling/wrinkling due to expansion under heating.

An ablative material is probably going to need to be scrubbed off for later adherence of the replacement material. This is the area where Elon excels. Don't do it half way when you can do it all the way even if all the way is harder and longer.

They're making a ton of money off of Starlink. Adding a million new subscribers every 2 months. Will be providing global cell coverage to terrestrial providers/likely capable of providing cell coverage to individuals as a package to their Starlink subscription.

They have the financial resources and time to get it done the ideal way. No one else is even on step one of a fully reusable rocket.

PJYoung said:

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Yep May 19th now.

Starship Flight 12: Ship 39 rolling back.https://t.co/e3xbqPnwZ5 pic.twitter.com/rWQekjY8oc

— NSF - NASASpaceflight.com (@NASASpaceflight) May 12, 2026

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That Elon, the man can build anything, and it dont take him long to build something. He probably built that StarShip mover in a few weeks and drew it out on a napkin. Amazing how big all the equipment is related to a StarShip and Elon cranks out Starships and launch pads like building a paper airplane and a tree house; he builds them at a fraction of the cost that NASA would spend. NASA builds a Launch pad in 10-12 years for billions of dollars.

Great to see a person like Elon doing this, their isnt many other people (maybe none) on this earth that could tackle a project like this and make it move so fast. Great time to be alive, I hope we all get to see Mars as a habitable planet.

SpaceX has officially scheduled Starship's first V3 test flight for May 19th! The launch window will open at 6:30 PM ET.

"The upcoming flight will debut the next generation Starship and Super Heavy vehicles, powered by the next evolution of the Raptor engine and launching from a… pic.twitter.com/M8KVzZqatr

— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) May 12, 2026

Confirmed flight test objectives:
- Super Heavy water splashdown
- Raptor Relight
- Payload Deploy demonstration, including 2 working satellites which will transmit imagery
- Starship Landing Burn down-selecting to just 1 engine https://t.co/7FZJtLz8P0

— Ryan Caton (@dpoddolphinpro) May 12, 2026

It’s no secret that we intend to launch Starship a lot, targeting thousands of flights per year. That cadence will require the ability to launch from many different locations, so we are constantly exploring to find viable sites to expand Starship operations in the future, both… https://t.co/6TrcaGrvVe

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 12, 2026

Also....

BREAKING: Google and SpaceX are in talks to launch data centers into orbit amid surging AI demand, per WSJ.

— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) May 12, 2026

Trying to pick my jaw up off the floor after seeing the ignition sequence for all 33 of B19's Raptor 3's.

Much tighter and less staggered than Version 1/2 boosters. Good grief. pic.twitter.com/ryxlTKGbRB

— Max Evans (@_MaxQ_) May 12, 2026

Point of view. You’re sitting at your desk going through what feels like a never ending backlog of email when suddenly everyone around you gets up from their desk to go to the windows. Because there is a Starship driving its way down the road. 5 minutes later, everyone’s back at…

— Shana Diez (@ShanaDiez) May 12, 2026

V4 will be 15% to 20% longer

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2026

Hmmm, this will drive some fun renders in short order, 142-149 meters tall? I also saw that V3 has 50 cameras on it, so the launch broadcast/footage should be even more spectacular.

So, umm, maybe I am just being obtuse about this, but starship launches from Louisiana??

SpaceX is considering several locations domestically and internationally to build the world’s most advanced spaceports! https://t.co/QCXwztAjr2

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2026

That seems pretty crazy to me, and would require significant overflight of populated areas of Texas as well for upper stage re-entries.

nortex97 said:

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So, umm, maybe I am just being obtuse about this, but starship launches from Louisiana??

SpaceX is considering several locations domestically and internationally to build the world’s most advanced spaceports! https://t.co/QCXwztAjr2

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2026

That seems pretty crazy to me, and would require significant overflight of populated areas of Texas as well for upper stage re-entries.

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You don't have to fly over populated areas - as long as you're coastal you can always fly out. You're just spending extra fuel to achieve any orbits outside of your specific selection.

When politics gets involved you may find yourself willing to spend money to avoid issues. Also once tankers become involved you're able to make up for inefficient launch trajectories by refueling, which opens up all sorts of locations. Even a 50% efficient site is better than no site, if you think large scale.

Reminds me of what they just did with the Colossus Datacenter... It's an older facility compared to the cutting edge, and they are going to make billions off it by reselling the compute to Anthropic. Find the opportunity and execute.

I'm referencing return/landing trajectories for the upper stage. Not many great options there to get to sea level on the Louisiana coast.

nortex97 said:

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I'm referencing return/landing trajectories for the upper stage. Not many great options there to get to sea level on the Louisiana coast.

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Ah gotcha. Well maybe it's like commercial air travel. Once it's proven enough you're willing to make some exceptions?

Sure, and that's there plan. It would probably take them 3 to 5 years to build/scale up there in any case.