aTmAg said:
Sorry for all the questions. I'm sure I could find this out using google, but maybe others here would like to see the answers.
Is the mission profile is the same? Or now that they proved they can relight the raptors, are they going to be able to orbit the earth and land the starship somewhere in the Gulf?
This mission profile will be the same - early morning launch, night time landing of Starship in the Indian Ocean and trying to catch the booster back at the pad.
Elon has said they will try to land Starship back at the pad after they successfully land Starship in the ocean 3 times. This would be the 3rd time.
It is thought that Starship coming back to the pad would take up to 9 orbits but I don't think that's clear yet.
I personally expect to see them try that sometime in late 2025 but it's Elon so who knows. Nobody really believed him when he said they would try to catch the booster at the pad that quickly.
What SpaceX WANTS to do and what governments ALLOW them to do are probably 2 different things since bringing Starship back would entail them flying over some populated areas including Monterrey, Mexico which has a population of over 5 million.
Just Saturday I was listening to the NSF live stream and Chris Berger mentioned that the shuttle disaster in 2003 would've certainly cost MANY lives on the ground if it had broken up just 1 minute earlier since that would've put the debris field directly on top of the DFW metroplex. So there are safety considerations with such a new program.
