It’s breaking news in Australia now
Although the ABC are calling S40 “debris” and suspected “space junk” pic.twitter.com/rSbAUT0Bun

— Peridotite (@PeridotiteMFSO) August 18, 2026

It's probably an ABC "writer" using AI image detection or something. God forbid anyone actually look at what they're doing...

Who would have ever guessed the Raptor would double as a good tow hook? Gotta love that SpaceX shade tree engineering.

I don't know man. Let's tie a tow strap on it and see if it holds.

I suspect the drag penalty towing it backwards must be substantial. Seems they should have yoked both fins on the nose and towed it from the front.

We may get a wakeup call if China's Chang'e 7 successfully lands at Shackleton Crater near the lunar south pole.

It launches Sunday.

Time to get boots on the ground, and a base there

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/08/the-united-states-is-about-to-wake-up-to-the-threat-from-chinas-space-program/

lb3 said:

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I suspect the drag penalty towing it backwards must be substantial. Seems they should have yoked both fins on the nose and towed it from the front.

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There is nothing on the craft they can actually tie off on. All the speculation I've seen was that when you saw the large fenders around the vehicle the tow was tied to those.

Kenneth_2003 said:

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lb3 said:

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I suspect the drag penalty towing it backwards must be substantial. Seems they should have yoked both fins on the nose and towed it from the front.

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There is nothing on the craft they can actually tie off on. All the speculation I've seen was that when you saw the large fenders around the vehicle the tow was tied to those.

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I thought they had lifting/catch lugs near the top? Presumably they could tow it by those, but they may have been worried about collapsing the nosecone pulling at angles in rough seas.

Don't know how many of you follow Sal, but he has a solid channel on all things shipping...

I wonder if they just launch this thing over populated areas back and forth between landing pads.

VIDEO CONFIRMATION: Beautiful soft touchdown of Zhuque-3 on its second flight! https://t.co/QodMFI0zDJ pic.twitter.com/Sd2dIEAnze

— Ryan Caton (@dpoddolphinpro) August 18, 2026

Is that pad made of bamboo?

And glue!

Just beach it at Boca Chica.

The number of satellites launched into space so far is exactly this pic.twitter.com/Q73vL5iLfw

— Amazing Physics (@amazing_physics) August 18, 2026

Of course, some of them have fallen back down. Graphic is for illustration purposes only.

techno-ag said:

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The number of satellites launched into space so far is exactly this pic.twitter.com/Q73vL5iLfw

— Amazing Physics (@amazing_physics) August 18, 2026

Of course, some of them have fallen back down. Graphic is for illustration purposes only.

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15k seems a lot lower than I'd think we'd have up there right now.

And another timelapse of the fire building up: pic.twitter.com/XDmFcycVA9 https://t.co/LtvAZS9VFm

— jacobruh 🚀 (@jrxcket) August 19, 2026

It wound up falling over as they couldn't extinguish the fire at the base/around the engines afterward. Re-usability is still a ways off for them imho (6-12 months I'd swag).

SPACEX: Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry is scheduled to announce that a deal for SpaceX to develop the multibillion-dollar spaceport on the +130,000 acres near Pecan Island in Vermilion Parish on Tuesday at 11 a.m. CT in Abbeville.

This comes right after today's news that a… https://t.co/hBUiksp48K pic.twitter.com/NTdlHdrUWK

— S.E. Robinson, Jr. (@SERobinsonJr) August 19, 2026

Ship test tonight. Probably at about 10:40-10:45 pm

hph6203 said:

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SPACEX: Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry is scheduled to announce that a deal for SpaceX to develop the multibillion-dollar spaceport on the +130,000 acres near Pecan Island in Vermilion Parish on Tuesday at 11 a.m. CT in Abbeville.

This comes right after today's news that a… https://t.co/hBUiksp48K pic.twitter.com/NTdlHdrUWK

— S.E. Robinson, Jr. (@SERobinsonJr) August 19, 2026

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This feels out of the blue. Why over there?

FTAG 2000 said:

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hph6203 said:

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SPACEX: Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry is scheduled to announce that a deal for SpaceX to develop the multibillion-dollar spaceport on the +130,000 acres near Pecan Island in Vermilion Parish on Tuesday at 11 a.m. CT in Abbeville.

This comes right after today's news that a… https://t.co/hBUiksp48K pic.twitter.com/NTdlHdrUWK

— S.E. Robinson, Jr. (@SERobinsonJr) August 19, 2026

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This feels out of the blue. Why over there?

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Elon likes the gambling boats in Lake Charles....

FTAG 2000 said:

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hph6203 said:

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SPACEX: Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry is scheduled to announce that a deal for SpaceX to develop the multibillion-dollar spaceport on the +130,000 acres near Pecan Island in Vermilion Parish on Tuesday at 11 a.m. CT in Abbeville.

This comes right after today's news that a… https://t.co/hBUiksp48K pic.twitter.com/NTdlHdrUWK

— S.E. Robinson, Jr. (@SERobinsonJr) August 19, 2026

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This feels out of the blue. Why over there?

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Easy access to the intercoastal waterway. Nobody around to get mad about frequent launches, easy southerly launches, cheap labor, cheap land, and easy to work with environmental agencies. Same general things that attracted them to Texas.

TexAgs91 said:

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Ship test tonight. Probably at about 10:40-10:45 pm

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Apparently successful 15s single engine static fire at 11:05 pm.

Access to launching polar orbit satellites. That is supposed to be the majority of their future launches and can't generally do that from Florida or Starbase, because it would have the rocket flying over populated areas.

They applied for one million satellites in orbit. At 5 year useful life that's 9 launches every day. Plus one Starlink launch per day. People in South Texas would go from "wow cool, rockets." To "I'm going to murder Elon Musk it is loud all the time." Very quickly.

For the polar launches they also have SLC 4 and are slated to build out the old SLC 6 at Vandenberg

Best I can tell SLC-6 is still going to be developed for Falcon/Heavy launches. They're also currently limited to 100 annual launches and the California Coastal Commission has been a pain in the ass even if they're incapable of actually influencing the going ons at Vandenberg.

Only thing SpaceX is going to upset in Louisiana is the turtles and they probably prefer dodging rockets to dodging the coonass trying to eat them.

This sounds like regulatory approval for a ship catch may not happen fast enough for flight 14. It'll be interesting to see what that flight profile looks like without a ship catch.

This does not fit together. You say “probably in a few month” for the catch and this year a reuse. 🤷‍♂️ Before that you said catch in flight 14. Why the plan change?

— What about it!? (@FelixSchlang) August 20, 2026

Nope. I heard they might have been able to get there on the regulatory side, but overall they just weren't ready yet.

— Eric Berger (@SciGuySpace) August 20, 2026

Berger says SpaceX decision not regulatory.

He really looks like he's on something there. Hope not. 319 million shares unlocked today and stock is down toward 130, I picked up a few. Hopefully some good news out about Pecan Island as that is anticipated, though it will inevitably require massive capex also.

nortex97 said:

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He really looks like he's on something there. Hope not. 319 million shares unlocked today and stock is down toward 130, I picked up a few. Hopefully some good news out about Pecan Island as that is anticipated, though it will inevitably require massive capex also.

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The spectrum. So much spectrum.

hph6203 said:

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Nope. I heard they might have been able to get there on the regulatory side, but overall they just weren't ready yet.

— Eric Berger (@SciGuySpace) August 20, 2026

Berger says SpaceX decision not regulatory.

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As much cutting and other work as they have been doing on the tower and chopsticks the last few days, wouldn't surprise me if it is a tower issue and not an issue with ship.

But I also wonder if it goes back to not wanting to potentially put their only functional launch site out of service if they have a catastrophic failure. In a couple of months, they should have extra launch pads and towers ready at the Cape and at Starbase.

Tower 1 should be pretty close to ready in a month or so. But I found Elon's comment about 'if we had a tower out at sea in the gulf' pretty telling. I hope we see work on that commence in short order.

There should still be no reason for flight 14 not to do several orbits though right?

Shouldn't be...the last major obstacle that was public knowledge was the demonstration of Raptor relight in space, which was accomplished on Flight 13. So I would think they're going orbital this time unless there was something in the Raptor data that's concerning, they're concerned about tank pressures with respect to time, or they don't think there's an advantage/reason to do so without ship catch.