The problem with any sprayed on material is there is no room for thermal expansion as it heats up and whatever gases or liquids (humidity, etc) that get trapped between the coating and the skin of the ship have no room to escape if they expand due to heating. With a tile design, both of those issues are addressed by the gaps between the tiles. I guess they could try to use some kind of dry powder coating cured in a negative pressure oven, but the size of the ship would seem to make that difficult to accomplish.

NORMAND RANGER hauling ass out to S40 pic.twitter.com/1mUmvs5KjL

— TheSpaceEngineer (@mcrs987) July 29, 2026

EDIT: Now it looks like this ship has nothing to do with SpaceX operations on Starship. Sigh

Starship has been afloat for 106 hours and has traveled 310km since landing. Currently 1200km from the nearest Australian shoreline. GO Australis still trailing Starship https://t.co/WqMHVFREYd pic.twitter.com/66Pnn9NC7c

— TheSpaceEngineer (@mcrs987) July 29, 2026

Kenneth_2003 said:

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txags92 said:

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Decay said:

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I mean I think it's pretty obvious that SpaceX flat out doesn't have answers for some of the biggest questions. They are going to continue to iterate and optimize and if a quantum leap in technology looks attainable then they'll go for it. In the meantime the heat tiles look dramatically better each time they fly.

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It is also a bit disingenuous by some of the online pundits to take the position that because Spacex can't accomplish every one of their objectives with their current iteration of spacecraft that they are "failing" or "making fantastical claims about capability" like I have seen from some X posters. Even if the tiles require them to inspect and replace some and that takes a month to retrofit a ship before the next launch, that is still 12 times faster reuse than any of their competitors that are unable to launch faster than about once per year so far. Just because their launch lead says the pad was designed to handle a cadence of one launch per 60 minutes 24/7 doesn't mean Spacex is making the claim that they will be ready for that kind of cadence any time soon.

They are doing astounding things with their spacecraft that nobody else is even close to catching up to, and have made those same kinds of quantum leaps forward in capability regularly over the objections of the competitors and detractors. So when I see people doubting them online, I just laugh and wait for them to get schooled like Tory Bruno did by Gwen Shotwell after taking shots at the "partially assembled" Raptor engines.

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Agree with everything you said.
I saw the "Dead End" headline pop up on my Google news/deadline notifications yesterday. I tapped the link with some curiosity but pretty quickly dismissed it as general Elon hate. That's a bold claim to state the heat shield is a supposed "Dead End" for rapid reuse when 1) SpaceX won't even attempt orbital flight until maybe the next flight and orbit, reentry, AND catch/land are required for ANY reuse, and 2) SpaceX is the ONLY company looking at any reuse in the SuperHeavy lift space and they're the ONLY company evaluating reuse of any orbital components outside of small crew vehicles.

China has caught 1 medium/heavy lift first stage
Blue Origin can catch their medium/heavy lift first stage, but they just blew up their only launch facility and at best will return to flight late this year, i think more likely early next year.

SpaceX has 4 orbital class launch locations and almost has 6 orbital class pads.
LC39A -- F9/FH pad (only doing FH launches now) & Starship pad & tower under construction
SLC40 -- F9
Vandenberg -- F9
Starbase -- Pad 2 is fully functional and Tower 1 is being upgraded

Like Txags92 said, ANY reuse of a complete orbital class upper stage is ahead of anything the competition is doing. Even if it takes a month... what was the fastest Shuttle turnaround? 54 days was the fastest... Shuttle Atlantis between STS 51J & 65B in 1985 (pre-Challenger and pre-Columbia)

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They're also rebuilding SLC6 at Vandenberg for heavy launch to go along with their presence at SLC 4

nortex97 said:

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Some skepticism about the heat shield tiles.

Thinking about this for more than 5 minutes, it's obvious that:

1) SpaceX engineers took lessons from Shuttle to reduce maintenance time via modular tile shape
2) robotic inspection can automate what was formerly an intensive human process
3) eventually SpaceX will achieve high… https://t.co/NGmZJowTcU

— lizvstein (@lizvstein) July 29, 2026

Not sure that is really warranted.

Quote:

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As such, SpaceX's heat shield will likely be good enough to deploy a next-generation Starlink constellation. But the experts are concerned that it will be unable to hit the high flight rate needed several hundred to thousands of low-cost launches annually for large settlements on the Moon and Mars, orbital data centers, or large-scale space-based solar power.

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I think that's some Elon hate talking there mixed with uninformed opinions. After Starship's first flight with the rock-tornado that became of the launch pad, and the fact that pad one always needed refurbishment after each flight some people were saying that the pad just couldn't support a high flight rate.

Then came pad 2.

I think there is some combination of elements that will get SpaceX the kind of tile they need for a fully reusable tile. Or at least a kind of tile you can get a few flights out of.

Regarding the pad... Elon is repeatedly on record saying they didn't know how to build a launch structure for that rocket so the goal was always build something and hope it just doesn't blow up. We'll learn from every launch.

That yielded the tower at pad one and the water bidet system. Then came pad 2 with the flame trench.

Same goes for tiles. Getting a ship home that engineers can see will be huge.

These articles ignore all of that and speak in absolutes.

NEW🚨: NASA's Curiosity rover shares insane new panorama shot from Mars pic.twitter.com/6Y3l8D9tPa

— Latest in space (@latestinspace) July 29, 2026

Betting against Elon! Good luck with that one.

It's going to be a surreal feeling one day for someone to step foot on that desert and not be able to take off a helmet.

looks like a great place to go jeeping

This is correct. The only post-reentry tiles they've had an opportunity at direct access to have been some post-explosion flotsam. If that. In another month they'll probably have 2 recovered Starships on hand. That's when the real iterative process starts.

Starlink-equipped buoys provided real-time video streaming in the Indian Ocean during Starship’s thirteenth test flight 🛰️🚀 pic.twitter.com/BdvM6F5f0C

— Starlink (@Starlink) July 29, 2026

PJYoung said:

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Kenneth_2003 said:

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PJYoung said:

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will25u said:

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I think the Falcon 9 reduction/no more flights was fake news. I posted about it in the last few pages.

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I'm very surprised SpaceX hasn't denied it.

Falcon 9 launches are certainly trending down lately compared to prior years.

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2023 -- 96 Total, 91 F9, 5 FH
2024 -- 134 Total, 132 F9, 2 FH
2025 -- 165 Total, 165 F9, 0 FH
2026 -- thru July 25: 88 Total, 87 F9, 1 FH
Estimating 140-145sih total

Lower than 2025, but I don't know if we can determine a real trend here.
SpaceX Starlink is still Falcon's biggest customer but they're only launching V2 mini as the V3 is too big and too heavy to carry on F9.

F9 will by necessity slow though with the conversion of 39A to Starship operations.

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Yeah the launches are slowing for sure lately.

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SpaceX is a little less than 10% off the 2025 cadence. I haven't found a resource to confirm but I suspect they are doing well from a revenue standpoint by launching a larger proportion of customer payloads.

Falcon 9 to launch 18 more missions for the @USSpaceForce by September 2027 from pad 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base https://t.co/6OKcqccyJd

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 30, 2026

Yeah they have recently slowed for sure.

They did 165 in 2025 and expect 140 ish this year. They are at 88 falcon launches (including 1 heavy) so far in 2026.

This is what Shotwell said back in March in her Time interview:
I think we're over 600 now. [Note: The figure is 608 as of this writing.] Last year was our largest launch year for Falcon. Yeah, this year we'll still launch a lot, but not as much. We launched 165 times last year. This year, maybe 140, 145-ish, yeah. And then we'll tail off our launches as starship is coming online

You keep saying that. The pace is slower. You keep ignoring if that matters/brings in less revenue/degrades their capability.

Are they slowing because they don't need to keep launching V2 Starlink satellites? Probably. How is the rest of the business doing? What else are they doing?

They about to start spamming LEO with V3 Starlink sats in a way that'll put Falcon 9 to shame.

The edit....Heaven forbid they do exactly what the COO said would happen.

I never meant it as a bad thing. Its just what is happening. Falcon is going away and starship is gonna go nuts.

A terrestrial network, and iphone competitor would be huge...and expensive.

New @semafor: @elonmusk's $SPCX looking to acquire terrestrial spectrum via M&A or auction, sources say. Just the latest sign that SpaceX is serious about building out Starlink into a real competitor to $T , $TMUS , $VZ W/ @lizrhoffman pic.twitter.com/kgL1wEYMLO

— Rohan Goswami (@rogoswami) July 29, 2026

@nextbigfuture thinks the superchargers/cybercabs will be a partial solution to the densification challenge of a new network;

Quote:

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SpaceX and Tesla can cover cities with cellphone coverage.
The strategic power isn't any single cell's reach but getting complete coverage. Fixed Supercharger nodes hold the corridors, mobile Cybercabs follow demand into dense areas, and Powerwall-hosted nodes fill in neighborhoods. Tesla and SpaceX will have insane cost advantage. It circumvents the cell tower leases.

This is where the model breaks from the traditional playbook. A conventional outdoor small cell runs roughly $25,000$70,000 in its first year once you add fiber backhaul, site lease, and power. The SpaceX/Tesla approach zeroes out the three biggest line items. Mass production and integrating the systems into the products will remove duplicate installation and get costs to around $1000-2000 for superchargers, powerwalls and megapods. The low power car systems will be $100-250.

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They were making 5 starlink satellites/day earlier this year still in Hawthorne. I suspect they have significantly reduced that however, in favor of standing up the full V3 satellite line. They still need FCC approval for the Starlink V3's however, which should rapidly scale with starship launches once it happens:

Quote:

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A Starship V3 mission is projected to deliver approximately 60 terabits per second of new Starlink network capacity roughly 20 times what a typical Falcon 9 V2 Mini mission adds. The difference comes from both satellite count (Starship can carry more V3 satellites per launch) and per-satellite performance (each V3 delivers 1 Tbps vs. ~80100 Gbps for V2 Mini). Starship's 150-ton payload capacity to low Earth orbit roughly ten times Falcon 9's means each flight deploys far larger, heavier hardware. Until Starship reaches operational cadence and V3 receives FCC authorization, Falcon 9 V2 Mini launches like today's remain the only way Starlink is growing.

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humans & @cybertruck for scale pic.twitter.com/y6svMiR1ES

— Max Evans (@_MaxQ_) July 30, 2026

I'm in a wilderness area with no cell coverage at the moment and was trying to explain the Starlink constellation to someone. It blew my mind when I pulled up an active map that showed that there were about 460 satellites available (above the horizon) that we could access at that time.

This is a great shot of the V3 Starlink sats on the fly.

The first Starlink V3 satellites in space successfully deployed their solar arrays, fired their thrusters, established connections with the Starlink constellation using radio frequencies and laser links, and captured imagery of Starship pic.twitter.com/Ro8MRXFu08

— Starlink (@Starlink) July 30, 2026

It took SpaceX 3 years to achieve the current Starlink constellation with ~100 Falcon 9 launches per year

Starship can do that in just 16 launches and using Falcon 9’s flight rate of every 2.3 days, Starship would surpass the Starlink V2 constellation in only 34 days vs 3 years!… https://t.co/KfQrrypuV5 pic.twitter.com/D9QgyrTtLc

— Truthful🛰️ (@Truthful_ast) July 30, 2026

The rescue is on!

Both Normand Ranger and Skimmer Tide are now steaming toward Ship 40 and GO Australis.

Normand Ranger (making ~15 kts) should arrive on station around noon Friday Texas time (~17:00 UTC).

Skimmer Tide is running a bit slower at ~10 kts and will likely arrive… https://t.co/XC4mJfQEcf pic.twitter.com/ZgmrOCC5yq

— Claudius (@ClaudiusNDX) July 30, 2026

This is a fun little side quest that we did not expect prior to the launch.

PJYoung said:

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double aught said:

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This is a fun little side quest that we did not expect prior to the launch.

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I mean at this point it's been floating longer than the Titanic.

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Titanic launched on 31 May 1911
She sank 15 April 1912

Edit... sorry man, I couldn't resist.
So we're not gonna count her sea trials?

When will "new" propulsion system come online?

Publicly...

lb3 said:

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I'm in a wilderness area with no cell coverage at the moment and was trying to explain the Starlink constellation to someone. It blew my mind when I pulled up an active map that showed that there were about 460 satellites available (above the horizon) that we could access at that time.

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One day i'll no longer be able to "say sorry honey no cell service on this lease". Dammit

Ellie annoys me, but her guest here breaks down A LOT of what we should expect to see in they ship catch. He breaks down the orbital mechanics that will come into play and ultimately gets into the timing of the mission (length, not dates). He's also done a lot with telemetry on Pecos missions and we are how much SpaceX can probably move the ship around and the his guys at the flight path to the tower.

I don't know about her guest's numbers, and I wrote a response.

He says after 6-8 orbits ship should be in a good position to reenter on the entry corridor (which is a ESE track). You can see where it would be in 6-8 orbits at Starbase's latitude: Somewhere around India to China.


16 orbits (24 hrs) gets you where you want to be. Or am I missing something?


p.s. I chose a 33 degree inclination orbit because that puts it right on the entry corridor shown here

Raise the altitude to reduce the number of orbits.

August 20th NET as of now, but I have read speculation they will only do 3 to 8 orbits. I really have no idea.

The only thing I can think is that the suborbital inclination they've used is shallower than 33*. They flew a corridor that kept them north of the South American Coastline, overflying the Caribbean sea and the Leeward Islands.

Would that bring the ascending limb of the closer to the Baja coast then allow them to just fly into that ESE corridor?

EDIT to add -- You can probably add about 15 minutes or earth rotation to the uphill climb as the vehicle accelerates to orbital velocity. Same too for the time following the deorbit burn and reentry. But 30 minutes doesn't get your orbit pathway from China to Starbase.

Full disclosure, I was watching the video while fixing dinner so I wasn't giving him 100%

Orbital mechanics ain't my thing, but is it possible they could test orbital maneuvers and change the orbit enough to reduce orbit count?

So clean and so smooth!

Hot staging pic.twitter.com/GIQT5ek2Sj

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 31, 2026

Maximus_Meridius said:

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Orbital mechanics ain't my thing, but is it possible they could test orbital maneuvers and change the orbit enough to reduce orbit count?

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Yes. From the start of the entry corridor it looks like they start veering off the orbital path. But not by much. And certainly not by half a planet's worth.