5/19/2026 at 4:52:28 AM
The stress tests they'll perform are really interesting:1) Starship will deploy "two modified satellites... [to] transmit imagery [of the heat shield] down to operators... Several tiles on Starship have been painted white to simulate missing tiles and serve as imaging targets in the test."
2) Relighting a Raptor engine
3) "For Starship entry, a single heat shield tile has been intentionally removed to measure the aerodynamic load differences on adjacent tiles when there is a tile missing"
4) Banking maneuver and rear flap structural test
by lorenzohess
5/20/2026 at 10:06:04 AM
missed the part where they are leveraging the starlink hardware for visuals durring tests. At some point someone from space x quiped that they were in the business of gathering data on rockets, and given that they have the ability to insert a sattelite into any orbit at there discretion, it would be a trivial extra cost to get full spectrum video of there test flights from orbit.by metalman