SpaceX Starship 24 major new plan changed, Starlink's in big trouble... Huge thanks to: LabPadre: null Starship Gazer: https://twitter.com/StarshipGazer Clarence365: https://twitter.com/Clarence3652 ErcX: https://twitter.com/ErcXspace null Source of thumb: Starship Gazer: https://twitter.com/StarshipGazer ======= This month, SpaceX successfully ignited all six engines on its latest Starship prototype, taking a significant step towards ensuring that the upper stage will be ready for the rocket’s first orbital launch attempt. It is thought a happy ending happened to ship 24, but a few days later, it is continue undergoing strange modifications that seem to imply that the upper stage is not living up to SpaceX’s expectations, which seems to suggest that there will be no deployment of any satellites on this vehicle even as a test. Find out more about this in today’s episode of Alpha Tech channel: In March, we were so excited to see SpaceX outfit the Ship 24 prototype with a unique Starlink satellite dispenser. But on 21 September, Photographer Starship Gazer took some awesome images of a new cover lifted into place over the top of S24's Starlink V2 PEZ door. Interestingly, on the same day, a new full-size Starlink V2 satellite deployment machine (PEZ) was installed in Ship 27’s payload bay. Many questions were raised about Ship 24 fate. And as expected, on 22 September, starship 24's Starlink V2 satellite PEZ dispenser is permanently closed for business. The new cover is very thoroughly tack welded all around the edges. So, sounds like S24 won’t be deploying any payloads. Anyway, for a ship that’ll be making the first attempt to orbit, I think SpaceX really is just focusing on “getting it to work first” before putting it to good use. Fair enough! In another possible rare case, maybe SpaceX found some design flaw in this Pez dispenser so instead of trying to remove the whole mechanism and mess up the structural integrity of s24, they chose to seal the door. What do you think about this? Now, it’s unclear if additional testing will be required for Ship 24. This week, SpaceX has no scheduled road closures. What about Starlink V2? Starlink V2 will probably be deployed for the first time on falcon 9. Last month, SpaceX said it revised plans for its next-generation Starlink Gen2 constellation to allow the upgraded satellites to launch on its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket in addition to Starship, a new and unproven vehicle. According to SpaceX, despite the seemingly major form-factor changes required to make Gen2 fit, Starship and Falcon 9-optimized satellites will still be “technically identical.” The implication is that the satellites launched on Falcon 9 will still offer the same performance as those launched on Starship, albeit in a different form factor. Nonetheless, the only thing SpaceX guarantees in the document is that the Falcon 9-launched Gen2 satellites won’t be more powerful than those launched on Starship, presumably preserving the applicability of existing analysis in the current Starlink Gen2 application. It’s thus possible that Falcon 9-optimized Starlink Gen2 satellites will have to sacrifice some of their performance relative to the unconstrained Starship-optimized variant. SpaceX Starship 24 major new plan changed, Starlink's in big trouble...