Huge congratulations to the engineering team on this one! It's been quite interesting to watch the evolution of Starship. Had they put another couple of tonnes of propellant and oxidizer on the Booster they might have caught both of them. It is still unclear to me what the final mass fraction to orbit will work out to be, but something that is 100% re-usable is better than something 60% reusable[1].
[1] Estimate of Falcon 9's booster + fairings being 60% (by cost, not by mass) of the launch package.
Unfortunately the payload margins continue to be much lower than what they were aiming for at various points.
Originally they aimed for 150 tons of payload to LEO for Starship V1. Then they lowered that goal to 100 tons. But then Starship V1 only managed to achieve approximately 0 tons, which prompted them to target 100 tons for a larger, more powerful Starship V3 (and 200 tons for Starship V4). But now Starship V3 only achieves around 50 tons to LEO, based on the estimated weight of 26 Starlink V3 satellites.
I think the main issues were that Starship dry mass continued to be heavier than expected, and that the Raptor engines performed lower than they thought they would. Elon Musk recently said the Raptor V3 engines could only reliably achieve 230 tons of thrust per engine (a measure of force) instead of the originally projected 280.
Typical rocket tests will have dummy mass to simulate a payload (if not some high risk tolerance university project). This is ideal because you want to test as close as possible to the real thing, including things like stress on the vehicle supporting the payload mass. So a vehicle barely making to orbit without any payload mass isn't a great place to be. Starship is being developed differently than most rockets, so they have time to get to the better place, but they're still not where they have stated they expected to be.
Today's achievement was incredible, but it seems reasonable to temper the lofty statements previously made about this vehicle's immediate impact with statements of its actual capabilities.
Why? This is the worst version of starship and booster that will ever fly. It isn't unreasonable to look at the giant rocket factory they have produced and think "yeah, I reckon they will continue development at the lightning quick pace they always have done"
> This is the worst version of starship and booster that will ever fly.
That is true for any rocket.
Remember that Starship V1 was announced to have a payload margin of 150 tons to LEO, by around 2021 if I recall correctly. Now it's late 2026 and the payload is something like 50 tons. You may still call this "lightning fast", but it is far less progress than what we thought would happen several years ago.
The difference is the cadence. Also the rapid pace of development, they aren't afraid to change things and go through multiple blocks, getting data by flight testing and making improvements. Look at Vulcan Centaur and how long it has taken and compare it to Starship.
"ULA began development of the new launch vehicle in 2014, primarily to compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and to comply with a Congressional mandate to phase out the use of the Russian-made RD-180 engine that powered the Atlas V. "
"The Vulcan Centaur conducted its first launch on January 8, 2024, carrying the Peregrine lunar lander as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. Its second flight, conducted on October 4, 2024, as part of the U.S. Space Force's National Security Space Launch (NSSL) certification process, achieved its planned orbit despite the loss of a nozzle on one of the GEM-63XL solid rocket boosters, which resulted in reduced and asymmetrical thrust. Following a five-month review, the Space Force certified Vulcan for NSSL missions in March 2025. In February 2026, a second issue involving a solid rocket booster occurred, after which launches were paused pending investigation."
Centaur has flown 4 times since 2014. SpaceX began active development of the Starship program in 2018.
I have every confidence they will work this out. I would hate it if people benchmarked my code whilst it was still in development and extrapolated the future performance from that.
Chamber pressure, mixture ratio, and throttle limits can be adjusted operationally within the hardware’s margins. Engines on reusable vehicles are regularly swapped, inspected, and replaced. Process changes, minor part upgrades, and material improvements get introduced into the production line.
Flight data drives continuous tweaks to control software (throttle profiles, mixture ratio schedules, startup sequences, health monitoring). Those are software updates
I want you to look at the evolution of the capacity of Falcon 9 over its various design iterations. There certainly was a lot of optimization leading to substantial growth in capacity.
Well said. I'd also add not everything is unachievable just because it hasn't been done yet. A lot of people won't even update their priors once something is done (belief perseverance). I've lost count of the number of older people that tell me electric cars won't work whilst there is a perfectly functional one sat on my driveway.
[−]throwaway2037 · 2026-11-15 Sun 03:50 UTC ·
link
> Had they put another couple of tonnes of propellant and oxidizer on the Booster they might have caught both of them.
They called it off because it was running lower on fuel than they expected - the margins are crazy thin. You can see a green burst of flame near the end, which is what happens when you run oxygen rich/fuel poor (also called "engine-rich" - iirc the green flame is copper from the engine as the oxidizer-rich mix causes it to run hot).
[−]hackeraccount · 2026-11-15 Sun 05:20 UTC ·
link
I think it's a supposition that the reason they didn't catch the booster was that it couldn't get back to the chopsticks. I don't think SpaceX described the issues as that ... it would seem sort of strange if it was because the seemingly planned a catch for it so you'd think they would have a good handle on the fuel required. It's possible they didn't fully understand that requirement though.
[1] Estimate of Falcon 9's booster + fairings being 60% (by cost, not by mass) of the launch package.
Originally they aimed for 150 tons of payload to LEO for Starship V1. Then they lowered that goal to 100 tons. But then Starship V1 only managed to achieve approximately 0 tons, which prompted them to target 100 tons for a larger, more powerful Starship V3 (and 200 tons for Starship V4). But now Starship V3 only achieves around 50 tons to LEO, based on the estimated weight of 26 Starlink V3 satellites.
I think the main issues were that Starship dry mass continued to be heavier than expected, and that the Raptor engines performed lower than they thought they would. Elon Musk recently said the Raptor V3 engines could only reliably achieve 230 tons of thrust per engine (a measure of force) instead of the originally projected 280.
Are all of these comments comparing hypothetical production loads to small test scenarios?
That is true for any rocket.
Remember that Starship V1 was announced to have a payload margin of 150 tons to LEO, by around 2021 if I recall correctly. Now it's late 2026 and the payload is something like 50 tons. You may still call this "lightning fast", but it is far less progress than what we thought would happen several years ago.
"ULA began development of the new launch vehicle in 2014, primarily to compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and to comply with a Congressional mandate to phase out the use of the Russian-made RD-180 engine that powered the Atlas V. "
"The Vulcan Centaur conducted its first launch on January 8, 2024, carrying the Peregrine lunar lander as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. Its second flight, conducted on October 4, 2024, as part of the U.S. Space Force's National Security Space Launch (NSSL) certification process, achieved its planned orbit despite the loss of a nozzle on one of the GEM-63XL solid rocket boosters, which resulted in reduced and asymmetrical thrust. Following a five-month review, the Space Force certified Vulcan for NSSL missions in March 2025. In February 2026, a second issue involving a solid rocket booster occurred, after which launches were paused pending investigation."
Centaur has flown 4 times since 2014. SpaceX began active development of the Starship program in 2018.
Flight data drives continuous tweaks to control software (throttle profiles, mixture ratio schedules, startup sequences, health monitoring). Those are software updates
But not everything is achievable just because we want to achieve it. Physics/chemistry also have a say in it.