🔴LIVE: SpaceX Tests the Stack for the Fifth Flight of Starship - Booster 12 and Ship 30

SpaceX is performing another set of full stack testing of Booster 12 and Ship 30 ahead of the fifth flight of Starship. This booster might be the first to be caught by the chopsticks. This is the second round of testing, after the full stack already performed a round of testing.

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[WilboBaggins-dmub]

So happy to have had the opportunity to catch up

[sxmolin]

Will need to add footage of the new Vulcan rocket on the intro video

[DebraJean]

Came in at the end of the livestream, so I had to back up and replay from the beginning!

[zapfanzapfan]

So, we still have a full WDR to look forward to soon?

[Tinman_]

DOD won't be licensing flight 5 because the flight has no direct expectations or immediate interests from the DOD to satisfy a certification such as recent Vulcan launch. Secondly, NASA could license claiming Artemis program priority and needing data regarding success or failure. FAA owns this delay because they grounded F9 and Starship and is obligated to either rescind their grounding order (gov't never rescinds an order) or approve the launch at their discretion.

[ТахирИкрамов-нж]

it wasn't a full WDR right? so flight 5 is still very far away?

[addickland]

Frankly I don't see flight 5 happening in Oktober unless one of these three things are true:
1: The FAA has been sufficiently pressured (and, let's not mince words, "bullied") by the likes of NASA and Congress into moving quickly but quietly to get this over with.
2: The relation between SpaceX and the FAA hasn't become quite as hostile as it seems from the outside, and an acceptable compromise has been worked out.
3: SpaceX has gotten a promise from either NASA/the pentagon or transportation minister Buttigieg that they'll get a waiver exempting this flight from FAA oversight under some "National Security Interest" bollocks premise (something which people on that greatest font of wisdom, reddit, have been repeatedly saying is something that those agencies have the legal power to do, as in "you're being dumb FAA, this is important and safe, go pound sand") and are gambling that even if the FAA flip out, their hands will be tied by those above them, since the FAA is not in fact sovereign and can be dictated to by the likes of Congress and the Pentagon.

Obviously I hope it's option 2, but if a flight does happen this month, it will be interesting to see which one it was.

[mikecozy]

Dont they have a lisense to launch anyhow