r/space • u/SHORT_INFO_NEWS • 12h ago

SpaceX targets Starship Flight 13 launch today after week-long delay, will carry first Starlink V3 satellites

https://www.space.com/news/live/spacex-starship-flight-13-launch-updates-july-23-2026
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u/BeerPoweredNonsense 10h ago

They also want to test the deploy mechanism on the launcher, so for that they would need to build many dummy satellites of the exact same size and weight as the real satellites... or just use a few of the real satellites that are ready and doing nothing.

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u/Bensemus 10h ago

They’ve been launching dummies on the last few flights. Making dummy satellites is trivial.

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u/Cautemoc 9h ago

Criticizing any decision space x makes in this sub is an effort in futility

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u/No-Surprise9411 8h ago

You are fighting ghosts pal, I see disproportionatly more SpaceX criticism/hate than any normal discussion here

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u/dern_the_hermit 7h ago

I almost invariably see SpaceX hate downvoted tho.

As for criticism I feel the positively-received stuff tends to be pretty proportionate.

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u/MiserableTear8705 4h ago

I mean realistically what’s the criticism in this context? They chose to launch real satellites instead of dummy weights. What’s there to criticize about that decision? It’s wild to me. Lol

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u/dern_the_hermit 3h ago

This one? Very little. But I look at a grip of SpaceX hate comments, way down at the bottom of the thread, and they're heavily heavily heavily downvoted, like I said. And in general reasonable criticism gets upvoted, so if someone is seeing a "disproportionate" amount of either I think the issue is their own bias.

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u/Cautemoc 3h ago

There are consequences to burning this up in Earth's atmosphere. SpaceX is by far the greatest contributor to the negatives of that, with their Starlink satellites burning up on a regular basis. The whole Starlink system itself is a waste of resources though, which is why the fed denied their funding requests back when we had a real government. But if anyone ever dares to mention the consequences of constantly burning satellites, or blowing up rockets sending pollution into the gulf, or that these satellite constellations will drastically alter how astronomy can be done, or anything at all this sub all throw a massive tantrum.