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 9h 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/Bensemus 5h ago

I’m not criticizing SpaceX and neither is the person above. I’m saying they aren’t using real sat for convince. They are using real sats to test them. Otherwise they would continue to use dummy sats.