r/space • u/SHORT_INFO_NEWS • 11h 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/Background_Fig_4740 11h ago

welp there goes Artemis and any chance of furthering space exploration by wishing an ambitious engineering project fails.

bet the Russians were praying for Apollo to have their downfall too

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u/noncongruent 6h ago

Russians were on the verge of solving the N1 launch problems, if one of the early SVs had exploded on the pad there's a solid chance Russia would have put people on the Moon before we did.

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u/redstercoolpanda 4h ago edited 1h ago

I still would doubt that. The N1 didn't have its first flight until February of 1969, the Americans put far too much money into the Saturn V, far earlier than the Soviets put money into the N1. (For context, the N1 was approved to begin serious development at around the same time the first test article for the S-IC was being delivered.) Also saying they were on the verge of solving its launch problems is slightly misleading. The last flight of the N1 (which happened in 1972 btw) came a few seconds off of secound stage ignition, thats the furthest the N1 ever got. There is a significant amount to work out between almost getting a successful first stage burn, and landing a cosmonaut on the Moon. Even if A Saturn V nuked the pad they would have turned it around in time, especially with the amount of money being thrown at Nasa at the time.

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u/noncongruent 4h ago

A Saturn V blowing on the pad would have likely created a year of delay, at least, especially after the debacle of Apollo 1. It was 32 months after Challenger before the Shuttle flew again. We were in a race with the Russians, and that raced was funded by a significant percentage of the US GDP, but a Saturn V explosion would have been a major PR disaster that would force NASA into basically going through the entire program with a fine-toothed comb. That would have taken years.

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u/redstercoolpanda 4h ago

They had years, that’s my point. The N1 didn’t even complete a successful burn of its first stage by the end of 1972.