Starship Flight 11 Timing Poll

[jongoff]

Ok, with Flight 10 in the books, and from all appearances being nearly picture perfect, I wanted to start a poll about when people think the next Starship flight will be. As far as I've seen, SpaceX and Elon haven't formally announced what their next plans are, so this should be interesting. To be nice, I've clicked the "allow users to change vote" option, but I'm only keeping the poll open for four days -- through Sunday afternoon US time.

I tried to phrase this in a way to leave it open on whether the next mission would be a flight test or an operational mission. Just whichever the next Starship mission is that clears the launch mount.

When you vote, as usual, we'd love to get your thoughts. Particularly on what you think they'll go for for the next flight, why you think they'll do it that way, etc.

I was going to try to be cutesy with some hypothetical thoughts on what each of the months might mean, but decided to keep this nice and simple.

~Jon

[jongoff]

I may try changing my vote before the end of the poll, but my current thinking is that since this mission was so successful, that they're going to push to do the next flight ASAP, to get rid of the last V2 Starship, so they can move on to V3. My guess is they'll do some additional tweaks to the mission CONOPS and flight plan, to stress things further, but only make limited hardware tweaks. With minor changes, I think they have a good shot at the next mission happening before the end of September, which would give them a decent shot at clearing the decks for a late Q4 first flight of V3.

That said, I could also see many of the other options as being likely -- maybe they try to do something more aggressive with the final V2 mission, which takes a bit more time (Oct/Nov). Or maybe they decide to just skip the final V2 mission and move straight to V3. All of those seem plausible, but just flying again ASAP seems most likely to me as of today.

~Jon

[DanClemmensen]

I voted October. Two months elapsed prior to 6, 7, 8, and 9. The interval before 10 was longer due to the Massey's RUD and resulting OLM Ship SF kludge.

I would hope for a shorter interval based on increased knowledge, but they will still need to use the OLM Ship SF kludge, so this balances out. In addition, there is less schedule pressure because flight 12 cannot fly until Massey's and Pad 2 are ready, so flight 11 is not on its critical path.

[sdsds]

I too reserve the option of changing my prediction before the poll closes, but for now: October 14, 2025. That's based on the 49 day interval between IFTs 7 and 8. (I don't consider the 38 day interval between IFTs 5 and 6 to be representative.)

Edit to add a slightly more nuanced prediction, using the interval between flights 5 and 6 as the 25th percentile and the interval between flights 6 and 7 as the 75th percentile.

Edit again: as hinted I have changed my vote to September. The median of my new distribution is ~48 days (October) but the likelihood of a September launch is higher than that for an October launch:
September: ~33%
October: ~25%
November: ~15%

This allows for both the possibility of a very quick turn-around and also for the possibility of a mishap that destroys either the remaining v2 booster or ship. (Note the log scale on the x-axis.)

[catdlr]

I voted October. Two months elapsed prior to 6, 7, 8, and 9. The interval before 10 was longer due to the Massey's RUD and resulting OLM Ship SF kludge.

I would hope for a shorter interval based on increased knowledge, but they will still need to use the OLM Ship SF kludge, so this balances out. In addition, there is less schedule pressure because flight 12 cannot fly until Massey's and Pad 2 are ready, so flight 11 is not on its critical path.

Agreed and voted the same.

Tony

[Llian Rhydderch]

SpaceX started the year 2025 with plans to reach a rate of >2 Starship launches per month.  Musk aspirational goal, and all that.

There have been a number of reasons to slow that rate down as they've dealt with multiple ship anomalies & RUDs.  With a clean v2 Starship flight behind them now, there's no reason for Musk not to go FULL SEND on the last v2 flight:  B15.2 & S38, learn what they can, and endeavor to rapidly steer all work to the future v3 design and v3-compatible launch mount.

I'll estimate they are successful, and get it off in late September.  Thus clearing the deck for 4th quarter to focus on the v3 transition.

[Robotbeat]

Hey, no option for August!

I voted for October. They could actually hit September, tho.

I didn't get a chance to gloat about picking August for Flight 10 and winning before the thread was locked.

[jongoff]

I may try changing my vote before the end of the poll, but my current thinking is that since this mission was so successful, that they're going to push to do the next flight ASAP, to get rid of the last V2 Starship, so they can move on to V3. My guess is they'll do some additional tweaks to the mission CONOPS and flight plan, to stress things further, but only make limited hardware tweaks. With minor changes, I think they have a good shot at the next mission happening before the end of September, which would give them a decent shot at clearing the decks for a late Q4 first flight of V3.

That said, I could also see many of the other options as being likely -- maybe they try to do something more aggressive with the final V2 mission, which takes a bit more time (Oct/Nov). Or maybe they decide to just skip the final V2 mission and move straight to V3. All of those seem plausible, but just flying again ASAP seems most likely to me as of today.

~Jon

After thinking some more, I decided to change my vote to October. I still think September is possible, but it would be late September even if they sprinted to it, and if they want to add any new things to test, it could easily bump it out by a few weeks.

~Jon

[Vultur]

I think late September is entirely possible, but I voted October because that could either be a relatively quick campaign with a few weather delays or whatever, pushing it onto the first few days of October, or more work ending up in late October.

[daedalus1]

September is tight, very likely October.

[jongoff]

Hmm... very tight grouping. Maybe I should've done it in half-month chunks. Oh well.

That said, the voting results were pretty clear, and very similar to the results I got from my twitter poll as well -- https://twitter.com/rocketrepreneur/status/1960813631362490881

I'd love for SpaceX to make me regret switching my vote from September to October.

~Jon

[Robotbeat]

The real big question is Flight 12, the first V3.

[AmigaClone]

The real big question is Flight 12, the first V3.

I would say as early as late December to start of April. OLM-2(B) and the rebuilt static test facility at Massey's Test Site will likely be the limiting factors.

[jongoff]

With a very clean launch through booster splashdown and SECO, it looks like the wisdom of crowds won this one -- October it was, like 70% of us guessed!

I'll create a Flight 12 poll probably tonight or tomorrow. As Robotbeat put it, that's a much bigger questionmark.

Should I split it up into half-month intervals for more granularity on the guesses?

~Jon

[Robotbeat]

Can’t really gloat about winning this as 70% of us voted October.

[AmigaClone]

With a very clean launch through booster splashdown and SECO, it looks like the wisdom of crowds won this one -- October it was, like 70% of us guessed!

I'll create a Flight 12 poll probably tonight or tomorrow. As Robotbeat put it, that's a much bigger questionmark.

Should I split it up into half-month intervals for more granularity on the guesses?

~Jon

I would say half-month intervals for at least January-April 2026. Before that range could be "Before the end of 2025" After that range you might want to have a couple of single-month intervals then "July 2026 or later" and "Never".

[AmigaClone]

I too reserve the option of changing my prediction before the poll closes, but for now: October 14, 2025. That's based on the 49 day interval between IFTs 7 and 8. (I don't consider the 38 day interval between IFTs 5 and 6 to be representative.)

Edit to add a slightly more nuanced prediction, using the interval between flights 5 and 6 as the 25th percentile and the interval between flights 6 and 7 as the 75th percentile.

Edit again: as hinted I have changed my vote to September. The median of my new distribution is ~48 days (October) but the likelihood of a September launch is higher than that for an October launch:
September: ~33%
October: ~25%
November: ~15%

This allows for both the possibility of a very quick turn-around and also for the possibility of a mishap that destroys either the remaining v2 booster or ship. (Note the log scale on the x-axis.)

Your original guess was within 40 minutes of being accurate using UTC  .

[jongoff]

Ok, I mostly took AmigaClone's recommendations and started the poll for Flight 12: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=63682

I figured that even though a pre-end-of-2025 launch is extremely unlikely, it's fine if the poll has a bunch of zeros for the first few lines (unless someone thinks they know something we don't know).

~Jon

[Vultur]

Can’t really gloat about winning this as 70% of us voted October.

Yeah. Flight 11 felt like we had something to work from to predict with. Flight 12 is much more unknown.

[Robotbeat]

Ok, I mostly took AmigaClone's recommendations and started the poll for Flight 12: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=63682

I figured that even though a pre-end-of-2025 launch is extremely unlikely, it's fine if the poll has a bunch of zeros for the first few lines (unless someone thinks they know something we don't know).

~Jon

Oh dang, you have a gazillion poll choices… I guess you want fewer people to be able to claim they were right.