Starship Probably Isn't Launching May 15th... Here's Why [6:39]

YouTube transcript reformatted at textformatter.ai *may* follow.

What About It? (Felix S)
range of dates 12th through 18th
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyo1qhoFOX0

Ellie’s Transcript

Well, you guys, I’ve been grasping at straws to try and put together a Starship update because just when it seems that we’re making progress, then we have a bit of a delay or a little bit of a setback. So, let me tell you where we’re at and why I don’t think that May 15th is a likely date for the debut of V3, but that doesn’t mean that we won’t have a launch in May. So, let’s rewind the clock just a little bit to May 7th when we had this beautiful full thrust 33 engine static fire with Superheavy version 3 or V3.

This was a full duration static fire and quite a long one at that. So, following this successful static fire test of booster 19, ship 39 began rolling out to the pad. And as you can see, at one point during that rollout, ship 39 had to come to a halt, creating quite a wobble that a lot of folks were talking about on X. So, thank you to NSF for capturing all of the 24/7 action down at Starbase. But then, ship 39 finally made it to the pad. But we had yet another small issue, which there was apparently an issue with the chopsticks, and they had to fix a skate. But they were able to of course fix that and achieve the first full stack of Starship V3. And you can see how beautiful this duo looks. And this full stack just set another record as the tallest rocket and most powerful in history. Now 1.3 m or about 5 ft taller than the V2 stack.

But when Saturday rolled around, a lot of us thought that we might get an early Mother’s Day gift of seeing a wet dress rehearsal. Thought this might happen around noon, but the hours just kept going by and we still did not have a wet dress rehearsal. Now, part of this is because this is all brand new. It’s a brand new pad. It’s a brand new booster. It’s a brand new ship. We got brand new engines. There’s a lot of new components. And so of course it’s not unexpected that there might be some issues or adjustments needed, but Highway 4 was ultimately closed and it seemed like we were going to have a wet dress rehearsal. And one important change with V3 is that the prop loading will now be faster with the V3 booster and ship with the new tank farm. Yet again, another new component. But the prop loading could take maybe about 30 minutes, which is down from almost an hour for what it took with V2.

But after many, many hours, actually around 9:45 p.m. at night on Saturday, it seemed that they did run into an issue with propellant loading and they were unable to fix it. So, they did not complete a wet dress rehearsal. The road was reopened and now we’re going to have to wait. So today I’m releasing this on Sunday, May 10th. Happy Mother’s Day. A lot of you guys may be wondering, will we get a wet dress rehearsal today? And unfortunately, probably not. According to NASA’s space flight, they could attempt Sunday, but they’d need to find a way around this, which they attached this PDF, which basically outlines that SpaceX is not allowed to do these tests on holidays, which as you can see highlighted, uh, includes Mother’s Day.

Well, I can tell you that this mother would be totally fine with seeing them do a wet dress rehearsal, but of course, this is because there is that public beach at the end of the highway and maybe some local mothers would love to enjoy the beach. So, this is unfortunate and basically the bottom line, I know that I’m kind of just scrapping together some information, but I wanted to give you guys the latest because I haven’t published in a week. I’ve been kind of trying to figure out when a good estimate for a launch day would be for you. And so this is the latest information. Basically, we thought that flight 12 would be May 12th. Then it was pretty well established that it would likely be May 15th. Because of the issue that they had today, it probably is not going to be May 15th. And I’m pretty confident saying that.

So, because they’re unlikely to be able to do a wet dress rehearsal today, May 10th, on Mother’s Day, they still need to complete that wet dress rehearsal, and the work isn’t done after that. Once the wet dress rehearsal is successful, ship 39 will have to go all the way back to Massis for an igniter test because an engine was replaced after the static fire. Of course, there’s always some final prep work for both the booster and the ship. They’ll have to load those dummy Starlinks. And all of this will probably take about a week from when the wet dress rehearsal is completed. So, we may not get a launch next weekend after all. It’s probably no earlier than May 18th, and it may even be a slightly longer push to May 22nd.

But as you can see, some NOTAMs were posted with launch dates supporting launch windows from May 15th through May 21st. So that is kind of the latest. I know that it’s not much information, but I’m hoping that the least I can do here is help you guys with your planning purposes, and I’ll keep staying on top of the story. But for right now, I really think that May 15th is uh probably not very feasible. So, I think they still can pull it off in May. I think SpaceX is very determined to launch this rocket, but of course, like I mentioned earlier in the video, there’s a lot of new things going on and so of course they want to get it right.

They have that IPO coming up. Um, you know, we’ll see if that also influences the situation, but it’s hard to believe that it’s been like seven months since we’ve seen Starship launch. Man, the last time was in November of last year, so we are well overdue, but that is the latest and the greatest. Uh, hopefully you guys are having a great Mother’s Day. Thank you so much for watching this video and supporting my channel. If you want to support me, please subscribe. It’s completely free. And I’ll see you in the next video.

The next SpaceX Starship launch, designated Flight 12, is scheduled for May 15, 2026, at 22:30 UTC (5:30 PM CDT).

Key details for this mission include:

Vehicle Configuration: This will be the maiden flight of the Block 3 variant, featuring Booster 19 and Ship 39.

Launch Site: The launch will take place from Starbase, Orbital Launch Pad 2 (OLP-2), marking the first launch from this new pad.

Mission Profile: The flight will follow a transatmospheric trajectory similar to previous tests, with the upper stage falling slightly short of orbital velocity.

Context: Flight 12 follows the last launch (Flight 11) on October 13, 2025, and follows the destruction of the originally planned Booster 18 during testing.

AI-generated answer. Please verify critical facts.

https://search.brave.com/search?q=starship+launch+date&summary=1

Underdevelopment

But what about Jefferson?

(I will see myself out)

That was a slick comment

Did they find that one of their Raptor engines is missing?

Show some grace.

You have to do that kind of thing with grace. :)

They’ve swapped out a few for apparently technical problems, taking them off the next super heavy that’s under construction.