Transcript
Chapter 1: Booster 21’s Static Fire and Pad Wear
On Friday evening, Booster 21 fired all 33 engines. SpaceX says: full duration. But the burn was 10 seconds shorter than on the last two flights, and SpaceX doesn’t say why.
I have a theory, and it tells us a lot about what one launch really costs a pad.
Ship 40 is sailing the wrong way around the planet, on purpose. Louisiana has already started work on its $100 billion Starbase. And Flight 14? Two weeks out. What did SpaceX just quietly change, and why?
My name is Felix. Welcome to What About It!? Let’s dive right in!
Starship Updates
Let’s start with the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Booster 21 has done its static fire! On Friday evening, all 33 Raptor engines came to life at Pad 2. SpaceX calls it a full duration burn. And still, it was around 10 seconds shorter than the ones from the last two flights. Around 15 to 16 seconds this time. So SpaceX says “full duration,” which means they reduced the full duration length by roughly 10 seconds. My thought is that this might have happened due to the wear after the past two flights. We saw SpaceX install extra burn plates in the trench, in locations where the wear from Flights 12 and 13 was stronger than expected.
A fun fact on the side: the trench has to endure more stress during a static fire than during a launch. During a launch, the booster stays attached to the pad for around 3 to maybe 4 seconds. Then it takes off and immediately provides relief for the flame diverter system. During a static fire, the booster doesn’t move at all. It sits there, blasting all 33 engines down into the trench, making the deluge system work hard and the diverter wear fast. So, SpaceX might have reduced the static fire length to preserve the pad? At least that’s my theory. If you have a better one, in the comments are right below.
Chapter 2: Flight 14 Preparations and Timeline
So Booster 21 was rolled back to Mega Bay 1 already and is now going through final preparations for Flight 14. Two weeks out. During Flight 12, there were 14 days between the booster static fire and a first launch attempt. And on Flight 13, there were only 6 days in between. Add a little extra care for everything this mission is supposed to do, and September 15th is now hard locked in on my calendar. That’s what we can expect, and that’s what the WAI team is working toward. And we still have no definitive answer if this flight will enter orbit or not. I’ll report as soon as there’s any sort of information!
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Final preparation, by the way, means exactly what it sounds like. Final inspections after the static fire, closing out open work items, and waiting for the pad to be ready to receive the full stack. The next time we see Booster 21 roll down Highway 4, it’s hopefully going to the launch mount. And even without a catch attempt, this is the launch I’m most excited about in years.
If Ship 41 enters orbit, Starship makes a huge step forward. Real satellites, into a real orbit, from the vehicle that is supposed to carry the future of spaceflight on its back. So, the last two weeks of waiting are going to be the hardest. And because we still don’t know which mission we’re getting, let me explain both variants.
If Flight 14 goes orbital, you know the profile from our earlier coverage. A minimum of 3 orbits to line the ground track back up with Starbase. Roughly four and a half hours between launch and landing. Starlink V3 deployment somewhere in the middle, and this time the satellites would stay up. So, a launch in the morning and a splashdown in the early afternoon, and one very intense half-day for the WAI livestream team.
If SpaceX decides on one more suborbital rehearsal instead, we get the familiar profile one more time, flown by the most refined Starship yet, with the orbital attempt moving one flight down the line. I know which version I’m hoping for. But I’ll take either one over an empty pad.
Over at Massey’s, our old friend S43.1 has begun testing. The mystery nose cone is in business. Jordan and Amy caught it on Wednesday afternoon. And Starship Gazer captured it at night with a fully frosty LOX header tank, standing in the super crusher. SpaceX’s quest for either a stronger or a lighter nose cone continues.
Remember how SpaceX launched Flight 13 into the fastest Max Q ever for a Starship stack? So this research is either done to determine how strong the current assembly is, or to find a way to keep it strong while reducing weight. Weight reduction is an aspect of development that comes after reliable operation has been established for Starship. Iterative design and I do expect SpaceX to take quite a few tons of weight out of both upper and lower stages of the Starship as time progresses. Version 3 was a first step. And every ton that comes out of that structure is a ton that goes into the payload bay instead. That’s why this unglamorous test stand work matters so much.
Chapter 3: Ship 40’s Surprising Route Home
Now to Ship 40
And to a little surprise. For weeks, we assumed the trip home would go east. Across the Pacific, through the Panama Canal, and into the Gulf. Guess what? Ship 40 is doing the opposite. Forte turned west and is taking the Cape of Good Hope route around Africa. And I want to know why. And so I did some digging. And the answer makes a lot of sense once you look at a globe instead of a flat map.
First, the Distance
Christmas Island sits in the eastern Indian Ocean. From there, going west around Africa to Brownsville is about 12,400 nautical miles. Our Panama estimate was around 13,000. So the “long way around” is actually the shorter way.
Second, There’s No Canal
No Panama slot booking, no tolls, no sitting at anchor with a priceless rocket on deck, waiting for a transit window ‘cause that place is pretty busy. But wait, if you’re going west anyway, why not Suez? That route would save another 400 miles. It would also lead straight through the Red Sea, though, and that is not a neighborhood where you send a cargo that cannot be replaced. So 400 extra miles for open ocean the entire way is the cheapest insurance policy ever written.
Third, the Season
The Pacific typhoon season peaks exactly now, in September and October. On the southern route, Forte has room to steer around weather systems instead of threading through them. Forte is currently making 14.8 knots, and the tracking data says it’ll arrive at the Port of Brownsville on October 8th. Our “first half of October” estimate from last episode holds.
Itinerary
And for everybody following along on the trackers, the itinerary looks like this: across the Indian Ocean now, around the Cape of Good Hope in the coming weeks, and then the long diagonal across the Atlantic and into the Gulf at the start of October. A flown Starship, coming home past the Cape of Good Hope. Magellan would be proud. And confused.
Chapter 4: Breaking Ground at Starbase Louisiana
Starbase, Louisiana Update
From the oceans to the swamps. Starbase, Louisiana is already moving! RGV Aerial Photography has done a first flyover at the new Louisiana site! Thank you, Mauricio! And SpaceX is not wasting any time. Mauricio found core drilling operations in several locations where SpaceX will build infrastructure. And that is one of the first things you do when you want to determine your next steps. You pull samples, and you learn what the ground can actually carry before you design a single foundation on it. And pay attention to the drilling pattern. The machines are working in the area where Starfactory and Terabay are planned, and the drill plan appears to trace the launch site locations down the coast. The master plan from the announcement video is being checked against reality, hole by hole. A dredge and its pipeline were also spotted near the port access. That’s either routine waterway work, or the first step toward bringing construction material in by water. SpaceX said so. We’ll keep watching to find out.
Felix Needs Help Getting a Green Card
So now I have a very important announcement! For the middle of the video, I have something different for you this time. We are still trying to desperately get a US green card. Yeah, that’s harder than you’d think. But you can help! We need to prove to our case officer that WAI has a real impact on the US. So if you work in the education system in the US, if you’re a teacher or a professor, and you’ve used our material in class before, send me an email to contact@whataboutit.net! Whether you’re showing our live streams to your students or using a passage from a video to explain something, send us a description of what you’re doing and what impact it has! Also, if you were inspired to enter a STEM field through watching What About It?! do the same thing! Did you choose aerospace engineering because we inspired you? Are you becoming an engineer because you rock twice a week? Help us! Send us an email explaining what you did, how we influenced your path, and what impact WAI had on your students or your career. Thank you so much. And for all the others, remember to like, subscribe, and become a channel member or Patron to help us grow further! You’re the reason we keep doing this. Thank you so much! You rock!
Water Table at Starbase
So, if you followed our Starbase, Texas coverage over the years, you know what comes after the drilling in the ground like this. Marshland doesn’t carry a launch pad on its own. Expect surcharge preloading to squeeze the water out of the soil, piles driven deep, and pile caps on top. The same playbook we basically just watched at the expansion site at Starbase, Texas, again. The samples they’re pulling right now will show how deep those piles have to go. Louisiana’s swamp is about to be studied more thoroughly than it ever was in its life.
And the state of Louisiana? They can hardly believe their luck. Governor Jeff Landry put it like this on Friday, quote: “The numbers speak for themselves. SpaceX’s $100 billion investment will transform Louisiana as we know it.” When we covered the announcement last week, we talked about 3,000 jobs to start and up to 10,000 in the long run. For the parish where the loudest thing until now was the shrimp boats, that is a radical change.
Chapter 5: Star Shield’s Expanding Military Role
StarShield and SpaceX Updates
Now, let’s look up again. Have you ever heard of StarShield? StarShield is SpaceX’s military Starlink constellation, which just got another major contract. For everyone newer to the channel: StarShield is the government version of Starlink. Dedicated Starlink military satellites are operated for the US government instead of for consumers like you and me. And this constellation isn’t done yet. The US Space Force signed up for a fleet-level service that will provide StarShield connectivity to military aircraft worldwide. At least 500 megabits per second down and at least 100 up, anywhere the soldiers are, delivered through StarShield Tile and Tile Mini aviation terminals.
So remember what we learned on the first-ever SpaceX earnings call? Commercial aviation is less than 10% penetrated, and passengers are booking connecting flights just to sit in a Starlink-equipped plane. Now the same story is playing out on the military side. SpaceX is quietly becoming critical communications infrastructure for aircraft, civilian and military alike. And every one of those contracts is feeding Falcon 9 and later Starship.
Where 10 years ago people were wondering what payloads SpaceX could even fly with a reusable rocket, we’re now looking at a situation where, even with reusable rockets, SpaceX can’t launch enough. So, Booster 21 and Ship 41 are both through their test campaigns, and Pad 2 is getting its final checks. Two weeks, if my calendar is right, and this is not a joke. Whatever Flight 14 turns out to be, suborbital or orbital, it’s going to be yet another spectacular Starship launch with all the excitement guaranteed.
Orbit or not to orbit on Flight 14, what’s your bet? I’ll be reading every single one, probably while refreshing Forte’s position on the tracker. What a time to be alive. And all of it to venture further and to stay. In fact, the Moon really starts to become the place to be.
Chapter 6: iSpace’s Third Attempt at the Moon
Exploring the Future of Lunar Landers
Here’s a fact to consider. Never in history were so many landers prepared to make the trip to our natural satellite at the same time. And not all of these landers come from the United States. Over in Japan, a Tokyo-based private company is racing to establish regular delivery service to the lunar surface. And it isn’t their first attempt either. ispace has tried this twice before. Two landers, two crashes. Both times they made it all the way to the Moon, and then lost the spacecraft in the final minutes before touchdown. And now, guess what? They have signed up for attempt number three. This time though, the whole mission is Japanese. The lander, the rocket, and a good part of the money behind it. No chopsticks involved, though. So, let’s take a look at what went wrong on the first two missions. And at why a launch contract signed a couple of weeks ago might be a bigger deal than it looks at first.
Mission 1
Mission 1 launched at the end of 2022 and arrived in April 2023. And it got so close! The lander was already descending. Everything looked nominal. And then the software got confused about its own altitude. It thought it was on the ground while it was still kilometers above. So it hovered. And hovered. Until the tanks were empty. And then it dropped and crashed.
Mission 2
Mission 2’s lander was named Resilience. It launched in January 2025 on a Falcon 9, sharing the ride with Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander. And that ride-sharing must have hurt until today. Because Blue Ghost went on to nail its landing and became the first private spacecraft to fully and cleanly touch down on the Moon. The most amazing imagery. Resilience, from the very same rocket, did not. It reached lunar orbit. It started its descent. And then, around 90 seconds before touchdown, the telemetry went wild. The altitude reading jumped from 52 m above the ground to a number below the surface. After that, all contact was lost. Resilience came down hard in a region called Mare Frigoris. The “Sea of Cold.” Up in the Moon’s northern latitudes. Two failed landings. Not the best start. Damn.
But after Mission 2, ispace did the right thing and took its time analyzing the data. The verdict: a hardware fault in the laser range finder. That is the lander’s altimeter. It fires a laser down at the surface and tells the spacecraft exactly how far it still has to fall. And that part didn’t work. On Resilience, this sensitive instrument failed to deliver valid measurements until it was too late to slow down. Engines and power systems performed as expected. The laser did not. So, ispace’s scorecard after those two missions reads two “almosts.” Landing on the Moon is unforgiving, and ispace has the scars to prove it. But if you want to learn how to walk, you are bound to fall now and then. The important part is getting back up and improving.
The New Lander: ULTRA
Which brings us to the new lander. And it is called ULTRA. And no, this is not Resilience with a fresh coat of paint. It is a genuinely new vehicle. Because here’s something not everyone knows. ispace was quietly running two separate lander programs in parallel. The company has a Japanese arm and an American arm located in Colorado. The Japanese team was building something called a Series 3. The American team was building a bigger lander called APEX 1.0, meant for a NASA delivery contract. And in March 2026, ispace asked itself a very reasonable question. Why are we building two things? Wouldn’t it be better to merge them? ULTRA is that merger. It takes the structure from the Japanese Series 3 and combines it with the propellant tanks and the communications gear from the American APEX design. Especially the coms gear got a major update. It is built to talk to relay satellites in lunar orbit instead of only beaming straight back to Earth. And that matters a lot if you ever want to land somewhere Earth can’t see. Like the far side.
There was also an engine swap along the way. The lander was supposed to fly with a new engine called VoidRunner. But the supplier ran into performance problems. Critical ones, unfortunately. The engine simply didn’t reach the efficiency it needed. So, to not waste more time, ispace pulled the VoidRunner and switched to an engine that has already flown on past lunar missions. And after two crashes, I fully understand that decision. Flight heritage is suddenly worth a lot. And the two previous failures? The fixes for both are baked directly into the ULTRA design. Whether they actually work, we’ll only see when this vehicle makes its own landing attempt.
Launch Contract
Now to the part that made the headlines. At the end of July 2026, ispace signed a launch contract with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to fly ULTRA on Japan’s H3 rocket. The target is 2028. And you know how it goes with dates like these. A target, not a promise. Pencil it in lightly. But the date isn’t the important part here anyway. Think about this. ispace’s first two landers both rode on an American rocket, the Falcon 9. The rocket did its job just fine. But it also meant that Japan’s showcase lunar company was renting its ride to space from overseas. ULTRA on H3 changes that. For the first time, a Japanese-built lander flies on a Japanese-built rocket. Don’t get this wrong, though. Japan is part of the Artemis program, it’s contributing hardware like the planned pressurized rover, and there are no plans to change that. This is more about the supply chain. About Japan being able to send payloads to the Moon without asking anyone else for a lift.
But while all this sounds nice on paper, there are some rough edges as well. H3, the rocket half of this partnership, has been on its own rollercoaster ride. Since the old H-IIA was retired in June 2025, H3 is Japan’s only heavy lifter. And in December of the same year, it failed. The upper stage engine had a problem during ascent, and a navigation satellite was lost, and so JAXA grounded the entire rocket for 6 months to find out what went wrong. In June 2026, H3 returned to flight with a stripped-down version, the H3-30. That variant flies without any strap-on boosters at all. Just its core engines. And then, just weeks ago in August, it flew again and put another navigation satellite exactly where it belonged. Two clean flights in a row after the failure. So, the rocket ispace is betting its third Moon shot on comes freshly tested out of a difficult year.
And it does have the muscle for the job. In the right configuration, two main engines plus four solid boosters, H3 can send more than 6,000 kg onto a path to the Moon. That’s a fully grown African elephant on its way to the lunar surface. Yeah, more than enough for a lander like ULTRA.
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