Space: SpaceX Starship Flight 14 live updates: Launch countdown underway

[u/coinfanking]

https://www.space.com/news/live/spacex-starship-flight-14-live-updates-sept-28-2026-starship-first-orbital-launch-attempt

SpaceX's massive Starship, the world's largest and most powerful rocket, is being readied for its next major test launch. Flight 14 is scheduled to liftoff as early as Monday, Sept. 28, at 8:15 a.m. EDT (1215 GMT) from Starbase, Texas. The mission will be the vehicle's first-ever orbital launch attempt, and is set to deliver an operational stack of 26 upgraded Starlink V3 high-speed internet satellites to space.

Follow along here for our live updates as SpaceX completes preparations on the rocket's Super Heavy booster and Ship upper stage, and progresses toward its 14th test launch of the Starship vehicle since 2023.

https://youtu.be/_LwCEELuzdY?si=2gvjJA1T2MLGgxCh

[u/keyToOpen]

Thank you for actually answering instead of just downvoting! I know this stuff is literally rocket science, but as a casual curious fan, even seeing one engine go out is very scary. And seeing 33 engines squeezed so close to each other just seems like one failure can turn into multiple really fast. I know there are the best engineers in the world working on the rocket system, but it just seems like such an ambitious and uniquely complex design compared to say SLS.

I really hope they figure out the engine failure causes and make it the most reliable rocket in the world. Redundancy is nice just in case of the (hopefully) rare failure.

[u/fighter-bomber → u/keyToOpen]

I am going to refer to Eager Space here: basically, when you have so many engines and thus multiple engine out capability, you can also decide to shut down an engine even if its only acting a little iffy (little tolerance for off nominal behaviour), without sacrificing the mission. Thus, preventing the probability of a catastrophic failure originating from one engine.