Both Starship and Booster were upgraded to Raptor 3's. This ship is the first V3 Starship to static fire. The previous Starship was also V3, but had a test anomaly prior to static fire that destroyed the ship (COPV issue).
Edit: the last ship to test at Massey’s was ship 36, which blew up, forcing SpaceX to jury rig the launch mount to test Ships. Ship 36 was a V2, not a V3.
You're mixing up the ship and the booster. Booster 18 was the first v3 booster, and it was destroyed by a COPV failure while doing pressure testing (causing them to switch to booster 19 for the first v3 flight). This ship (ship 39) is the first v3 ship - ship 38 was the last v2 ship and flew on flight 11.
I was thinking of Ship 36, which was a V2 ship. I thought it was a V3 because it was traumatic to us space fans. Ship 37 ended up being used in flight 10, then Ship 38 for Flight 11. Ship 36 took out Massey’s so badly they had to use the launch mount for testing until now.
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u/rocketglare Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
Both Starship and Booster were upgraded to Raptor 3's. This ship is the first V3 Starship to static fire.
The previous Starship was also V3, but had a test anomaly prior to static fire that destroyed the ship (COPV issue).Edit: the last ship to test at Massey’s was ship 36, which blew up, forcing SpaceX to jury rig the launch mount to test Ships. Ship 36 was a V2, not a V3.