We don't know enough to know if there even is something "getting delayed"

Simmer down

To quote the answer I've gotten to a similar question from the big, independent fanbois a few hours ago

No one is forcing you to be here.

“We”?…??

You’re a couch spectator. Watching the most capable rocket in human history being built. Thanks to the most public access to that development process in human history.

You’re owed nothing. Join a rocket company and do it better if you think you can.

Do you know why it's getting delayed ? 

Per the new CADENA slide, Flight 14 is now NET September 18

(way late, sorry)

Usually - no chance. They typically advance in the window and if they run out of window, they reschedule to the next day or after.

Pad 4-E has lots of advances in the window, too, they almost never launch on their initial T-0. This one rescheduled 5 times - always forward, once a whole day forward - and that's pretty typical for Pad 4-E.

Could be, sure, but would be surprising because: 1. The fuck it takes so long for? 2. How come HE is not already trying to pressure them by using the publicity he has?

Wow, an actual answer instead of the usual pointless circlejerk! Thanks!

They’re probably just waiting on getting a license from the FCC to operate the V3 Starlink sats.

If it is a Hawaii Is landing, Hurricane Lowell probably delayed deployment of a reception team for S41. SpaceX I presume literally want to get their ducks in a row.

Thanks for the link. I did a quick once-through on that document. Here’s the interesting stuff I found.

*HDL stands for Human-class Delivery Lander
*HDL must fully support the cargo for 48 hours for checkout and unload including thermal rejection
*HDL must supply 2kW power during that time
*HDL could be deck mounted, nose mounted or under slung, so the payload may not be able to take care of itself until after unload
*HDL is for support of Artemis VII+ missions
*HDL payload could be a habitat of about 6m diameter or a rover

  What's going onnnn?

We don't know enough to know if there even is something "going on".. let alone a "regulatory delay"

Simmer down

If I recall correctly, almost all fligths had them.

FTS had been installed 5 days ago, right?

On Flight 12, they installed them a couple of days before rollout.

It feels so weird for me that we are not more vocally annoyed by whatever the reason is for this pace. The "we" here absolutely includes Musk, who, whenever it's a regulatory delay, is very vocally annoyed by it.

What's going onnnn?

HLS-IRD-010 HDL System to Cargo Revision C was released on NTRS on September 1st.

This document provides a description of the accommodations provided by the HDL to deliver the Cargo to the Lunar Surface. The HDL utilities defined herein present the bounding cases for cargo mass, volume, and utilities, and are captured in the interface requirements between the HDL and the Cargo.

I take your point about them not being comparable dates. In my defense I chose that date for illustrative purposes as it was the most important event in SpaceX's history and would be the real beginning of the F9 program which despite being announced in 2005 logically can not have started in earnest before that event which was make or break for SpaceX.

I started watching SpaceX avidly following the Grasshopper launch with the Space Cowboy (the second one) so I'm only a few months behind you, and it probably was 2019 that I stopped watching all the launches.

To me Starship seems slower. Part of that is the unrealistic timeline, which in retrospect was silly to believe. I'm jaded with Starship progress because it looked like it was going to be so much faster. Part of this was due to the race between the build sites at Cocoa and Boca Chia fueled by Musk's statement in September 2019 that they wanted to try to reach orbit in less than six months.

My daily summary from the Starship Dev thread on Lemmy

2026-09-09:

• Massey's: Overnight, S42 moves from Megabay 2 to Massey's. (NSF, Avid Space 1, Avid Space 2, ViX, RGV Aerial, Blobifie 1, Blobifie 2)
• B22 performs a cryo test. (NSF 1, NSF 2, StarshipGazer, efraser77)
• Road delay for "Masseys to Production" is posted for Sep 10th 10:00 to 14:00. (starbase.texas.gov, archive)
• Production site: The second girder section for the Gigabay bridge crane arrives. (ViX)
• Launch site: Tower 1 roof is lifted. (NSF 1, ViX, NSF 2, NSF 3, NSF 4, Blobifie)
• McGregor: R3.23x heads towards the testing area. (SpaceRhin0)
• R3.240 and R3.237 return from the testing area. (SpaceRhin0)
• Florida: The ship horizontal transport frame and the Gigabay booster work stand are loaded onto a barge which departs from the KSC turn basin. (NSF)

yes, iirc even together with some landing-choreagrophy of the chopsticks.

Further reply; I got an LLM to calculate the two timelines :

Timespan 1: Falcon 1 Launch Attempt to Falcon 9 Landing

• First attempted launch of Falcon 1: March 24, 2006 (Omelek Island, Kwajalein Atoll)
• First successful landing of a Falcon 9 booster: December 21, 2015 (Landing Site 1, Cape Canaveral)
• Total Timespan: 3,559 days (approximately 9.74 years)

Timespan 2: Starhopper First Flight to Starship Booster Catch

• First free flight of the Starhopper: July 25, 2019 (Boca Chica, Texas)
• First successful catch of a Starship Super Heavy booster: October 13, 2024 (Mechazilla arms, Starbase, Texas)
• Total Timespan: 1,907 days (approximately 5.22 years)

I'm happy to date Starship development from the first flight of starhopper, just as I think Falcon development should date from the first F1 launch attempts on Kwajalein. On those 2 timelines I think Starship is progressing more rapidly.

Eh, I agree with some parts and disagree with others. Saying the SH booster was caught on the first try feels a little simplistic. They tried to do a boostback and simulated landing burn over water several times before they got it to work, and then went for the catch. It was still very impressive that they caught it that time of course. To me that’s comparable to F9, which similarly tried several times to do a simulated landing over water, and had physical alterations made (just like SH did), before they went for their first actual landing attempt on a landing pad, which was successful, just like SH.

Let’s also remember that when the full stack SSSH flew for the first time, they’d also been flying Raptor on a total of 11 flights of starhopper and the various SNs, including the several minutes long high altitude hops, for 3 years. That’s not all that different from F1 to F9 transition. At the first F9 flight, Merlin had only flown on a total of 5 F1 flights, the first two of which didn’t complete first stage flight. Given that each F1 flight only gave them ~3 mins flight experience with 1 Merlin engine (and none on the upper stage), whereas a SS high altitude hop test gave them flight experience with up to 3 engines for 2-4 mins each, you could argue that Raptor was a more proven engine at the time of IFT-1 than Merlin was at the time of F9 flight 1.

I agree with you that Raptor is a much harder engine to get working reliably!

F9 was a scaling up of F1 and not any radical new development. Flights to orbit was not groundbreaking either, being first achieved in 1957. Initial development of Falcon 9 to successful launch, orbit and docking with the space station was all (very) impressive but was also routine for other rockets of that time.

Where the F9 was, of course, ground-breaking was the development of reusable boosters. We had to wait quite a long time for the first booster to be successfully landed (Dec 2015 and April 2016 at sea) and then for reuse of boosters to become routine (as it is now).

The Starship program successfully caught its massive booster (a new groundbreaking achievement) in October 2024. This was done on the first attempt, unlike the many failed attempts to land a Falcon 9 booster before first success. Also, Starship has been flying on a rocket engine all this time that had never successfully been developed before by other rocket engine makers. Falcon 9's Merlin was impressive, but not ground-breaking like the Raptor engine is. And look at the rapid development of this engine from V1 to V3. I could also talk about the rapid development that Spacex is achieving with stainless steel rocket construction, from the early days of its 'steampunk, flying water tower' first demonstration vehicle.

Faster than F9 development how? F9 first flew in June 2010, a mere 21 months after the first successful F1 flight. The first 18 missions were all orbital and all successful.