But let me translate Elon Musk, here:
It was announced earlier this month that Elon Musk, the creator of SpaceX, will make an effort to launch his company’s futuristic, bullet-shaped Starship into orbit in January, but he is not optimistic about the outcome of that maiden test flight.
(Via Instapundit) Translation: that sumbitch gonna blow up. Which is why there’s not going to be a single thing on that prototype that won’t be a sensor to help engineers better understand why it blew up. Fortunately for Musk, by now it’s understood that SpaceX routinely incinerates a few rockets on its way to the next step. That has proven to be quite valuable to his long-term plans…
Here’s Elon’s criteria to evaluate the orbital launch’s success.
1. Don’t blow up the launch tower.
2. Clear the tower.
3. Good separation of Starship and Super Heavy
4. Good return to splashdown of Super Heavy in Gulf of Mexico.
5. Starship performing the belly hop 1/2 across the world.
6. Starship surviving the reentry.
7. Starship doing a good splashdown outside of Hawaii.
The first couple of launch are pathfinder missions to work out some of the procedures. I wouldn’t be surprise that they start launching Starlink by the 5th or 6th SS/SH test. They do have a lot of Starlink to get to orbit.