Just Now: Musk’s Second-Gen Starship Completes Final Flight! Bonus: Jensen Huang Personally Delivers Supercomputer

Starship V2 Farewell Mission — A Smooth Final Flight

The 11th and final Starship V2 mission ended successfully just moments ago.

Key highlights:

• Booster 15 (flight-proven) took to the skies again.
• 8 Starlink simulators deployed flawlessly.
• Multiple heat shield tiles removed for extreme stress testing.
• Spacecraft concluded with a planned breakup splashdown over the Indian Ocean.

This flight closes the chapter on Starship V2 and signals the shift toward V3 — SpaceX’s pivotal variant aimed at enabling future Mars landings. As Elon Musk has often emphasized, Starship is a continuously iterated system.

---

VIP Visit — Jensen Huang Delivers DGX Spark

An unexpected highlight: NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang visited Starbase, Texas, delivering the upcoming DGX Spark personal supercomputer to Musk.

Notably, in 2016, Musk’s team was among the first to receive a DGX‑1 from Huang.

---

The Finish Line for V2 — The Starting Line for V3

Mission hardware:

• Super Heavy Booster 15 (B15‑2)
• Starship Ship 38 (S38)

Booster 15 Background

• Flight‑proven — previously flew during Mission 8.
• Equipped with 24 recycled Raptor engines.
• Demonstrated the “chopstick rocket catch” in earlier flights.
• This mission’s primary goal: validate new landing ignition engine configuration for next-gen boosters.

Launch Sequence Recap

• Liftoff — Super Heavy ignited all engines and climbed toward orbit.
• Hot‑stage separation (~2.5 minutes in) —
• The Ship ignited its 6 engines (combined thrust ≈ 64 Boeing 747s).
• Super Heavy initiated boostback toward splashdown zone.
• Booster flip maneuver — reoriented for retro-thrust.
• Reverse burn — 13 engines first, then switched to 5 for precise control.
• Previously: 3 engines used.
• V3 design: 5 engines for redundancy.
• Landing ignition test succeeded offshore in the Gulf of Mexico (no tower capture).

---

One Launch = Twenty — Musk’s Starlink V3 Strategy

The Starship upper stage’s key tasks:

Starlink Simulator Deployment

• 8 simulators (each ≈ 2,000 kg) — total ≈ 16,000 kg payload.
• Released into same suborbital trajectory as Starship.
• Smooth deployment — 1 minute per satellite.
• Side payload bay door opened mid‑orbit (unlike nose cone designs).
• Rail system improvements eliminated previous hiccups.

Why This Matters

SpaceX aims for Starship to:

• Replace Falcon 9 as primary satellite deployment platform.
• Launch Starlink V3 satellites:
• 20× Falcon 9’s per‑launch capacity.
• Up to 60 Tbps network capacity added per launch.
• Lower cost/kg to orbit.

Additional Testing

• Single Raptor re‑ignition in space — simulated de‑orbit burn for future missions.

---

Extreme Heat Shield Testing

Starship’s Thermal Protection:

• Covered in thousands of tiles with small gaps (allow metal structure expansion/shrinkage).
• Gaps sometimes allow plasma infiltration → edge overheating.

Lessons from Flight 10

• Tile gap infiltration caused local ablation.
• Investigation: solid propellant residue ignited during venting → partial structure & flap damage.

Flight 11 Experiment

• Deliberately removed tiles from fragile zones — no ablative backup layer in some areas.
• Exposed structure tested against direct re‑entry heat.
• Wider use of Crunch Wrap — high‑temp felt blocking plasma between tiles.
• First possible full‑craft deployment of Crunch Wrap.

Production scale:

• Florida site: ~1,000 tiles/day currently.
• Designed capacity: ~7,000 tiles/day (≈ 1 tile every 13 seconds) — enough for 10 Starships/month.

---

Testing Future RTLS Flight Profiles

Complex Re‑entry Maneuvers

• Dynamic skew during supersonic/hypersonic flight — rolling sideways for simulated precision landings.
• Large turn in subsonic stage before belly landing posture — tests for tower-assisted landings.

Conclusion

• Splashdown in Indian Ocean — planned destruction post-impact.
• Data collected for:
• Next-gen Super Heavy booster.
• Heat shield stress validation.
• Future Return‑To‑Launch‑Site procedures.
• Marks final launch for current Starbase pad — major upgrades ahead.

---

Iteration as Innovation

Fly‑and‑modify approach — test in real flight, improve rapidly, skip long ground simulations.

High risk, but extreme iteration speed — core to Musk’s philosophy:

Faster progress via faster failures.

---

Parallels in Content Creation

In aerospace and media alike, iterative improvement accelerates outcomes.

Like SpaceX, creators use open-source AI platforms such as AiToEarn官网 to:

• Generate, publish, and monetize content across multiple channels.
• Integrate tools for cross‑platform publishing, analytics, and ranking.
• Apply feedback loops for rapid refinement.

Explore AiToEarn核心应用 for strategies that mirror Starship’s fast iteration philosophy — whether you’re aiming for Mars or viral reach.