Starship Flight 14 (Starlink 31-1)

Starship Flight 14 is NET Monday September 28th, 7:23 AM CT!!, pending Regulatory approval.

As the Starship program ramps up from south Texas we are at orbital insertion! Flight 14 will be the first orbital and operational starship flight. SpaceX CFO Bret Johnson said on X that “Flight 14 will be the first profitable Starship flight”. Ship 41 will carry operational Starlink satellites and will put them in to an orbital level provided the . 

In FAA filing 1174-EX-ST-2026, there was a thought of catching both ship and booster. Elon Musk on X last month said that “a ship catch will be coming in a few months”. Given all of this evidence is there will not be a catch of a ship catch would be attempted because of overflight questions at Starbase and Florida (which isn’t ready anyways) as well as it being the first ship to return at orbital velocity. This has been verified by SpaceX through their X posts and their overview posted to their website. SuperHeavy will attempt a soft splashdown off the coast of Texas due to the following reasons; first, a V3 Superheavy has not successfully completed a soft splashdown or a successful full boost-back and landing burn, secondly there is only one operation tower and catch apparatus and a RUD on the pad structure would be a set back to the increasing cadence that SpaceX would like to be able to do in order to meet the needs of the Artemis program and the internal goals that SpaceX has for the Starship program.  

The importance of this flight is to be able to ramp cadence up to where it needs to be to be ready for Artemis III as well as refueling technology and extending length of orbital life. In the flight 13 webcast SpaceX said that it could remain on orbit for “about a day”. If SpaceX is go for orbital insertion at T+25 minutes into flight it will deploy Starlink V3 satellites conduct six orbits and splashdown in the Pacific ocean off the coast of Chile. If there isn't sufficient redundancy according to SpaceX they will not conduct the orbital insertion burn and copy the last suborbital trajectory and splashdown in the Indian Ocean again.

One of the easter eggs via SpaceX's post was that there are two tiles flying from Ship 40 along with some changes in the heat shield based on what was learned by Flight 13 from more attachment points at some of the places where tiles are prone to fly off to curved tiles at points where plasma can get behind the tiles. Orbital velocity will stretch and test the heatshield and the heatshield team.

As we are progressing towards higher cadence SpaceX has been playing the Starship Superheavy merry-go-round. This week while the Ship 41 and Booster 21 have been in the mega bays getting their final tune-ups, Booster 22 has cryoproofed, Ship 42 has gone to Masseys and its unclear if it has cryo-proofed and at time of writing was being lifted at Pad 2 for catch testing which included moving the ship in and out of the chopsticks to simulate moving from a catch position to a transport/lift position and then with stabilizers engaged raised to top of the tower and extended the Ship Quick Disconnect to test procedures for safing the ship for transport on a stand quickly after catch. All of these tests will hopefully decrease the time between flight 14 and flight 15.

What needs to happen before launch? We will need to have NOTAM and NOTMARS posted to have the keep out zones ready and prepared to allow a launch which we have those in place around the globe , we need to see the Starlink satellites loaded into Ship 41 and then road closures from production to pad, which were in place for the transport of the ship and then a wet dress rehearsal was completed on the morning of September 24th! Now we wait for FAA launch license while we watch and wait for the next step there was a mildly surprising de-stack on the morning of September 25th without a road delay looking forward to the restacking and imminent launch. We watch and wait!!

The stakes of this launch are as great as the early launches of V1 booster and ship. A successful flight will open the gates to a operational Starship flights and a quicker turnaround. A less that optimal results with Flight 14 will more than delay Flight 15 with adjustments based on lessons learned by flying.

As we watch, we live in a glorious age of space technologies and we need to enjoy the things we get to see. 

Excitement Guaranteed!