A month ago, I posted about Starship’s successful Test Flight 13, including how the ship most improbably survived its soft landing and belly flop into the ocean. Well, after weeks of nail-biting drama as recovery vessels rushed to the scene then tugged the mammoth vessel through rough seas, it has arrived in calm, sheltered waters off Christmas Island (Australian territory in the Indian Ocean). SpaceX engineers have conducted exhaustive on-scene analysis of the ship (you know how SpaceX loves data on what went right and wrong, so they can do it better next time).
And now a 48,000-ton semi-submersible named FORTE has arrived, and the ship is being loaded onto it. When it’s secure, they will begin another mult-week journey back to Starbase, Texas. Once there, you can believe engineers will pore over every square centimeter with an electron microscope (more or less).
What an incredible story - and incredible images! I can’t believe that such a massive vessel floats so well, and so high in the water.
