Launch time has slipped, now in a little over half an hour.

https://x.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1768254684504936574?s=20

[Post-flight update]

My immediate thoughts: Booster didn’t survive, but it did seem to make it to the ocean intact, so that’s a step forward. They’ll probably figure out why they didn’t get a proper relight of the center Raptors, but that’s not important to a customer, any more than whether a Falcon booster comes home does.

As for Starship, they can clearly get into orbit, and open the payload bay doors, which is necessary to deploy a payload. But they didn’t demonstrate on-orbit engine relight, and until they do that, the ship can’t be considered operational, because it has to be able to deorbit, even if it can’t survive entry, so it doesn’t become a navigation hazard. They also seem to have an issue with attitude control, unless they planned that continual roll during coast (and that may have contributed to the failed entry as well), and absent that, they can’t deploy satellites. Until they solve those two issues, they can’t consider it operational. But I think that this was a huge step forward, and after another test in which they do relight the engines on orbit, and can demonstrate attitude control, they can start deploying satellites (likely Starlink initially).

[Update late morning]

Here‘s Marina Koren’s take.

[Update a while later]

OK, technically, they didn’t make orbit, but they certainly achieved orbital speed (as planned). They didn’t circularize because they didn’t intend to.

[Friday-morning update]

Here‘s Eric Berger’s take. He says that the roll was not planned, and it was why they didn’t attempt the relight.

[Bumped]