Now Playing
Starship V3 Launch Day: Hydraulic Fix, IPO Billions & Moon Stakes | May 22
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
SpaceX's Starship V3 faces its rescheduled launch window after a hydraulic pin failure scrubbed Flight 12 — with a $15B development bet, NASA's 2028 Moon timeline, and a looming IPO all riding on tonight's countdown. Six stories in six minutes.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
A hydraulic pin on SpaceX's launch tower failed to retract yesterday, and that single mechanical failure scrubbed the most consequential rocket test in years. Flight Twelve, the debut of Starship V3, was aborted on May twenty-first after a cascade of issues hit the pad.
Starship V3 is four hundred and seven feet tall and produces eighteen million pounds of thrust. It's designed to refuel in orbit, which is the capability that unlocks lunar and Mars missions with payloads exceeding one hundred metric tons.
The timing here matters in a second way. SpaceX recently filed its IPO prospectus, and the numbers inside it tell a clear story.
There's a third pressure layer sitting behind the IPO. NASA's Artemis program is targeting a crewed lunar landing by twenty twenty-eight, and Starship is the designated lunar lander.
The signal to watch on May twenty-second isn't just whether the rocket lifts off. The hydraulic pin fix is the first test.
Chapter summary auto-generated from the verified script. Listen to the full episode for the complete content.