On 26 August 2025, SpaceX launched the world's largest rocket, successfully performing all parts of its planned mission, including "soft" splashdown landings of both its heavy booster in the Gulf of America/Mexico and the Starship spacecraft in the Indian Ocean after a one-hour, six-minute flight.
The following video covers the entire launch and presents about 50 minutes of background information before showing the launch. We recommend skipping ahead to a little past the 45-minute mark to get to the portion of the coverage that focuses on the launch and flight.
Watch Starship's tenth flight test → https://t.co/UIwbeGoo2B https://t.co/BFrpQPQFUw
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 26, 2025
The soft splashdown of the Starship vehicle is remarkable because it traveled over halfway around the world in little more than an hour, landing exactly where intended. The following video of its landing was captured by a camera SpaceX placed on a buoy at the target zone in the Indian Ocean:
If you're trying to get any spot on Earth, you usually won't ever need to fly more than halfway around the planet to get there. SpaceX just proved its Starship spacecraft can make that kind of trip in about an hour. That's a revolutionary capability in transportation.
But that's not all. The Starship spacecraft has the capability of carrying significant quantities of cargo, which will greatly reduce the cost of accessing space. Visual Capitalist's "Cost of Space Flight Before and After SpaceX" chart shows how Starship is expected to affect the cost to launch a satellite into Earth orbit:
Those reduced costs mean more than less expensive satellites, they also open the door to much wider space exploration, including interplanetary travel within the solar system.
SpaceX' tenth attempted mission of its prototype Starship vehicle is greatly expanding what's possible for transportation. After SpaceX' nine previous attempts, it's exciting to watch all the engineering it will take to make so much more possible finally starting to click together.
Labels: ideas, technology
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