• NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    For all intents and purposes, starship has made it to orbit a few times. They purposely kept it sub orbital by cutting the engines off a few seconds early so it would re-enter the atmosphere where and as planned for their tests.

    You wouldn’t want a ship designed to survive re-entry to fail, and make landfall over a major city, but they have landed it as planned in the ocean in a controlled manner a couple times.

    (Edit: also the last 3 launches have been the V2 ship. It’s substantially different than the V1s they did land in the ocean and is having some growing pains)

    In the time SpaceX has designed, launched, landed, and reused two orbital boosters, no one else has done it once.