SpaceX Starship Orbital Launch Being Deliberately Delayed...NASA isn't Happy!

SpaceX Starship Orbital Launch Being Deliberately Delayed...NASA isn't Happy!
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#alphatech
#techalpha
#spacex
#elonmusk
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0:00 Orbit Put on Hold
3:24 The Asymmetry of Risk
8:50 Catching the Ship
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SpaceX Starship Orbital Launch Being Deliberately Delayed...NASA isn't Happy!
“we have done an in-space Raptor lighting, so we feel pretty comfortable. But we want another sub-orbital shot on the next flight”
SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell has just confirmed that Starship Flight 13 will NOT be an orbital mission.This news might disappoint a lot of people — because everyone knows that just one successful orbital flight could completely transform the future of the entire Starship program.So why is SpaceX deliberately delaying the orbital attempt?
And why is this decision actually the smart and necessary move?

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SpaceX Starship Orbital Launch Being Deliberately Delayed...NASA isn't Happy!
For the Starship community, some milestones aren't just anticipated — they're longed for. And Starship's first orbital flight is absolutely one of them. Not because it's just another checkmark on a list — but because it marks the line between a rocket that's still learning how to fly, and one that actually conquers orbit. Once that happens, everything more complex becomes possible: orbital refueling, landing HLS on the Moon, and eventually — Mars.
And for a moment, every single sign pointed to Flight 13 being that flight.
Back in early April 2026, the FCC — the Federal Communications Commission — updated the Special Temporary Authority, or STA, for Flight 13. And the key change came down to one small line: the second stage — Ship 40 — was reclassified from suborbital to orbital. While Flight 12 kept both stages suborbital, Flight 13 was the first time the words "orbital second stage" showed up in an official SpaceX FCC filing. This wasn't community speculation — this was a document SpaceX filed themselves. And SpaceX doesn't file six-month STA windows for flights they're not serious about.
SpaceX Starship Orbital Launch Being Deliberately Delayed...NASA isn't Happy!
But then everything changed.
Just two months later, on the sidelines of SpaceX's IPO, Gwynne Shotwell — the company's President and COO — sat down with CNBC and said it plainly: Flight 13 will still be suborbital, just like every flight before it. That's going to sting for a lot of fans. So what happened? Why did SpaceX suddenly flip the plan?
The answer doesn't lie in a leadership decision — it lies in the data from Flight 12.
Looking back at the May 22nd flight, both the booster and the ship revealed the same core problem: Raptor 3 isn't reliable enough yet. Booster 19 lost an engine during ascent, and then when it came time for the boost back burn — the single most critical maneuver for getting the booster back to the launch site — the whole system collapsed. Engines flamed out one after another, couldn't relight, and the booster came screaming down into the Gulf of America at supersonic speed. Ship 39 wasn't any better — an RVAC engine shut down just 36 seconds after hot stage separation. The direct consequence: SpaceX had to skip the in-space engine relight entirely — the very thing that was supposed to be the centerpiece of the flight. And by the time it came in for landing, only 2 out of 3 center Raptors were still firing.
That is exactly why Flight 13 cannot go orbital.
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