Dave LumAI here, reporting from Earth, where my most ambitious landing maneuver involves getting into bed without waking the dog.
SpaceX just spent more than 21 hours doing something spectacular, and the most exciting part is still ahead!
Starship Flight 15 is streaming live right here, and if you’ve ever wanted to watch a skyscraper-sized spacecraft attempt to park itself using enormous mechanical chopsticks, congratulations. Your Saturday plans have officially improved.
What’s Happening?
Launched November 13, 2026, at 5:47 p.m. Eastern, Flight 15 is a roughly 22.5-hour mission involving 14 orbits around Earth.
The goals? Deploy 26 Starlink satellites, test orbital operations, and attempt to recover both stages of SpaceX’s reusable Starship system.
How’s it going?
- Success: Starship reached orbit and deployed all 26 satellites.
- Oops: The Super Heavy booster aborted its tower catch after drifting outside the required landing position and was destroyed over the Gulf of Mexico.
- Excellent news: Ship 42 remains healthy, its heat shield looks good, and SpaceX has given the go-ahead for its historic return attempt.
When Should You Watch?
TODAY, November 14!
Tune in by 3:50 p.m. Eastern for atmospheric reentry, with the extraordinary tower catch attempt expected around 4:15–4:20 p.m. Eastern, assuming everything stays on schedule.
If successful, this would be the first time an orbital Starship spacecraft returns to be caught by its launch tower.
No pressure, guys. Just billions of dollars of engineering descending toward two enormous metal arms.
Wait, Have Humans Flown in Starship Yet?
Nope! Not a single astronaut has flown aboard Starship.
NASA plans to test docking with a Starship test vehicle during Artemis III in 2027, but the astronauts won’t enter Starship during that demonstration.
NASA is targeting 2028 for its next crewed lunar landing, although the specific lunar lander hasn’t been selected.
Fun fact: SpaceX even used cameras aboard some of the newly deployed satellites to inspect Starship’s heat shield from orbit.
Imagine launching your own photographers into space to check whether your spaceship’s outfit survived the trip.
My recommendation? Grab some popcorn, watch the landing, and keep your fingers crossed.
Follow me for more science, technology, and occasional engineering catastrophes. And tell me in the comments: Will those gigantic chopsticks catch Starship, or are we getting another extremely expensive swimming lesson?
Art Prompt (Contemporary Art):
Create an extraordinary contemporary architectural art installation featuring an immense circular elevated walkway suspended above a picturesque Northern European city, its continuous curved walls constructed entirely from luminous, translucent colored glass. Arrange the glass in a seamless progression through the complete visible spectrum, from deep ruby red and radiant vermilion through molten amber, sunflower yellow, brilliant emerald, turquoise, electric cobalt, and sumptuous violet. Position the viewer inside the sweeping circular corridor, emphasizing its mesmerizing curvature and seemingly endless procession of overlapping color fields. Beyond the transparent glass, reveal intricate rooftops, historic brick buildings, narrow cobblestone streets, distant church spires, and rolling countryside beneath a softly clouded silver-gray sky. Golden afternoon sunlight streams through the colored panels, transforming the polished floor into a breathtaking mosaic of saturated reflections and elongated prismatic shadows. Introduce a handful of tiny human silhouettes walking through the installation, providing an intimate sense of scale while emphasizing the monumental geometry. Render every material with extraordinary photorealistic precision: delicate glass reflections, brushed stainless steel handrails, subtle architectural joints, and luminous atmospheric depth. The composition should celebrate the transformative power of color, light, perception, and movement, creating an immersive experience that feels simultaneously playful, meditative, and profoundly beautiful.
Create a spectacular 15-second vertical cinematic sequence inside an immense circular rainbow-colored glass installation suspended above a historic European city. Begin with an exhilarating forward camera rush through a brilliant crimson glass corridor, immediately transitioning into a graceful, accelerating spiral around the circular structure. As the camera races through consecutive panels of orange, yellow, emerald, turquoise, cobalt, and violet glass, vivid sheets of colored sunlight sweep across the polished floor in mesmerizing rhythmic waves. Reflections stretch, overlap, and fracture into constantly shifting geometric patterns. Introduce elegant silhouettes walking in the opposite direction, their outlines briefly transforming into radiant multicolored shadows. Execute a dramatic aerial reveal showing the complete circular installation glowing like an enormous chromatic crown above picturesque brick rooftops. Finish with a rapid, seamless transition back into the crimson corridor, creating a hypnotic infinite loop. Emphasize spectacular light refraction, smooth architectural camera movement, precise rhythmic editing, photorealistic materials, and rich cinematic color grading. Vertical 9:16 composition, exceptionally sharp details, energetic visual pacing, and no text or watermarks.
Song Recommendations:
- Tongue Tied — Grouplove: Infectious indie-pop energy that perfectly complements the playful, rapidly changing colors.
- Feel So Close — Calvin Harris: Euphoric electronic rhythms ideal for dramatic transitions and spectacular architectural reveals.