Created a visualization of various orbital planes for Starship and subsequent RTLS opportunities, ideally trying to help people who keep misunderstanding how the ground track moves and thus showing the limited number of return windows for all three launch sites.

Looks like about 24 hours until a possible starship catch.

There is one path from texas that brings them around in ~5hrs, but otherwise yeah the majority of these land on 20-24 hour intervals

Incredible. Thank you for making this

Why have you not included launches to 32° from the Cape? Both Boca Chica and Louisiana require doglegs to reach 32°, while the Cape doesn't.

Would just be too crowded for the visualization, you can see how it is perfectly in phase with one of the the Starbase trajectory anyway I did not feel like it was necessary to add additional points along the same line

Crowded, yes. Try launching on the ascending node, then you have a golden opportunity to RTLS to either Florida or Louisiana on the first orbit!

thx for this TSE, 🤗

@KenKirtland17 Awesome. How much cross range are you assuming for Starship?

@KenKirtland17 The green circles represent 300km which is the crossrange that the vehicle currently does (on flights 12 and 13). Orange circles around them are double that as a kind of "maybe possible" zone because I doubt the current profile is anywhere near the max it can do

@grant_cates @KenKirtland17 Space Shuttle cross range was what? 1500km? I'd think a Starship could do at least 2/3 of that...

@grant_cates @KenKirtland17 I agree with you , but we have not *seen* evidence of its maximum range, so simply adding the current range it is doing and a second one doubling that distance is adequate enough for the time being. It doesn't make much of a difference anyway

People really underestimate how quickly the Earth rotates out from under a 90-minute orbit. Without massive cross-range capability, those planar alignment windows are way tighter than most realize.

Very nice visualization! 👍

Ótimo trabalho, como sempre!

Are there any tfr's yet?

they have to do it in 1 orbit and use lift to extend the along track distance. Does not work in SSO though since it is all cross-track and they have to wait 24 hr.

The re-entry will probably be visible above my head, and I'm eagerly waiting to capture it. ☄️📷

Nice work! I tried explaining in words. This beats it by a mile.

Nice work. People keep assuming a booster can Always fly back to the pad whenever it wants. Ground track shifts ~22.5 deg west each rev, so the pad passes back under the plane once daily. Explained this at club nights more than once.

Outstanding visualization!

28° ?

Having more than one track at a time is confusing.

Really cool content 🤍

This is one of the cleanest visualizations of why Starship RTLS windows are so tight. The 300 km current cross-range versus the 600 km “maybe” zone really shows how much extra capability would change the operational picture for all three sites.

Very cool, thanks.

Fascinating 🚀👏🇦🇺❣️

Yes, this is correct. I've been trying to explain that it takes 24 hrs on Ellie's and WAI's YouTube channels. They were both wrong.

Is 27° an operational Starlink orbit?