I don't think Starship has gotten to orbit yet. It's gotten to altitude but not speed. That's a very big deal, because slowing down from that speed is a massive challenge unto itself.

Orbit is scheduled for the test after next, if all goes well.

They don't really need Starship just for orbit. They've already got ships that get to the ISS and back. They really do need to get Starship to orbit or their plans really will be hosed.

>I don't think Starship has gotten to orbit yet. It's gotten to altitude but not speed.

I'm honestly kinda curious how you came to this thinking after watching the launches, like the last Flight 11 [0]? They have the velocity listed at all times right there in the bottom corner. It's peaking over 7.4 km/s, seems pretty clear they were stopping just barely short and maintaining a ballistic path on purpose exactly as they said they would in the flight plan they filed ahead of time with the FAA for deorbit safety purposes, not because they couldn't have technically squeezed out another few hundred m/s and different trajectory if that was the goal. It's a hardware rich program, and their testing sequence has been reasonably careful about controlling the space of out of bounds scenarios (on the scale of rocketry). What has lead you to believe that they can do 7.4+ km/s with Raptor 2 and Block 2 but v3 won't be able to do ~7.8 (or that they couldn't have done it with v2 for that matter)?

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0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tvK7flZ72c

They've pretty clearly demonstrated the ability to get to orbit but have, quite reasonably, not actually put the thing into orbit. Given the size of the rocket they've been needing to demonstrate things like the relight for control after achieving orbit and have prioritized other issues like figuring out reentry.

So yes, you are literally correct in that they haven't put one in orbit, but it's more out of caution than capability. What they've only demonstrated in the most recent tests is that they have good reason to believe to believe that they can deorbit in a controlled fashion. But... now they've upgraded everything: raptor 3, booster v3, starship v3. Those need to prove out those capabilities again.

So I wouldn't be surprised if they continue the suborbital program for the next 3 or 4 tests. Given all the redesign, they aren't exactly at the beginning, but they have to show that they haven't broken what they previously fixed.

AFAIK they are just cutting the engines off some seconds before they would achieve full orbit, and they have already demonstrated deorbut burns. So I don't think a proper orbit will be a big hurdle for SpaceX.