Starship prototype #8 gets its nosecone
Screen capture from LabPadre live stream.
Capitalism in space: SpaceX has now installed the nosecone on Starship prototype #8 in advance of its first vertical hop to 50,000 feet, or more than ten miles, expected sometime in November.
Curiously, hours prior to nose installation, SpaceX apparently removed one of Starship SN8’s three Raptor engines while also revealing that a spare fourth engine was already in Boca Chica. In other words, the prototype likely has only two Raptor engines installed at the moment, meaning that SpaceX will need to install another before the company can prepare for SN8’s next major test campaign.
According to CEO Elon Musk, the plan was to static fire Starship SN8’s three Raptor engines, perform final inspections and checkouts, perform another static fire, and finally attempt the first high-attitude Starship flight test. As of October 22nd, SpaceX has seemingly completed the two steps. Nosecone freshly installed, it’s likely that SpaceX will use the second triple-Raptor static fire opportunity to test the engines while feeding propellant solely from Starship’s liquid oxygen and methane header tanks – the latter of which is located in the nose.
The removal of one engine suggests they found something in that engine they didn’t like during last week’s static fire test, though that is mere speculation on my part.
The addition of the nosecone, with its own fins, clearly changes the appearance of prototype #8, making it look truly like a rocket ship. In fact, it looks more like the rocket ship imagined by science fiction writers for decades prior to the advent of spaceflight in the 1960s. The irony is that this is the first real rocket since the V2 in World War II to have this look.
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In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
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Screen capture from LabPadre live stream.
Capitalism in space: SpaceX has now installed the nosecone on Starship prototype #8 in advance of its first vertical hop to 50,000 feet, or more than ten miles, expected sometime in November.
Curiously, hours prior to nose installation, SpaceX apparently removed one of Starship SN8’s three Raptor engines while also revealing that a spare fourth engine was already in Boca Chica. In other words, the prototype likely has only two Raptor engines installed at the moment, meaning that SpaceX will need to install another before the company can prepare for SN8’s next major test campaign.
According to CEO Elon Musk, the plan was to static fire Starship SN8’s three Raptor engines, perform final inspections and checkouts, perform another static fire, and finally attempt the first high-attitude Starship flight test. As of October 22nd, SpaceX has seemingly completed the two steps. Nosecone freshly installed, it’s likely that SpaceX will use the second triple-Raptor static fire opportunity to test the engines while feeding propellant solely from Starship’s liquid oxygen and methane header tanks – the latter of which is located in the nose.
The removal of one engine suggests they found something in that engine they didn’t like during last week’s static fire test, though that is mere speculation on my part.
The addition of the nosecone, with its own fins, clearly changes the appearance of prototype #8, making it look truly like a rocket ship. In fact, it looks more like the rocket ship imagined by science fiction writers for decades prior to the advent of spaceflight in the 1960s. The irony is that this is the first real rocket since the V2 in World War II to have this look.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
I can’t wait to see SN8 soar!
I am curious how technicians will access the nosecone / upper fins for close inspection & servicing in the absence of a service tower. The current man lifts don’t appear to have the reach.
The use of the term “nosecone” seems a bit misleading. This part of the rocket not carrying propellant comprises more than 1/3 of the total length, the join line being at the top of the orange cherry-picker cranes in the above photo, meaning much of this section is tubular, not tapered in a cone-like fashion. True, there is some fuel in a “header” tank in this section for balance purposes and aerial restarts, but in the main this is where the “payload” goes. Payload meaning cargo, satellites, passengers, or even more propellant, in the tanker version.
So perhaps “Payload Section” would be a better naming convention, and leave “nosecone” for very topmost segment that actually curves to a point?
I want to go for a ride.
Ray Van Dune wrote: “The use of the term ‘nosecone’ seems a bit misleading.”
The article used several different words, including “nose section” and “nose.” The nosecone itself is attached to the front of this section (the dictionary defines a nosecone as the cone-shaped nose of a rocket or aircraft, although the Starship nose looks more like a paraboloid than a cone).
On the other hand, “nosecone” is the word SpaceX used, and it is often best to stick with the manufacturer’s terms. Fairings often have sections that are cylindrical, and we tend to think of the whole fairing as the “nosecone” not just the conical section. We tend to think of the entire payload section of a rocket as the “nosecone.”
On the third hand, the gripping hand, the Starship (apart from the Super Heavy) is really a combination of different sections of a standard launch vehicle. Super Heavy is the equivalent of the first stage, and Starship is the equivalent of a combination of the upper stage and the payload fairing. What an interesting creation. Imagine someone willingly carrying the weight of the nosecone (fairing) all the way to space.
Robert wrote: “In fact, it looks more like the rocket ship imagined by science fiction writers for decades prior to the advent of spaceflight in the 1960s. The irony is that this is the first real rocket since the V2 in World War II to have this look.”
More irony is that those science fiction writers had given their readers the impression that the way to get to the Moon, or other planets, was to board a rocket that looked like a V2 and fly directly to the destination. The whole rocket would return to Earth, perhaps available for reuse. Starship comes close to this model, with the exception that a booster stage is needed and refueling is required in Earth orbit. Up until the 1960s, everyone knew that a V2-like rocket would take us to the Moon, and it would either land on its tail and the crew would climb down a long ladder, or if it was a rocket ship named Galileo then it would land on its side and the crew would climb down a short ladder.
However, rocket scientists of the time knew that the only two ways to get to the Moon required multiple stages, and either it would have to be a huge rocket (e.g. Vega) leaving stages behind, or it would require refueling in low Earth orbit with an Earth orbit rendezvous by a second rocket. For decades I have said that the science fiction writers as well as the experts had gotten it all wrong, because the Apollo solution turned out to be neither but used one large rocket and lunar orbit rendezvous, as imagined by a lone voice in the wilderness, as he called himself in his proposal paper. SpaceX is showing that a method less like Apollo and more like a combination of both groups’s ideas works well, including the reusability of the whole rocket, like the science fiction writers had imagined.
There is irony that SpaceX is designing their rocket more like the science fiction writers had imagined and somewhat less than the experts had known it had to be. But those science fiction types may be smarter than we give them credit for. One of them also proposed putting relay stations, satellites, in the geostationary orbit that someone else had calculated.
Rocketship XM lives!