Musk confirms goal of orbital Starship flight this year


Capitalism in space: Musk today confirmed the stories published earlier this week that SpaceX has a target goal of completing the first test orbital flight of Starship before the end of this year, possibly as early as July.

The only new news in the article is Musk’s confirmation. It does outline again the challenges SpaceX faces to meet this goal, recognizing that these dates are thus merely targets that almost certainly will not be met. It also recognizes that the targets tell us that development will continue to move forward swiftly, and that an orbital test flight is also likely not that far in the future.

Who wants to bet that a Starship/Super Heavy rocket reaches orbit before SLS? Right now the odds I’d say are about 50-50.

7 comments

  • eddie willers

    “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?”

    Robert Browning

  • Steve Richter

    angry astronaut https://youtu.be/LQFlSODBwX0 is a very good youtube channel that covers starship and other space news.

  • pzatchok

    Reaching orbit is easy compaired to re-entry and landing.

  • pawn

    pz-

    Yeah, that thinking always reminds me of the specifics of Kennedy’s challenge “and to safely return them”.

    So what are the odds for either one coming back in “one piece”.

    The Starship re-entry process is going to be a interesting real test.

    I do have to say that I love this stuff. The pace is wonderful.

  • Star Bird

    When soon will they be launching Long Range manned Flight to the Andromada Galaxy?

  • wayne

    eddie-
    good stuff.

  • Edward

    From the article:

    Even after reaching orbit for the first time, SpaceX will likely continue Starship development largely unchanged, treating the orbital regime as just another sandbox to test and refine Starship prototypes with.

    SpaceX has limited experience operating in space. Fortunately, Starlink is giving them additional experience, but their tests will teach them quite a bit about large structures in orbit. Starship is a pretty large structure for reentry, too. Transferring large amounts of propellants in orbit is also new, but NASA had been confident that it could be done, as it was one of the methods that they considered for Apollo. Keeping alive a large number of people will also be a new challenge.

    We have been seeing a lot of stainless steel on Starship, even in the animations, but SpaceX will need to assess the thermal control in space. Will they be able to have exposed metal, like the Apollo service module, or will they need thermal materials, like many satellites?

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