SpaceX completes static fire test of three engines on Superheavy prototype #7
Capitalism in space: SpaceX yesterday successfully completed the first static fire test of more than one engine on its Superheavy prototype #7, firing three engines for five seconds.
NASASpaceflight livestreamed the test, and its footage suggests that only two engines may have fully lit up, with the third perhaps aborting. Whether or not the third Raptor joined the party, however, it was still the first multi-engine Super Heavy static fire that SpaceX has performed.
I have embedded that footage below. Expect more such tests in the coming days. If all works as planned (something we should not expect as this remains a development program), the tests will culminate in an orbital test flight sending Starship on a one orbit mission around the Earth. At present SpaceX wants that flight to occur before the end of this year.
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Capitalism in space: SpaceX yesterday successfully completed the first static fire test of more than one engine on its Superheavy prototype #7, firing three engines for five seconds.
NASASpaceflight livestreamed the test, and its footage suggests that only two engines may have fully lit up, with the third perhaps aborting. Whether or not the third Raptor joined the party, however, it was still the first multi-engine Super Heavy static fire that SpaceX has performed.
I have embedded that footage below. Expect more such tests in the coming days. If all works as planned (something we should not expect as this remains a development program), the tests will culminate in an orbital test flight sending Starship on a one orbit mission around the Earth. At present SpaceX wants that flight to occur before the end of this year.
The support of my readers through the years has given 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. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
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. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to 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.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five 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:
5. 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. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
HLLVs take time and commitment. Blowing up otherwise conventional Falcons every other landing attempt in the early days? That was one thing. This demands a less cavalier approach.
It’s been crudely enjoyable watching SpaceX drive the rest of the industry into involuntary fits of innovation.
Once again, really smart people who have to play catch-up.
Embarrassing that they all need to be buying vowels.
What are we paying them for?
GaryMike wrote: “It’s been crudely enjoyable watching SpaceX drive the rest of the industry into involuntary fits of innovation.”
It hasn’t been just SpaceX. Blue Origin thought that they were leading the way, but then they bogged down. Rocket Lab is also eager to lead innovative ideas. There have been other attempts to implement ideas that have yet to be used, such as the aerospike engine. Reaction Engines Ltd. in the U.K. is innovating an air-breathing rocket engine to save weight on the O2 carried in the lower atmosphere, and they intend to use it on their Skylon single stage to orbit rocket.
The main innovations that are needed would be to reduce prices and increase availability of launches. This is why Robert noted that if SpaceX meets its goal of 100 launches next year then it, by itself, will have launched more than the whole world’s annual launches for almost three decades, from 1991 through 2017.
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/in-2022-freedom-continues-to-fuel-the-launch-industry-towards-new-records/
In the 1990s, it was believed that if launch prices dropped to $2,000 per pound then there would be a great demand for launch services, and this seems to be the case. Commercial use of space is expanding beyond just communications, and communications is expanding, too.
It remains to be seen whether sheer mass or volume of payload on a single Starship launch vehicle drives the market, but in the meantime SpaceX plans to put up an extremely large number of satellites in constellations, so it is currently its own customer (is there a word for that?) and only customer (monopsony) for large-mass payloads. Hopefully, other companies will soon launch their heavy space station modules on Starship or a future heavy-launch competitor.