SpaceX to build five Starship/Superheavy prototypes in 2023
According to Elon Musk, SpaceX intends to build five Starship/Superheavy prototypes in 2023 for flight testing.
Assuming they can get launch permits, these five rockets should provide the company ample launch testing capability for at least the next two years, especially if it succeeds in landing these units and can consider reusing them in test flights.
At this moment, the launch permits from the federal government appears the main obstacle to getting this heavy lift reusable rocket tested and operational.
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According to Elon Musk, SpaceX intends to build five Starship/Superheavy prototypes in 2023 for flight testing.
Assuming they can get launch permits, these five rockets should provide the company ample launch testing capability for at least the next two years, especially if it succeeds in landing these units and can consider reusing them in test flights.
At this moment, the launch permits from the federal government appears the main obstacle to getting this heavy lift reusable rocket tested and operational.
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.
Five rockets in 12 months is an impressive tempo – I mean, it’s makes SLS look embarrassing – but they will need to increase that a great deal, if they are going to meet their HLS milestones for NASA, let alone deploy the Starlink 2.0 constellation on the timetable they’ve committed to. (Let alone, colonize Mars!)
Curious what Elon’s team thinks they can build in 2024.
We’ll know its a go if Elon is spotted at Hunter’s house with large bags of cash.
Make a deal with Mexico, build a new launch platform a few miles south of the current facility, and send up any rockets that American bureaucrats won’t approve from there. I can see this scenario playing out in the very near future anyways. Elon is surely thinking globally.
Tom: I paste this comment in response to every comment making believe Musk can flee the U.S:
——————
Why is it the first reaction of so many people when I post stories like this is to suggest that Elon Musk flee, to run away? Not only can’t he do it (both for legal and practical reasons), it is the worst possibly reaction to this government overreach.
It is time all Americans stopped running. There really is no where else to go. We need to stand and fight, and force the government and its intolerant minions to back down. Otherwise, freedom will continue to lose ground everywhere.
I expect Musk to fight, as he has fought and won previously.
As for moving:
1. Legally he can’t. SpaceX as a rocket company falls until strict federal regulations. No matter where he moves those regulations will apply, especially because much of his work force and materials will come from the U.S.
2. Practically he can’t. The qualified workers and infrastructure doesn’t exist in these other locations. You can’t simply recreate this kind of hi-tech company in South Africa, in Mexico, or any other third world country.
What Elon has on his side, beyond merely SpaceX’s popular base of support and like-minded political allies, is that there are a whole lot of people at NASA and the Space Force deeply vested now in Starship succeeding.
If FAA drags their feet, a bureaucratic scrum could ensue.
The recent news of Tesla’s self-driving promotion being staged won’t help. Bob Lutz tried to warn him off trying to automate everything. That’s how Cabada was nearly killed. Reusing rockets is to libertarians what recycling is to Greens.
Nothing can stop Elon now.
If his car company dies so what he made the cash already.
Everything is riding on Starlink now. It has the potential of earning him billions a year for almost nothing.
‘Even the rocket company is now protected by the simple fact the government needs him more than he needs them. The SLS has failed even if it flies just fine. Its late and over priced. Eventually the politicians will cancel it, quietly but canceled non the less.
Sending people to Mars is a goal for his people to meet. Something to keep them energized. As soon as he proves its possible the governments of the world will rush to his door with buckets of cash.
Reusing rockets is to libertarians what recycling is to Greens.
The self-driving promotion was indeed a fiasco, but this proposition doesn’t follow from that. SpaceX doesn’t pull off 61 launches in 2022 without reusing first stages.
Delta II was also inexpensive-just small, and flew how many times?