Starship prototype #20 completes another static fire launchpad test
Capitalism in space: Despite being blocked by the federal government bureauceacy from launching its Starship/Superheavy rocket on its first orbital flight, SpaceX yesterday successfully completed another static fire launchpad test of the 20th prototype of Starship.
It appears that this was the second static fire test that used all six of prototypes’s Raptor engines.
Meanwhile, Superheavy prototype #4 sits on the orbital launchpad, where similar static fire tests were expected but have not yet occurred. Either SpaceX engineers found they needed to additional revisions of the prototype before attempted such a test, which could fire as many as 29 Raptor engines at once, or the company has decided to hold back its testing because the FAA has not yet approved the environmental reassessment for the Boca Chica launch site. Firing the engines on Superheavy before that approval could be used by SpaceX’s environmental enemies as a public relations weapon to help kill the approval entirely.
Personally I think the answer is the former. It is not Elon Musk’s way to cower in fear of others. In fact, he is more likely to push forward, knowing that the publicity from a successful Superheavy static fire test will almost certainly be mostly positive and enthusiastic, thus helping to force politicians to force the bureaucracy to sign off its approval.
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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.
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.
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Capitalism in space: Despite being blocked by the federal government bureauceacy from launching its Starship/Superheavy rocket on its first orbital flight, SpaceX yesterday successfully completed another static fire launchpad test of the 20th prototype of Starship.
It appears that this was the second static fire test that used all six of prototypes’s Raptor engines.
Meanwhile, Superheavy prototype #4 sits on the orbital launchpad, where similar static fire tests were expected but have not yet occurred. Either SpaceX engineers found they needed to additional revisions of the prototype before attempted such a test, which could fire as many as 29 Raptor engines at once, or the company has decided to hold back its testing because the FAA has not yet approved the environmental reassessment for the Boca Chica launch site. Firing the engines on Superheavy before that approval could be used by SpaceX’s environmental enemies as a public relations weapon to help kill the approval entirely.
Personally I think the answer is the former. It is not Elon Musk’s way to cower in fear of others. In fact, he is more likely to push forward, knowing that the publicity from a successful Superheavy static fire test will almost certainly be mostly positive and enthusiastic, thus helping to force politicians to force the bureaucracy to sign off its approval.
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.
With the “upgraded” Raptor engines coming on line, could a fully fueled Starship ever be able to achieve, single stage to orbit, albeit with little or no cargo?
i.e. to deliver spacemen to the I.S.S. and maybe a couple of tons of supplies like the cargo dragon?
Asking for a friend…
Happy New Year to all.
Any word on where the oil rigs are in the construction phase?
I’d love to see him just move his orbital test launch out on a rig as a big finger to the eye of the regulators holding back progress.
Won’t happen obviously, but I’d love to see it just for the explosion of heads that would follow.
The reality loving, sometimes a bit harsh Dr. Jeff Bell was a great man. Everything he said about the crazy goal of colonizing Mars in this SpaceShow episode still applies – after more than 5 years – unchanged. Only the Mars and Musk madness has widened even more considerably among the fanboys. In my view, it is inevitable that the delusional Mars and Musk bubble will finally burst.
Enjoy this show.
https://www.thespaceshow.com/show/03-oct-2016/broadcast-2787-dr.-jeff-bell
Questioner,
You wrote: “Everything he said about the crazy goal of colonizing Mars in this SpaceShow episode still applies – after more than 5 years – unchanged.”
Hah! Some of it didn’t even apply at the time.
His example of the sun going into its red giant phase was absurd, and we know that he knows better. SpaceX succeeded in achievements that Dr. Bell and his sensible engineer friends had thought impossible. We lack evidence of shortened lifespan in free fall, such as on the ISS, and there is no evidence that people could not live long under 0.38 G environment; extrapolation of a hypothesis is not adequate evidence, and he should know this. It is why we do actual experiments under actual conditions. Considering that the Raptor engine has worked during flight testing, Dr. Bell is wrong again. He may dislike that the Space Shuttle and SpaceX push their engines beyond the usual limits, but that does not mean that they won’t work at those levels. Even NASA’s Perseverance Rover has shown that we can create the chemicals we need, in situ, and Bell thought this was just too much chemistry for we mere humans to be able to do.
Bell did not know his topic at all. He implied that it was bad that Musk would not use the usual Hohmann Transfer Orbit, thinking it would require too much fuel, but NASA and the other nations sending Mars probes haven’t used this orbit for decades, if they ever did. Mars probes routinely take six and a half months rather than the eight and a half that the Hohmann orbit takes. If he knew his topic then he would have known this.
Perhaps Dr. Bell was at his best when he was at a loss for any idea why we should colonize Mars, but when David Livingston suggested that maybe a caller could give a reason Bell then said that he probably would have heard that reason before. Talk about having it both ways, he implied that no reason could possibly be worthy of his consideration. “Go ahead, you crazies, try to convince me that Mars is worthy of the equivalent of an Antarctic winter-over.”
Dr. Bell also claimed that rockets cannot use composites the way that Rocket Lab is planning to use them on Neutron. In fact, he said that they cannot work the way they have been working on Falcon 9 ever since that podcast, about a hundred Falcon launches ago. More relevantly, Starship has since been changed from a composite material to steel, so this is yet another claim that does not apply. Oh, I forgot to mention that when there is a design change, it is a good thing, not the bad that Bell said it was. Dr.Bell may have sounded good at the time, but time has not been kind to Bell’s interview. What little he said that seemed to apply five years ago does not apply anymore. Bell is a true disbeliever. It was hard to listen to his incredible ignorance on the topic. What a waste of two hours. What a waste to spend additional time to explain this to you, Questioner, since you know so little, yourself, that you were willing to use Bell’s uninformed interview in an attempt to make your poorly thought out point.
“Only the Mars and Musk madness has widened even more considerably among the fanboys.”
Now that Starship has demonstrated that Raptor works, that Starship can fly, and that it can land, it seems that the fanboys may be justified in their enthusiasm. Even NASA thinks that Starship can land on the Moon, so is NASA also considered a fanboy?
It seems that between Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Sierra Space, and SpaceX new advancements in rocketry are being made again, but advancements at the traditional launch companies have been incremental in the past four or five decades.
Isn’t it interesting that when NASA proposed going to Mars it was not seen as a crazy goal, madness, delusional, or a bubble? However, it is all those things to Musk haters, but only because they hate Musk and his annoying “pseudo-philosophical and pseudo-moral chatter” (Ref:
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/faa-delays-final-approval-of-starship-environmental-reassessment-till-feb-28th/#comment-1267083 ).
What Musk haters miss, however, is that Musk is not the only one who succeeds. Blue Origin was first to propulsively land a reusable booster. Orbital Sciences also succeeded in taking supplies and equipment to the ISS, at a time when the “sensible engineers” thought it was too difficult for commercial companies to do. What had once been impossible is now being done. If your concern is that there is no business market for putting man on Mars or for a Martian colony, then you do not need to worry about that, only SpaceX’s investors need to worry about that, not the taxpayers. A failed Martian colony would not be history’s first failed colony, but nothing is stopping anyone else from trying again, just as no one prevented the colonization of most of the Earth.
“In my view, it is inevitable that the delusional Mars and Musk bubble will finally burst.”
Do you have a predicted time for this burst, or perhaps an impetus for the burst?