Starship update: Prototype #10 being readied for launch
Link here. Not only have the engines been installed on the tenth Starship prototype, the static fire test is set for this week, maybe as early as today. It appears they are trying to launch the next test flight before the end of February.
At landing they will now fire all three engines, in case one or more fail to light (as happened with prototype #9), and then shut down all but one immediately and let that do the landing burn. This adds redundancy and increases the odds of a successful landing.
The article also provides a detailed update on the status of future Starship and Super Heavy test articles. While #11 is being readied for launch, it appears that, based on what has been learned from #8 and #9, they are dismantling prototypes #12-14 and incorporating changes to #15, which will likely fly after #11.
One aspect of this development program struck me today. These prototypes are essentially expendable rockets. Like it did with its early expendable Falcon 9, SpaceX is using these throw-away prototypes to test ways to make them more reusable and reliable. Unlike the Falcon 9s, however, the company isn’t using these prototypes to launch payloads, at least not at this stage. It isn’t good enough that these prototypes can successfully launch. They must be able to land as well.
I suspect that once during this test program the full rocket begins to reach orbit SpaceX will add payloads, even as they continue to test re-entry and landing. The early flights might produce rockets that successfully bring satellites into space but end up getting destroyed upon return. Those loses will then be used to make later ships better and more likely to return intact.
Eventually, we will have a rocket entirely reusable and flying multiple times, just like the Falcon 9 first stage.
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.
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Link here. Not only have the engines been installed on the tenth Starship prototype, the static fire test is set for this week, maybe as early as today. It appears they are trying to launch the next test flight before the end of February.
At landing they will now fire all three engines, in case one or more fail to light (as happened with prototype #9), and then shut down all but one immediately and let that do the landing burn. This adds redundancy and increases the odds of a successful landing.
The article also provides a detailed update on the status of future Starship and Super Heavy test articles. While #11 is being readied for launch, it appears that, based on what has been learned from #8 and #9, they are dismantling prototypes #12-14 and incorporating changes to #15, which will likely fly after #11.
One aspect of this development program struck me today. These prototypes are essentially expendable rockets. Like it did with its early expendable Falcon 9, SpaceX is using these throw-away prototypes to test ways to make them more reusable and reliable. Unlike the Falcon 9s, however, the company isn’t using these prototypes to launch payloads, at least not at this stage. It isn’t good enough that these prototypes can successfully launch. They must be able to land as well.
I suspect that once during this test program the full rocket begins to reach orbit SpaceX will add payloads, even as they continue to test re-entry and landing. The early flights might produce rockets that successfully bring satellites into space but end up getting destroyed upon return. Those loses will then be used to make later ships better and more likely to return intact.
Eventually, we will have a rocket entirely reusable and flying multiple times, just like the Falcon 9 first stage.
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.
“It’s a Jetsons World: Private Miracles and Public Crimes”
Jeffery Tucker 2011
https://mises.org/library/its-jetsons-world-private-miracles-and-public-crimes
“The Jetsons’ world is our world: explosive technological advances, entrenched bourgeois culture, a culture of enterprise that is the very font of the good life. But there is one major difference, and it isn’t the flying car, which we might already have were it not for the government’s promotion of roads and the central plan that manages transportation. It is this: we also live in the midst of a gigantic leviathan state that seeks to control every aspect of our life to its smallest detail.
The government is still Flintstones, an anachronism that operates as this massive drag on our lives. With its money manipulations, regulations, taxation, wars (on people, products, and services), prisons, and injustices, we similarly look the other way. We try to find the workaround and keep living like the Jetsons. Often times things don’t go right and the reason is the anachronism that rules us. And yet, unless we understand cause and effect in the way that the old liberal tradition explained it, we can miss the source….”
Wayne, I’d rather live under government by the Flintstones than under Machiavelli’s prince (who, by the way, was probably based Cesare Borgia, with perhaps observations of Cesare’s uncle, Pope Alexander V, and Machiavelli’s own employer, the de Medici family).
Elon is into so very many things. This morning I heard that he’s invested 1,5 billion in bit coin. Sometimes I wonder if he realizes the danger the government may be to his enterprise and is maneuvering to become so extensive and omnipresent that even the government cannot oppose him.
Some interesting differences between the F9 and SS systems:
* All parts of the SS system are reusable., not just the booster as in F9.
* The SS booster “SuperHeavy” will never be used anywhere but on Earth, since Starship can land and relaunch by itself on any other land-able solar system body without booster assistance.
* Many Starships will not have flaps or thermal protection tile, because they will never again reenter an atmosphere (although aerobraking into orbit would require thermal protection).
* Many Starships will not have landing gear because they will never again land on a surface., for example an asteroid mining freighter.
I can imagine a Starship with no flaps, tiles, or landing gear that is basically a huge fuel tank parked in LEO to be used to gas up other spacecraft. Or such a ship could be sent from Earth to Mars orbit to “top up” Starships just launched from Mars’ surface for their journey to Earth or elsewhere.
Ref. Michael’s comment: Yes.
And he knows the window is closing fast. You now have me thinking of the world we are likely to have in the next quarter-century, or rather, the world that will be shaping. Not exactly the one I had in mind, but a mis-spent childhood reading sci-fi actually helps here. Many alternate futures, and familiar with the historical ones. Rocks and Shoals.
Super Heavy is what will change things-whether Starship can land or not.
Ray Van Dune remarked: “I can imagine a Starship with no flaps, tiles, or landing gear that is basically a huge fuel tank parked in LEO to be used to gas up other spacecraft.”
That’s a truck stop. Don’t need a spaceship for that. Just some stuff to do the job,.
Deep Space 9 Season 6, Episode 2
“Rocks and Shoals”
https://youtu.be/a6UCAeS44lQ
2:12
“We will hold this world for the Dominion, until we die….”
I wonder if he realizes the danger the government may be to his enterprise and is maneuvering to become so extensive and omnipresent that even the government cannot oppose him.
You mean something such as buying offshore oil platforms before getting lawfared upon by the EPA and FAA?
As much as I hate “big tech”, I do not understand why folks such as Zuckerberg don’t tell Congress to shove it and close down their US operations. Move everything offshore. If the government tries to stop you, flood your platform with “look what your congress critter is doing to us! You’re going to lose all your friends!” propaganda.