Tag: Starship

Starship prototype #25 is rolled to launchpad for static fire engine tests

10:02 am

Starship prototype #25 on the way to launchpad
Click for original image.

SpaceX yesterday evening rolled its 25th prototype of its Starship spacecraft to its suborbital launchpad at Boca Chica, as shown on the image to the right, for a planned static fire engine test of its six Raptor engines.

If all goes well, the company hopes to stack this prototype on top of the ninth prototype of Superheavy and complete the second test orbital flight of the entire rocket as early as June 15, 2023, with a launch window as long as six months according to the company’s FCC communications license application.

The actual launch date however remains very uncertain, for several reasons. The FAA must issue a launch license, and it won’t do that until it is satisfied the investigation into the first launch failure is complete. That launch approval will also likely be delayed because of the lawsuit against that agency for issuing the previous launch license.

8 comments

Weird dome near Starship candidate landing zone on Mars

1:47 pm

Weird dome near Starship candidate landing zone on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 27, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label as domes in Arcadia Planitia, one of the many large northern lowland plains of Mars.

This to me is a “What the heck?” image. I won’t dare try to explain the warped concentric ringed pattern at the top of the mesa, nor the bright and dark splotch that surrounds it. The small craters around it appear to have glacier material within them, and the terrain here likely has a lot of near surface ice, being at 37 degrees north latitude in a region where the data suggests such ice exists. The different colors here likely indicate the difference between dust (orange) and coarser material (aqua).

The location, as shown in the overview map below, makes this mesa more tantalizing.
» Read more

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Environmentalists sue FAA, demanding it shut down Boca Chica and Starship

12:10 pm

Starship/Superheavy at T+4:02, just after the self-destruct command was issued
Starship/Superheavy at T+4:02, just after the self-destruct command
was issued on April 20, 2023. It also appears to be the fate of SpaceX’s
entire Boca Chica operation, if the environmental radicals get their way.

A group of environmental groups as well as a non-profit corporation calling itself the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas, Inc, today filed a lawsuit against the Federal Aviation Administration FAA), demanding it shut down SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility and block all further Superheavy/Starship launches.

You can read the lawsuit here [pdf]. Its essence is contained in these two paragraphs:

The area surrounding the SpaceX facility at Boca Chica is a biologically diverse and essential habitat area for many species, including federally protected wildlife and animals that are considered sacred to the Carrizo/Comecrudo People, such as the critically endangered ocelot. The SpaceX facility is smack in the middle of publicly owned conservation, park, and recreation lands, including a National Wildlife Refuge, two State Parks, a State Wildlife Management Area, and a State Coastal Preserve. These lands are of extraordinary conservation value for a range of federally and state lists wildlife and other protected species such as migratory birds. Bird species from both the Central and Mississippi flyways converge there, making it an essential wintering and stopover area for migratory birds as they move north and south each year.

SpaceX activities authorized in the FONSI/ROD [the environmental reassessment issued last year] have and will adversely affect the surrounding wildlife habitat and communities. In addition to harm from construction activities and increased vehicle traffic, rocket launches result in intense heat, noise, and light pollution. Furthermore, the rocket launches and testing result in explosions which spread debris across surrounding habitat and cause brush/forest fires — including one that recently burned 68 acres of adjacent National Wildlife Refuge. The FAA calls these explosions “anomalies,” but in fact they occur frequently, with at least 8 over the past 5 years. FAA acknowledged that many more such “anomalies” are expected over the next 5 years. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has found that prior SpaceX rocket explosions harmed protected wildlife and designated habitat in violation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

In other words, rockets and launch sites should never be placed inside wildlife refuges, because such activity is detrimental to wildlife.

A more false statement cannot be made. Under this conclusion the launch facilities at Cape Canaveral, which have been operating in the middle of a wildlife refuge now for more than six decades, should be shut down immediately. All the wildlife there must certainly be dead!
» Read more

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Musk press conference on Starship/Superheavy launch

8:51 am

Yesterday Elon Musk held an hour-long audio press conference with a number of space reporters, broadcast over youtube. I have embedded that conference below, for those of my readers who wish to hear what Musk had to say, in his own words.

The key take-aways from Musk:

  • The launch was about what he expected
  • They will be ready to launch again in about two months
  • The debris “was really just basically sand and rock so it’s not toxic at all … it’s just like a sandstorm, essentially”
  • The biggest issue is making sure the flight termination system functions better.
  • The next flight will be a repeat, with the main goal getting to stage separation
  • He gives them an 80% chance of making orbit this year

When asked about obtaining the permit for that next flight, Musk side-stepped the question. It remains to my mind the largest obstacle for meeting his schedule.
» Read more

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With the federal bureaucracy gleefully sharpening its knives to shut down Boca Chica, SpaceX should quickly shift Starship/Superheavy operations to Florida

1:12 pm

Superheavy still going strong, shortly after Max-Q
Superheavy still going strong, shortly after Max-Q

The results of the spectacular test launch last week of SpaceX’s Superheavy/Starship heavy lift rocket was predictable in almost all ways.

First, everyone knew that it was highly unlikely that the launch would do everything intended. This was the first time ever that SpaceX had fired all 33 Raptor-2 engines at the base of Superheavy, at full power. It was the first time ever that this firing took place with Starship stacked on top. It was the first time ever that the entire stack was fueled. It was the first time ever that this rocket — the world’s most powerful (twice as powerful as the Saturn-5 and about three times more powerful than SLS) — had every launched.

The number of unknowns were gigantic, which was exactly why SpaceX needed to do the launch. The company’s engineers needed to find out what they didn’t know about Superheavy in order to refine their engineering so that Superheavy will be more likely for success in its next launch. They also needed to find out what such a launch would do to their preliminary launchpad, in order to refine its engineering as well so that future launches could take place with little or no damage.

Thus, it is not surprising that there were surprises. The most significant was the actual amount of success. Superheavy functioned far better than anyone could have dreamed, retaining flight control through max-q and then flying for almost three minutes before Starship failed to separate and the entire stack lost control and had to be destroyed. Most of its engines worked, though discovering the reasons for the handful that failed will be a prime question in the subsequent investigation.

The second unsurprising thing about this launch is the reaction of the federal bureaucracy, run by Democrats and the Biden administration. It has quickly moved in to squelch any further launches at Boca Chica, likely for a considerable time. The FAA immediately initiated its own investigation while grounding all further launches from Boca Chica. The Fish & Wildlife Service has now begun detailing, almost gleefully, the amount of ground damage the launch caused, including ripping out the concrete base below the rocket and flinging chunks of debris hundreds of feet away as well as depositing a cloud of sand dust on everything up to 6.5 miles from the launchpad.

This quote however is significant, and tells us the real truth:
» Read more

29 comments

Starship/Superheavy did not explode!

1:41 pm

Starship/Superheavy at T+4:02, just after the self-destruct command was issued
Starship/Superheavy at T+4:02, just after the self-destruct command
was issued

In the past twenty-four hours we have another wonderful demonstration of the utter bankruptcy of the American press in the manner in which it has decided to describe yesterday’s first test launch of Starship/Superheavy. Here are just a few headline examples:

Every single one of those headlines implies that the explosion was the launch’s failure. If you read the linked articles you find that many repeat that implication in their reports.

None are correct. » Read more

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Superheavy/Starship clears tower but fails at stage separation

7:06 am

Starship and Superheavy, having just cleared the tower
Starship and Superheavy, having just cleared the tower

In a spectacular first orbital launch attempt, SpaceX’s Superheavy and Starship successfully lifted off, clearing the tower and continuing through max-Q (maximum dynamic pressure). It then reached about 24 miles altitude when the rocket began to slowly spinn just prior to main engine cutoff and stage separation. At that point, because engine cutoff and separation had not occurred as planned, the engineering team used the flight termination system to destroy it so as to eliminate any risk to anyone on the ground.

As the announcers noted repeatedly, if the rocket simply cleared the tower they would consider this a magnificent success, considering that they had never fired Superheavy before in a real countdown. That Superheavy performed exactly as it should for almost its entire flight means SpaceX is that much closer to getting Starship into orbit than one would think at this stage of testing.
» Read more

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An ordinary person’s view of the Starship/Superheavy countdown

5:54 pm

Starship and Superheavy, stacked on the launchpad for launch

One of my readers, who wishes to go by is nickname Doubting Thomas on Behind the Black, went to Boca Chica earlier this week with the hope of seeing the live first orbital launch of Superheavy with Starship stacked on top. Unfortunately, the launch on April 17, 2023 was scrubbed, and he could not remain in Boca Chica for the now rescheduled launch early tomorrow morning on April 20th.

He sent me some pictures of that experience, however, which I post here with his permission. The best of course is the one to the right, of Starship stacked on Superheavy on the launchpad. This was taken before the roads were closed, and shows how incredibly close the general public can get to that launchpad simply by driving past on a public road.

The next few pictures give us a glimpse at the options people have for viewing future Boca Chica launches.
» Read more

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Watching the second attempt to launch Starship/Superheavy to orbit

5:37 pm

Starship/Superheavy flight plan for first orbital flight
Click for original image.

SpaceX’s second attempt of an inaugural orbital test launch of SpaceX’s massive Superheavy first stage with its orbital Starship spacecraft stacked on top has now been rescheduled for Thursday, April 20, 2023, with a 62-minute launch window opening at 8:28 am Central.

I have embedded SpaceX’s live stream of that launch below, which will begin around 7:15 am (Central). You can also see an independent 24/7 live stream from LabPadre, showing the launchpad from many different angles and available here. NasaSpaceFlight.com also has a 24/7 live stream showing multiple angles here. For both, to see links to their many camera angles click on “more” in the text.

Though both of these independent live streams provide alternative view angles of the launch, both will rely on SpaceX’s main live stream, embedded below, for actual updates on the countdown status.

The flight plan is shown in the graphic above. Assuming all goes as planned, most of the action will occur in the first ten minutes, at which time Starship will cut off its engines and be in orbit. It will then coast for a little over an hour when it will re-enter the atmosphere to splashdown in the Pacific north of the Hawaiian Islands.

As I have noted many times, the historical significance of this rocket cannot be overstated. It is twice as powerful as NASA’s Saturn-5 rocket and almost three-times as powerful as NASA’s new SLS rocket, and went from concept to launch in about seven years. Its development was funded entirely by private investment capital, at a fraction of the cost of either of the government’s rockets. And it will be completely reusable once operational, reducing the cost exponentially of getting large 100-ton payloads into orbit.

And most important, it was developed by free Americans, following their own personal dreams.
» Read more

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Starship/Superheavy launch scrubbed

6:22 am

Because of “a pressurization issue”, SpaceX engineers decided to scrub today’s first test launch of Starship/Superheavy. The launch team then made this launch attempt a wet dress countdown rehearsal, ending at T-40 seconds.

Because of the amount of fuel and oxygen involved, turn-around will take 48 hours, meaning the next launch attempt will likely occur on Wednesday, April 19, 2023, probably at the same approximate time in the morning.

Stay tuned for more details.

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Watching the launch of Starship/Superheavy

10:08 pm

Starship/Superheavy flight plan for first orbital flight
Click for original image.

UPDATE: Launch scrubbed. To get to new links for watching the live stream in the second launch attempt, now scheduled for April 20, 2023, go here.

Original post:
————-
The first orbital test launch of SpaceX’s massive Superheavy first stage with its orbital Starship spacecraft stacked on top is now scheduled for a launch in a two-and-a-half hour long launch window beginning at 8 am (Central) on Monday, April 17, 2023.

I have embedded SpaceX’s live stream of that launch below, which will begin around 7 am (Central). You can also see an independent 24/7 live stream from LabPadre, showing the launchpad from many different angles and available here. NasaSpaceFlight.com also has a 24/7 live stream showing multiple angles here. Though both of these independent live streams provide alternative view angles of the launch, both will rely on SpaceX’s main live stream, embedded below, for actual updates on the countdown status.

If the launch is scrubbed on April 17th, SpacX has backup dates on April 18th and 19th. The flight plan and time line is shown in the graphic above.

The monumental significance of this rocket cannot be overstated. It is the most powerful rocket ever built, capable of putting more mass into orbit than either the Saturn-5 or NASA’s new SLS rocket.

It took less than seven years from concept to launch. Compare that to SLS, which was proposed in 2004 and only launched last year, two decades later.

It has been been entirely developed with private funds. Though SpaceX does have a NASA contract for building a Starship lunar lander, little of that contract’s funds have yet been distributed to the company. From private funds SpaceX has raised about $10 billion, most of which has been channeled into this rocket’s development, with a small unknown amount used to develop Starlink. Compare that once again to SLS, which has cost about $60 billion to build.

Finally, it is being designed to be completely reusable, thus reducing the cost exponentially for putting large 100-ton payloads into orbit. If successful, Starship/Superheavy will very quickly make the human exploration and colonization of the solar system possible.

And it will do so not as a government project that is part of a government program, but as a private sector product, conceived by individual Americans freely following their dreams, and developed for profit, quickly and efficiently.

Let freedom ring!
» Read more

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FAA issues Starship launch license; SpaceX schedules launch for April 17th

4:53 pm

Starship stacked on top of Superheavy
Starship prototype #24 stacked on top of Superheavy prototype #7

FAA just sent out an email notice announcing that it has issued SpaceX the launch license for the first orbital test launch of Superheavy/Starship.

After completing an evaluation of all applicable Vehicle Operator License requirements, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a commercial Vehicle Operator License to SpaceX for launches of the Starship/Super Heavy Launch Vehicle Program in Cameron County, TX.

The affected environment and environmental impacts of Starship/Super Heavy operations at the Boca Chica Launch Site had been analyzed in the 2022 Final Programmatic Environmental Assessment for the SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy Launch Vehicle Program at the SpaceX Boca Chica Launch Site in Cameron County, Texas. Since the 2022 Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA), SpaceX provided the FAA with additional information regarding Starship’s planned landing, Super Heavy’s planned soft water landing, and the Launch Pad Detonation Suppression System. In accordance with FAA Order 1050.1F, Environmental Impacts: Policies and Procedures, the FAA prepared the Written Re-evaluation of the 2022 Final Programmatic Environmental Assessment for the SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy Launch Vehicle Program at the Boca Chica Launch Site in Cameron County, Texas to describe and evaluate this additional information.

Based on the Written Re-Evaluation, the FAA concluded that the issuance of a vehicle operator license for Starship/Super Heavy operations conforms to the prior environmental documentation, that the data contained in the 2022 PEA remains substantially valid, that there are no significant environmental changes, and all pertinent conditions and requirements of the prior approval have been met or will be met in the current action. Therefore, preparation of a supplemental or new environmental document is not necessary to support the Proposed Action.

In plain English, the FAA (and other federal agencies) have finally agreed that this launch will do nothing to change the conclusions of the environmental reassessment report that was approved in June 2022. That these agencies decided apparently decided to rehash that approved environmental reassessment for a launch that was also approved in that reassessment suggests that there are individuals in these agencies salivating for an opportunity to squelch SpaceX.

SpaceX has now set April 17, 2023 as the launch date, with its live stream going live in two days. I will embed that live stream late on April 16, 2023, for those who wish to watch it here.

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SpaceX announces it will be providing a webcast for Starship’s first orbital flight

9:03 pm

Starship/Superheavy flight plan for first orbital flight
Click for original image.

SpaceX today revealed the details for its live stream of the first orbital launch of Superheavy/Starship, now targeting a launch date around April 21, 2023, depending on when the FAA issues the launch license.

A live webcast of the flight test will begin ~45 minutes before liftoff. As is the case with all developmental testing, this schedule is dynamic and likely to change, so be sure to stay tuned to our social media channels for updates.

I will embed that live stream here on Behind the Black. Stay tuned for more information.

The flight plan is shown above. The website also provides a detailed timeline. If launch manages to pass through Max-Q and get to stage separation, Superheavy will do a flip to do a soft targeted landing in the Gulf of Mexico. Starship will continue into orbit, and then fire its engines to return to Earth to do a soft targeted landing in the Pacific northeast of the Big Island of Hawaii.

That is the plan. Much can go wrong along the way, considering Superheavy has never flown once, no less with Starship stacked on top. Furthermore, Starship has never flown in its present iteration. Previous suborbital tests were using much earlier prototypes vastly different that this prototype, #24 in the series.

Regardless whether all goes perfectly or some things fail, the launch will be a success because it will provide SpaceX data for future test flights, which are waiting in the wings.

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Starship orbital test flight delayed one more week due to FAA delays

9:29 am

According to a tweet yesterday by Elon Musk, the first orbital test flight of Starship/Superheavy has been delayed again.

Starship launch trending towards near the end of third week of April

Musk had made it clear in an April 8th tweet the cause of this delay or any other delays:

Starship is ready for launch. Awaiting regulatory approval

Musk needs to be somewhat diplomatic as it will not help him to make federal bureaucrats his enemies. What he is doing here is subtly letting everyone know the sole cause of the delay, in order to press the FAA to get a move on, without saying so directly. He leaves that to others, such as myself, to say it instead.

I fear that the FAA is now demanding that it must look at the data from any wet dress rehearsal countdown, including the short engine burst that Superheavy will likely do at T-0, before it will issue the permit. If so, we could see more than a week delay. The launch should easily slip to late May if not later.

The absurdity of this is that it is utterly pointless for FAA bureaucrats to look at any of this data. What do they know? Nothing. If something was significantly wrong SpaceX engineers would know far sooner, and delay the launch themselves.

The delays seen in issuing this one launch license however give us a nice picture of what it will be like for the launch industry once the moratorium on heavy regulations by the FAA and other federal agencies expires on October 1, 2023. Expect a substantial slowdown in development and launches, with many of the new companies about to become operational instead going bankrupt in a replay of the destruction of Virgin Orbit by the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority.

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Starship now stacked on launchpad

9:45 am

Starship stacked on top of Superheavy

In preparation for a final wet dress rehearsal countdown followed by its first launch, Starship has now been stacked on top of Superheavy at SpaceX’s launchpad at Boca Chica, Texas.

The picture to the right is a screen capture from a short video Elon Musk posted on Twitter. SpaceX had also tweeted that its “Team is working towards a launch rehearsal next week [April 10-11] followed by Starship’s first integrated flight test ~week later pending regulatory approval.”

At this time the FAA has still not issued the launch license. By announcing its plan to launch the week of April 17th, Musk and SpaceX puts pressure the government bureaucracy to get a move on.

23 comments

FAA issues travel advisory for Boca Chica for April 10, 2023 Starship launch

10:30 am

Though the FAA has not yet issued the launch license to SpaceX, allowing it to do the first orbital launch test of its Superheavy/Starship rocket, the agency today did issue a travel advisory for the Boca Chica area for April 10-11, 2023, in connection with this launch.

The FAA advisory is here. Scroll down to see the space activities section, which includes this information:

SPACEX STARSHIP SUPERHEAVY BOCA CHICA, TX
PRIMARY: 04/10/23 1310-1745Z
BACKUP(S): 04/11-12/23 1310-1745Z

Based on this information, we should expect the FAA launch license to be publicly announced any moment.

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay, who trolls Twitter so I don’t have to.

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Starship and Superheavy readied for orbital flight

10:22 am

With Superheavy prototype #7 already on the launchpad at Boca Chica, Texas, SpaceX engineers yesterday moved Starship prototype #24 beside it in preparation for stacking the orbital spacecraft on top of Superheavy for a launch now expected no earlier than April 10, 2023.

As the article notes, when Superheavy lifts off, it will set a new record for the most powerful rocket, having twice the thrust of either of NASA’s Saturn-5 or SLS rockets. And this record will be achieved by a privately built and owned rocket whose development has been funded almost entirely by private investment capital. Note too that the development took about six years, from concept to first launch, a few years less than it took NASA to build the Saturn-5 in the 1960s, and about one third the time it NASA to do the same thing with SLS in the 2000s, the 2010s, and the 2020s.

The orbital mission, it successful, will have Superheavy lift off, separate from Starship and then land controlled in the Gulf of Mexico. Starship will continue into orbit, and then attempt a controlled vertical splashdown in the Pacific Ocean northwest of the big Island of Hawaii.

At the moment, it appears the only obstacle to launch remains the FAA, which after many months has still not issued the launch license. This new activity at Boca Chica however suggests SpaceX expects that approval to occur momentarily.

15 comments

Lunar rover startup signs deal to send rover to the Moon using Starship

9:25 pm

The lunar rover startup Astrolab has signed a deal with SpaceX to send its FLEX rover to the Moon’s south pole region using a lunar lander version of Starship.

Jaret Matthews, founder and chief executive of Astrolab, said in an interview that the mission, which will include 1,000 kilograms of customer payloads, will be the first flight of the FLEX rover. It will be a rideshare payload on a Starship mission landing somewhere in the south polar region of the moon.

“Because our rover can traverse up to a couple thousand kilometers in a given year, we’re less sensitive to exactly where we land,” he said. “’It is definitely optimized for the south polar region because that’s fundamentally where we think that the bulk of the activity is going to be.”

The company unveiled a full scale prototype of its rover one year ago, when it made it clear it intended to compete for the rover contract in NASA’s Artemis program, competing against several big established players. Since then there has been little news. The story today sadly reeks to me of a lot of blarney. For example, the company has only 20 employees. Astrolab might have signed this deal, but I suspect it is a very tentative deal, easily canceled by either party at no cost.

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SpaceX might get investment capital from Saudi and UAE investors

10:23 am

According to several reports in the business press, SpaceX is presently negotiating with investment companies in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to possibly provide additional investment capital to the company.

Citing two individuals reportedly familiar with the matter, The Information noted that Saudi Arabia’s Water and Electricity Holding Company, Badeel, and the United Arab Emirates’ Alpha Dhabi are participating in the funding round. Morgan Stanley is reportedly organizing the investment effort.

At present it is unknown how much would be invested. It is also unclear if this foreign investment in an American rocket company can pass muster with the U.S. State Department.

SpaceX has already raised about $10 billion in private investment capital as well as $4 billion from NASA for the development of Starship/Superheavy.

7 comments

Starship launch still stalled by FAA

3:47 pm

According to a tweet by Elon Musk today, Starship will be ready for its first orbital test launch in a few weeks.

Musk also noted however that SpaceX is still awaiting the FAA’s launch license, and because of this he now expects the launch in the third week in April.

Why it is taking months for the FAA to issue this license is disturbing, and suggests that under the Biden administration the feds are behaving more and more like the incompetent Civil Aviation Authority in the UK, which stonewalled Virgin Orbit’s launch for months so that the company now sits on the verge of bankruptcy.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay for this story, who will be gone for the next two weeks on vacation. Have fun Jay.

5 comments

Sightseeing in the region near the Starship Mars landing zone

4:21 pm

Sightseeing in the region near Starship's landing zone
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on November 30, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a bulbous hill in the icy northern lowland plains of Mars. That it is icy here is indicated by the glacier features that appear to fill the small crater near the bottom of the picture.

You can get a better sense of stark alien nature of this terrain by looking at an MRO context camera image of the same area, taken on April 1, 2008. The subject hill is the first hill on the image’s west side, going from the top. This is a flat plain interspersed with crater splats, mounds of a variety of sizes, and a puzzling meandering dark line that suggests a crack from which material is oozing.

The geology to be studied here might be endless but for tourists the views will be astounding in their alienness.
» Read more

2 comments

What to expect when SpaceX launches Starship on its first orbital flight

10:04 am

Link here. The article does a careful review of the previous dress rehearsal countdowns and static fire tests, especially the last which successfully fired 31 of Superheavy’s 33 Raptor-2 engines for 7 seconds, in order to understand what will happen during the countdown on the day the rocket does its first orbital launch, now expected within weeks.

It appears right now that SpaceX is preparing to replace one or both of those failed engines, and do it with Superheavy prototype #7 still mounted to the launchpad. Starship prototype #24 has not yet been stacked on top, but work is presently being done to it nearby to prepare it for launch. For example, workers recently have removed the attachment points used by cranes before the chopsticks existed and put thermal tiles there instead.

Based on the pace of work, SpaceX should be ready to launch by mid-March. All that will prevent this will be the FAA, which still has not approved the launch license.

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SpaceX ready to launch Starship prototype #24 into orbit

10:07 am

According to a statement yesterday by one SpaceX official, the company is now ready to launch its Superheavy #7 booster, stacked with its Starship prototype #24, on an orbital test flight, with the only remaining obstacle to launch the launch license, not yet approved by the FAA.

Speaking on a panel at the Space Mobility conference here about “rocket cargo” delivery, Gary Henry, senior advisor for national security space solutions at SpaceX, said both the Super Heavy booster and its launch pad were in good shape after the Feb. 9 test, clearing the way for an orbital launch that is still pending a Federal Aviation Administration launch license. “We had a successful hot fire, and that was really the last box to check,” he said. “The vehicle is in good shape. The pad is in good shape.”

…“Pretty much all of the prerequisites to supporting an orbital demonstration attempt here in the next month or so look good,” he said.

Henry also outlined SpaceX’s overall plans for Starship in the next year or two, beginning with a series of test/operational launches that will iron out the kinks of the rocket while simultaneously placing Starlink satellites into orbit. At the same time, development will shift to creating a Moon lander version of Starship for NASA’S Artemis program, including doing refueling tests of Starship in orbit. These test flights will also lead quickly to the three private manned flights that SpaceX already has contracts for, including two around the Moon and one in Earth orbit.

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SpaceX abandons plan to convert floating oil platforms into Starship/Superheavy landing spots

4:18 pm

SpaceX has decided not to convert the two floating oil rigs it had purchased in 2020 into Starship/Superheavy landing platforms, and has sold both.

According to SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell,

Shotwell said the company needed to first start launching Starship and better understand that vehicle before building offshore launch platforms. “We really need to fly this vehicle to understand it, to get to know this machine, and then we’ll figure out how we’re going to launch it.”

She said she expected offshore platforms to eventually play a role to support an extraordinarily high launch cadence. “We have designed Starship to be as much like aircraft operations as we possibly can get it,” she said in the conference presentation. “We want to talk about dozens of launches a day, if not hundreds of launches a day.”

This is a perfect example of this company’s intelligent ability to focus on the most important problems now, instead of getting distracted by future issues and challenges it knows exists but are not the priority at this time.

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SpaceX completes 33-engine static fire test today of Superheavy prototype #7

10:25 am

Two seconds after ignition
Today’s Superheavy static fire test

SpaceX today successfully completed a 7-second-long static fire test of 31 of 33 Raptor-2 engines at the base Superheavy #7. The test ran for its full duration, and it appears no damage occurred to the launchpad. One engine shut down prior to test, and one shut down prematurely during the test. If this had happened during launch, the booster would still have had enough energy to get Starship to its required velocity to reach orbit.

The company will now have to analyze the test to determine whether it was sufficient to proceed to a March orbital launch. Certainly they will roll the booster back to the assembly building to exchange out the two engines that misfired.

All in all, it appears an orbital test flight of Starship could occur sometime in the next two months, assuming the FAA gets out of the way and issues the launch license.

EARLIER UPDATE:
—————-
Propellant loading is underway, and a rough time estimate for the actual static fire test is now 3 pm (Central).

Musk has now confirmed in a tweet that they are going to proceed to the test. It now appears that they have almost completed propellant loading. It appears they have filled the oxygen tanks, but not the methane tanks, and will probably not fill the methane tanks entirely for the test itself.

Original post:
—————-
No specific schedule has been announced of SpaceX’s attempt today to complete the first full 33-engine static fire test in Boca Chica of its seventh prototype of Superheavy, but a live stream is available from NASAspaceflight.com. I have embedded that live stream below.

The test will validate numerous systems, including the ground systems, the launchpad, the engines, and the systems for igniting all 33 in the proper sequence. Starship prototype #24 is not stacked on top of Superheavy in order to prevent any damage to it in case this test goes ugly. If so, SpaceX already has Superheavy prototype #9 ready to go in the nearby assembly building.

» Read more

21 comments

Stacked Starship and Superheavy complete first full wet dress rehearsal countdown

9:06 am

SpaceX yesterday successfully completed a full wet dress rehearsal countdown of its stacked Starship prototype #24 and Superheavy prototype #7, fueling both completely and taking the countdown down to T-0.

On this rehearsal however the Superheavy engines were not fired. From two SpaceX tweets:

Starship completed its first full flight-like wet dress rehearsal at Starbase today. This was the first time an integrated Ship and Booster were fully loaded with more than 10 million pounds of propellant

Today’s test will help verify a full launch countdown sequence, as well as the performance of Starship and the orbital pad for flight-like operations

Next step: Another full wet dress rehearsal countdown that includes a short static fire test of all 33 Superheavy Raptor-2 engines. Once that is done successfully, the company will be ready for that first orbital launch.

Meanwhile, SpaceX awaits its launch license from the FAA. I remain pessimistic that it will be issued on a timely manner, as there are clear signs the Biden administration wants to use its power against Musk, whom it now sees as an enemy.

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SpaceX to build five Starship/Superheavy prototypes in 2023

7:51 am

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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Musk: SpaceX is now targeting late February/March for 1st orbital launch of Starship

10:01 am

According to a tweet put out by Elon Musk on January 8, 2023, SpaceX is now targeting late February/March for 1st orbital launch of the 24th prototype of Starship and the seventh prototype of Superheavy.

The testing in 2022 has not gone as smoothly as hoped, and is the reason no launch occurred last year:

Super Heavy B7 first left SpaceX’s Starbase factory in March 2022 and has been in a continuous flux of testing, repairs, upgrades, and more testing in the nine months since. The 69-meter-tall (~225 ft), 9-meter-wide (~30 ft) steel rocket was severely damaged at least twice in April and July, requiring weeks of substantial repairs. But neither instance permanently crippled the Starship booster, and Booster 7 testing has been cautious but largely successful since the rocket’s last close call.

Following its return to the OLS [orbital launch site] in early August, Super Heavy B7 has completed six static fire tests of anywhere from one to fourteen of its 33 Raptor engines. It has almost certainly dethroned Falcon Heavy to become the most powerful SpaceX rocket ever tested. And on January 8th, 2023, SpaceX rolled the rocket back to Starbase’s orbital launch site for the seventh time. According to statements made by CEO Elon Musk and a presentation from a NASA official, the last major standalone test between Booster 7 and flight readiness is a full 33-engine static fire. Together, B7’s 33 Raptor 2 engines could produce up to 7600 tons (16.7 million lbf) of thrust at sea level, likely making Starship the most powerful rocket stage in the history of spaceflight.

I had read speculation earlier that it was impossible for SpaceX to do a full 33-engine static fire test because the OLS could not hold the rocket down. That now appears to be incorrect.

Musk’s tweet and proposed schedule should also not be taken with great seriousness. He routinely sets ambitious targets merely to keep the pace fast, even if those targets are not met.

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SpaceX raises another $750 million in private investment capital

9:36 am

SpaceX has just completed another round of fund-raising, gaining another $750 million in private investment capital.

This additional money now means that SpaceX has raised about $10 billion in private money, most of which is being used for the development of Starship and Superheavy. When we add the $4 billion SpaceX will get from NASA for Starship, the company now has $14 billion to build this new rocket.

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NASA extends Boeing’s contract to produce more SLS rockets

10:30 am

NASA yesterday announced that it will pay Boeing $3.2 billion for two more SLS rockets.

NASA has finalized its contract with Boeing of Huntsville, Alabama, for approximately $3.2 billion to continue manufacturing core and upper stages for future Space Launch System (SLS) rockets for Artemis missions to the Moon and beyond.

Under the SLS Stages Production and Evolution Contract action, Boeing will produce SLS core stages for Artemis III and IV, procure critical and long-lead material for the core stages for Artemis V and VI, provide the exploration upper stages (EUS) for Artemis V and VI, as well as tooling and related support and engineering services.

All this really means is that NASA is going depend on SLS and Orion to fly its astronauts to and from the Moon, and because of that its pace of flight will be — at best — slow and long-drawn out. For example, this new order extends the contract out to 2028. It will thus leave plenty of time for SpaceX and other nations to get there first.

I predict that the private Starship missions paid for by Yusaku Maezawa and Jared Isaacman will both fly before these two new Artemis missions. You heard it here first.

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