Musk: 'Dream Come True' To See Fully Stacked SpaceX Starship Rocket During Prep for Orbital Launch (cnbc.com) 61
Elon Musk's SpaceX stacked a Starship prototype rocket on top of a Super Heavy rocket booster for the first time on Friday morning, giving a look at the scale of the combined nearly 400-foot-tall vehicle. From a report: Musk, asked by CNBC what he thought of witnessing the milestone at the company's facility in Boca Chica, Texas, responded simply. "Dream come true," Musk replied in a tweet.
SpaceX is developing Starship to launch cargo and people on missions to the moon and Mars. Starship prototypes stand at about 160 feet tall, or around the size of a 16-story building, and are built of stainless steel -- representing the early version of the rocket that Musk unveiled in 2019. The rocket lifts off on top of a Super Heavy booster, which makes up the bottom half of the rocket and stands about 230 feet tall. Together, Starship and Super Heavy are nearly 400 feet tall when stacked for launch.
SpaceX is developing Starship to launch cargo and people on missions to the moon and Mars. Starship prototypes stand at about 160 feet tall, or around the size of a 16-story building, and are built of stainless steel -- representing the early version of the rocket that Musk unveiled in 2019. The rocket lifts off on top of a Super Heavy booster, which makes up the bottom half of the rocket and stands about 230 feet tall. Together, Starship and Super Heavy are nearly 400 feet tall when stacked for launch.
Is is amazing how quickly they assembled it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is is amazing how quickly they assembled it. (Score:5, Insightful)
The second stage was just sections a few days ago. Put it together and test fit on top of the rocket faster than others even think about it.
This article [arstechnica.com] from Aug 2 noted that SpaceX attached the 29 Raptor engines overnight.
Sometimes it is difficult to write objectively about the rate at which SpaceX makes progress. The advancements we're seeing at the company's Starbase site in South Texas are unprecedented.
Like, seriously unprecedented.
On Sunday, SpaceX finished stacking what it is calling "Booster 4," the first of its Super Heavy rocket boosters expected to take flight. This is a massive, single-core rocket that is approximately 70 meters tall, with a diameter of 9 meters. It has a thrust approximately double that of the Saturn V rocket that launched NASA astronauts to the Moon.
Then, overnight, something remarkable happened. Technicians and engineers at the SpaceX build facility near Boca Chica Beach attached 29 Raptor rocket engines to the rocket. Twenty-nine engines. Each with intricate plumbing lines and connections. This is the number of engines that Super Heavy will fly with for initial flight tests, although the final configuration is likely to have 33 engines.
I'm not really sure what to write or say about all this, because typically in the rocket business it takes a few days to install a single engine.
Re: Is is amazing how quickly they assembled it. (Score:3)
Fail early, fail often.
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Re: Is is amazing how quickly they assembled it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Or they might love it, depending on how adventurous they are...
=Smidge=
Re: Is is amazing how quickly they assembled it. (Score:2)
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That would be why they built the place a significant distance from population (except for those who they bought out, and chose to stay to take photos of cool rockets exploding). That said, the size of a superheavy explosion could fuck up south padre island.
Re:Is is amazing how quickly they assembled it. (Score:4, Informative)
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The advancements we're seeing at the company's Starbase site in South Texas are unprecedented.
Like, seriously unprecedented.
Probably before your time, but there was an even more revolutionary (at the time) rocket called the Saturn V. It went from concept to orbit between 1962 and 1967, using slide-rules. Depending on when you consider the BFR to have started, SpaceX might beat that record, but "unprecedented" is a strong term.
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Probably before your time,... the Saturn V.
Nope, I was around for that.
SpaceX might beat that record, but "unprecedented" is a strong term.
Hey, I didn't write that, just passed it along... :-)
Re: Is is amazing how quickly they assembled it. (Score:2)
Hubble (Score:5, Insightful)
"Due to its size & ability to return science instruments even from deep space, Starship will enable a whole new class of science missions"
Man, I know it would be a super expensive museum piece to retrieve it that way, but will Starship be big enough to retrieve Hubble? Because if anything belongs in a museum, Hubble will at the end of its run.
Re: Hubble (Score:2)
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It's a big camera in space, yes. So in that regard, similar to spy satellites. It also has several instruments with direct "spy satellite" predecessor. It's overall design was redone to incorporate spare optics from older spy satellites, for example it's assumed by many that the reduction in size of the main reflector from 3 meters to 2.4 meters was done to incorporate spy satellite optics.
That being said, it is in no way optimized for Earth observations and includes many instruments that would be of little
Re: Hubble (Score:2)
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Starship be big enough to retrieve Hubble?
It might be able to get to Hubble, but I'd be surprised if it was capable of bringing Hubble back to Earth and land with it all in one piece.
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If you had a crew there to strap it in securely I think it could be doable - essentially reinstall it in something akin to the original launch payload structure.
Starship is large enough that if you made those big cargo doors airtight you could actually bring something considerably larger than Hubble inside, and then pressurize the work space to allow for safe and convenient satellite servicing. You've have so much extra space for Hubble that you might not even need to fold in the solar arrays.
I would actua
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Man, I know it would be a super expensive museum piece to retrieve it that way, but will Starship be big enough to retrieve Hubble?
Starship has the capacity, although there is a lot more than just cargo capacity that would need to be addressed to stow and secure such a payload, as the Hubble was never designed to be recovered.
Re: Hubble (Score:2)
Re: Hubble (Score:5, Interesting)
It would be nice to see the Hubble in the Smithsonian (or possibly to repair and upgrade it further on orbit).
Let's see... The Hubble was carried up on a space shuttle so it can fit in an orbiter cargo bay. (presumably with the solar panels and booms folded up, and it's unclear if they can be folded up again after having deployed)
An orbiter cargo bay is 18.3m long x 4.6m wide x 4.6m tall. Starship is 17.24m long x 8m wide x 8m tall (at one end) and 3.6m wide x 3.6m tall (at the pointy end) so that's not entirely decisive. The dimensions for the main body of the Hubble though are 13.2m x 4.2m x 4.2m and that diameter gets to about say 15.5m in the bay. So I'd say that if you can refold everything and can get it into a cradle in the bay, yes, you could probably bring it back. Whether it can take the g forces of reentry on its side (as opposed to the force of launch on its end) is another story.
It would almost be preferable to put it in a big inflatable station with lights and cameras and call it an orbiting Smithsonian annex. Free admission if you can reach it.
Re: Hubble (Score:1)
Re: Hubble (Score:5, Insightful)
Because a museum floating in space would be fucking cool. That's a good enough reason for me, although I am sure there are "better" reasons that I am not interested in.
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It would almost be preferable to put it in a big inflatable station with lights and cameras and call it an orbiting Smithsonian annex. Free admission if you can reach it.
And not even CNN could criticize how Covid-safe that would be.
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More relevantly, if any of the 350 single points of failure jams when JWST is eventually launched and unfurled, Starship will be able to assist with spacewalking astronauts at the L2 observing position, just as Shuttle was when the Hubble primary mirror was found to have been misfigured.
Anticipation (Score:2)
Have they announced an anticipated launch date yet and what the mission will be? I'm kinda heads-down on my job recently and haven't had much time to read news.
We haven't had a Musk thread for a while here. I'm looking forward to reading all about what a delusional fraud he is and all that. Let'r rip boys.
Re:Anticipation (Score:5, Informative)
Likely 4-8 weeks prior to launch. This was just a first-run fit test of the joining of Starship & Booster. Need to finish plumbing , electrical , etc on tower, and pressure testing / static fire of the rockets on both the booster (29 engines) and starship (6 engines).
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and then Musk rockets fall down go boom until they work the kinks out. Can't wait. My favorite kind of boom is the classic V-2 big looping arc to going inverted and then ramming the ground with crowd pleaser firework.
pop up the popcorn
Re: Anticipation (Score:2)
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wasn't talking production, just that testing is a good time.
Re:Anticipation (Score:5, Funny)
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Definitely correct about testing the engines while mounted on booster, but they have already taken the starship off the booster, back to the hangar, and are removing the engines to allow for pressure testing (hydraulic rams mount to engine brackets , so engines cannot be present during pressure testing.
They will then re-mount engines, move starship to the test stand, static fire, then re-mount on Booster.
It's too big! It's too complex! (Score:5, Funny)
You may marvel at its size, but Blue Origin maintains it's just too big! https://www.blueorigin.com/ass... [blueorigin.com]
Blue Origin was planing tiny landers in comparison (at twice the cost of course) so that astronauts can enjoy stepping onto the surface of the moon without having to listen to elevator music! These huge "Starships" are too complicated and need so many new technologies, we really should use just what we already know, not try new things! And let's not mention that they are planning to use a new launch site "Boca Chica" (silly name right there), when it has never been tested for orbital flights - I mean, who knows how launch mechanics will work from that place, there might be a gravity well or something...
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We'll find out in due time whether Blue Origin was right about the Starship bid being too risky and complicated. Of course they would say that, but it's not an inherently silly kind of a criticism to make.
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I understand that. But Blue Origin was also partnering with Lockheed, Grumman and Draper on this, all of which have a great deal of experience, and there's no question that their mission archirtecture was much more conservative. It pretty much looks like the Apollo mission, with separate transfer, descent, and ascent elements. The entire vehicle could have been launched by ULA at Canaveral, so they weren't depending on New Glenn.
Again they're obviously making a self-serving critique here, but the element
It's too heavy! (Score:2)
A starship that big will never lift off! It's too heavy! It even says so in the name: Super Heavy!
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Did he say anything about those 100 people actually still being alive when they got to Mars?
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I know some fanboys who would still sign up for that. "First corpse on Mars? Sign me up! It's a win-win in my book!"
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100 people = ~6,5 cubic metres per person (minus provisions / life support), maybe a little more. A cube 1,86 meters on each side. If the ceiling were a "moderately tall" person's height, their share of the total space would cover a floor space equal to their height. Divided between bunks and common areas.
Hmm, I wonder how this compares to, say, nuclear submarines?
The bigger they come ... (Score:2, Insightful)
I eagerly await the next launch with popcorn in hand.
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I eagerly await the next launch with popcorn in hand.
RUDs (Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly) have, and likely will continue to, happen during the entire development. It is the Silicon Value "Fail fast" approach to rocket science.
Re:The bigger they come ... (Score:5, Insightful)
are you not ENTERTAINED?!!! (Score:2)
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Is that a cry for help because you're a sadistic zero-contributor?
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I think you'll enjoy this mashup video featuring SpaceX and the explosive intro to a popular TV series. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Aerospace centerfold (Score:3)
Bezos will require several strokes of genius to produce a missile that is longer once erected. In either case he's optimistic he'll shoot his load to Mars before Musk does.
Re:Aerospace centerfold (Score:5, Funny)