SpaceX Will 'Hopefully' Launch First Orbital Starship Flight In January (cnbc.com) 50
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Elon Musk on Wednesday said SpaceX is "hoping" to launch the first orbital flight test of its mammoth Starship rocket in January, a schedule that depends on testing and regulatory approval. "We'll do a bunch of tests in December and hopefully launch in January," Musk said, speaking at a meeting of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Space Studies Board.
The company's next major step in developing Starship is launching to orbit. First, the company needs a launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration for the mission, with the regulator expecting to complete a key environmental assessment by the end of this year. Musk noted that he wasn't sure if Starship would successfully reach orbit on the first try, but emphasized that he is "confident" that the rocket will get to space in 2022. "We intend to have a high flight rate next year," Musk said.
SpaceX aims to launch as many as a dozen Starship test flights next year, he said, to complete the "test flight program" and move to launching "real payloads in 2023." He stressed that creating a mass production line for Starship is crucial to the program's long-term goals, noting that the current "biggest constraint" on rocket manufacturing is how fast the company can build the Raptor engines needed for Starship. "I think, in order for life to become multiplanetary, we'll need maybe 1,000 ships or something like that," Musk said. "The overarching goal of SpaceX has been to advance space technology such that humanity can become a multi-planet species and, ultimately, a spacefaring civilization." SpaceX received a $2.9 billion contract from NASA to develop Starship for delivering astronauts to the moon's surface, but Musk said the company is "not assuming any international collaboration" or external funding for the rocket program. "[Starship] is at least 90% internally funded thus far," Musk said.
The company's next major step in developing Starship is launching to orbit. First, the company needs a launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration for the mission, with the regulator expecting to complete a key environmental assessment by the end of this year. Musk noted that he wasn't sure if Starship would successfully reach orbit on the first try, but emphasized that he is "confident" that the rocket will get to space in 2022. "We intend to have a high flight rate next year," Musk said.
SpaceX aims to launch as many as a dozen Starship test flights next year, he said, to complete the "test flight program" and move to launching "real payloads in 2023." He stressed that creating a mass production line for Starship is crucial to the program's long-term goals, noting that the current "biggest constraint" on rocket manufacturing is how fast the company can build the Raptor engines needed for Starship. "I think, in order for life to become multiplanetary, we'll need maybe 1,000 ships or something like that," Musk said. "The overarching goal of SpaceX has been to advance space technology such that humanity can become a multi-planet species and, ultimately, a spacefaring civilization." SpaceX received a $2.9 billion contract from NASA to develop Starship for delivering astronauts to the moon's surface, but Musk said the company is "not assuming any international collaboration" or external funding for the rocket program. "[Starship] is at least 90% internally funded thus far," Musk said.
Re: Yeah right (Score:3)
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Well, permitting *is* the reason why this is taking so long.
Of course, Starbase isn't standing idle in the meantime; they've been doing a lot of ground tests, refining the tiles and other hardware, as well as the production systems, and working on the "Mechazilla" landing tower (not needed for the initial launch, which is planning a controlled ocean landing a ways offshore from Hawaii).
Re:Yeah right (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not particularly explosion prone unless they want them to be and the goal here is to make the rocket leave the nature preserve
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I doubt it. Rocket technology has improved significantly since those days with much better simulations and testing available. SpaceX has already shown the engines and control systems work on the upper portion and they have plenty of experience with launching boosters at this point.
Why is it you don't think it'll work? Is it like a personal thing against the CEO? Amazon/ULA investor? Prefer Russian made rockets?
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Why is it you don't think it'll work? Is it like a personal thing against the CEO? Amazon/ULA investor? Prefer Russian made rockets?
Contrarianism isn't just a hobby, it's a lifestyle.
Now if we can just get SLS cancelled ... (Score:3)
Space launch services are now a commodity.
Re:Now if we can just get SLS cancelled ... (Score:5, Insightful)
They're suppose to launch soon at least - all the rocket parts are out in FL now.
Whether they choose to launch a second one is a bit questionable since at this point SpaceX is already many times cheaper and if they get starship the difference will be even more, but I guess SLS is more of a tax-payer funded jobs program than an actual space program
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SLS is more of a tax-payer funded jobs program than an actual space program
Rather than spending the money on a spacecraft we don't need, they could have spent that money on infrastructure improvements which would also employ people but also produce something of actual benefit, unlike SLS.
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Rather than spending the money on a spacecraft we don't need, they could have spent that money on infrastructure improvements which would also employ people but also produce something of actual benefit, unlike SLS.
SLS uses solid fuel rockets, while no one else does or wants to, especially when launching humans. A solid fuel rocket failure has killed American astronauts, in the Challenger disaster. Congress mandates it in order to keep what was Thiokol Chemical, now a division of Northrop Grumman, in the solid fuel rocket business. ICBMs are solid fuel rockets. SLS allows continued development of ICBMs without using the ICBM initialism and upsetting people.
SLS is a weapons development program in sheep's clothing.
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SLS allows continued development of ICBMs without using the ICBM initialism and upsetting people.
The budget gives the military $10B they didn't ask for and they can engage in these programs in secret by just disappearing any successfully nosy activists.
Time to grab the popcorn... (Score:1)
...and listen to all the crabs whining as they die in a bucket!
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...and listen to all the crabs whining as they die in a bucket!
We're watching them die on this very thread.
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So the shorts are going to kill SpaceX like they killed Tesla? ... I think you're confused on multiple levels here. There's the obvious, that clearly Tesla has not been killed, and then the only slightly less obvious that SpaceX is not a publicly traded company. It's not wholly owned by Musk, but he does own a controlling interest. I know Google owns some. Maybe they could do something like shorting in a private sale, but it's not really the same thing.
As for the speed of engine production... Are you aware
Amazing pace of development (Score:3)
Re:Amazing pace of development (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll tell you I can't wait until they light up that roman candle with 29 engines installed. It will be epic.
They made so much progress because they were willing to not only do simulations, but live-fire exercises that yield data that no simulation can. Yes they do blow up prototypes now and then, and when that happens you can expect the usual "bwhaa-haa incompetent fools" type of posts here and wherever else the topic shows up.
But the adults in the room see it differently.
Although they joke about "rapid unscheduled disassembly" they spend their brain power on examining it to make sure it doesn't happen again. Result: rockets that are more reliable than those engineered the "old way" and you ultimately get them faster.
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Result: rockets that are more reliable than those engineered the "old way" and you ultimately get them faster.
It's not about reliability. You can't beat the Soyuz rocket for that. And old-method rockets like the Saturn V, Shuttle or SLS worked perfectly the first time.
Rather, as Elon says, it is all about re-usability and reduced cost.
Reuse requires much lower safety margins. Too low to meet in the design stage without iterative testing.
The "old way" was to design the rocket first, then figure out how to build it. And don't assemble the rocket until each component has been thoroughly tested.
The "new way" is like
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You seem to be unaware (or glossing over) the painful development history of the F-1 engine. Before the first Saturn V was built, a great many F-1 prototypes were built, tested...and self-destructed. CuriousDroid on youtube [youtube.com] has an excellent video on the subject. By that measure, "old-method" looks an awful lot like the build-test-fail-try again approach of SpaceX.
To its credit, the Shuttle appears to have gone throug
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Don't forget the failures of Boeing's Starliner to reach ISS. They were supposed to be the "sure thing", in case SpaceX, the new guy on the block, wasn't able to make it work on time. Now they've reached a point where available docking ports on ISS will be a limitation... if they can ever get it to launch again. This while SpaceX has already completed three of the six launches in its contract.
And then there's the problem of launch vehicles. Right now there's two of them depending on "Below Orbit" to delive
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To its credit, the Shuttle appears to have gone through its development - through first flights - without any catastrophic failures.
That is because NASA redefined turbine failures as a maintenance issue after they found that all of the engines were coming back with cracked turbine blades. This also contributed to high refurbishment costs; the engines were not reusable.
And then there were the solid rocket segments which were so out of round from the bending moment at lift off, that they could not be straightened within specifications, so the workers refurbishing them ignore the specifications.
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It's not about reliability. You can't beat the Soyuz rocket for that.
Actually, you can, as Falcon 9 has shown in recent years. When was the last time that Soyuz had a hundred-long successful flight streak? Oh, wait, that was twenty five years ago...
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Actually, you can, as Falcon 9 has shown in recent years. When was the last time that Soyuz had a hundred-long successful flight streak? Oh, wait, that was twenty five years ago...
Falcon 9 is doing well, but when was the last time a Soyuz blew up on the pad :-)
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It's interesting that they are going down the route that the USSR did with having a large number of smaller engines. The Soviet attempts ended in failure, which is a shame as they might have got people to the Moon otherwise, but the basic concept is sound.
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but the basic concept is sound.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. It very much depends on the nature of engine failures. If your engine tends to explode and take out the surrounding engines, then fewer engines is going to be better. If failures can be contained, then more is better, from a reliability point of view.
In the end, SpaceX didn't have much choice because they would not have had the funds to develop a large first stage engine as well as raptor. But whether, in the face of unlimited funding (or even the funding they have now), th
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They are definitely slowing down though. Just like with software projects, whacking up some impressive gui demos can happen quite fast, but as you dive further and further into getting a system production ready things get gummed up quickly.
The problem they have now is that a failure of the rocket has the potential to take out 35 expensive raptor engines, months of work, and their entire launch system, which has taken a long time to build. With the previous prototypes it would just take out 3 raptors and a c
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I'm actually surprised they haven't gone for launching and landing a booster first, rather than the whole stack. I would have thought the risks of destroying the launch system would have made it worth building a test booster with less engines and landing legs and perfecting the operation of this (basically doing what starship was doing but with grid fins) until they had it landing back on the launch tower. At that point they could test with progressively more engines until they were launching and landing a
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I wish there were more details available on this generation of rocket engines and how they are able to make so many. Seems like they are just able to expend them as needed and take risks.
From recent video interviews with Musk, rapid manufacturing of the Raptor engines seems to be a bottleneck. A Raptor 2 [youtube.com] is coming that will reduce complexity and improve manufacturability. [youtube.com]
The most exciting thing happening on this planet (Score:1)
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I highly doubt it. (Score:1)
Starship (Score:2)
Its not a Starship until it orbits another star
SpaceX Launching (Score:1)
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