SpaceX Prepares For Rehearsal, Test Flight of Starship Rocket

SpaceX plans to carry out a launch rehearsal next week of Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, and its first test flight possibly the following week, the private space company said Thursday. Phys.Org reports: SpaceX published photos of the massive Starship, which is designed to eventually send astronauts to the Moon and beyond, on its launchpad at the company's base in Texas. "Starship fully stacked at Starbase," SpaceX said in a tweet. "Team is working towards a launch rehearsal next week followed by Starship's first integrated flight test ~ week later pending regulatory approval."

SpaceX will need a green light from the Federal Aviation Administration before being allowed to carry out the orbital test launch. SpaceX conducted a successful test-firing of the 33 Raptor engines on the first-stage booster of Starship in February. The 230-foot (69-meter) Super Heavy booster was anchored to the ground during the test-firing, called a static fire, to prevent it from lifting off.

Starship will change access to space.

[greytree]

Those 50s space dreams will be realized within the next decade.

Yes, Elon Musk can be an idiot, but he has also made this happen.

Re: Starship will change access to space.

[Anonymouse Cowtard]

Won't be viable until they rename it SpaceSex and allow people to join the hundred miles high club.

Re:

[greytree]

I meant the 50s space dreams from Popular Science, but other magazines were available.

Re:Starship will change access to space.

[greytree]

1. Musk did not invest in Spacex, he started it.
2. Musk did not invest much in Spacex, he didn't have that much at the time.
3. The Old Space companies had multiple orders or magnitude more money than Musk and had been doing it for over 50 years.
4. There are multiple New Space companies now trying to emulate Spacex, with nothing like its success.
5. It is irrelevant what engineering Musk personally did - he hired the right guys and led them to make the *revolutionary* engineering happen.
6. Musk knows enough about the engineering to discuss it in depth and at length. ...
7. Profit!

Re:Starship will change access to space.

[JaredOfEuropa]

SpaceX was founded by Musk and Cantrell, initially with the idea of purchasing a Russian rocket to do a launch. Cantrell left a few months in as he saw no future in the company. Shotwell was hired shortly after.

Re:Starship will change access to space.

[bradley13]

Well, I disagree with you. I'm not a Musk worshipper, but you have to admit that

- He chose to invest in space

- He initially built the SpaceX company, and put their philosophy in place. That philosophy - move fast and break things - has worked well.

- Sure, there are other space companies. None of them are anywhere near SpaceX. In 2022, SpaceX had 61 launches. The next highest company launched...8.

SpaceX has revolutionized access to space. They had (and have) plenty of competitors, who are mostly failing to keep up.

Re:Starship will change access to space.

[Eunomion]

You have no idea what you're talking about. Musk is literally the CTO and chief designer, and has been constantly involved in the fine details of the technology from day one. To the point that people accuse him of being a micro-manager. You're just copying and pasting criticisms of Steve Jobs that have nothing to do with this person or this company.

Re:

[Strider-]

That's why there's an entire team at SpaceX who's job it is to contain Musk, and keep him from actually touching/breaking anything.

Re:

[Eunomion]

Musk hired that team, you imbecile. A man knows his limitations.

mod this up someone

[Petr Blazek]

This is how to deal with imbecilic comments...

Re:Starship will change access to space.

[r2kordmaa]

Dude... do you not remember the state of space launch business before SpaceX? It wasn't that long ago, it was dismal. Of course he didn't single handedly do a job of thousands of engineers, but he did push through ideas and ways of working that would have never flown in space industry before SpaceX. And it's those ideas and changes that differentiate SpaceX from rest of industry and make it the massive success that it is. 61 successful launches, no failures just last year, that's better than most launchers achieve in decades. You would have to be delusional to downplay that.

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[backslashdot]

I get the Musk adulation. I actually like Musk, but don't like his post-Biden politics and ultra-rightwing move. He's constantly cherrypicking to bitch about wokeness and topics like anti-transgender BS. Ironically a lot of the things he says, I agree with .. BUT .. he's not balanced in reporting wrongful actions. It's like this .. if you constantly ONLY broadcast when LGBT people do something bad and oppressive without ever showing instances where they are wronged or doing something good .. that's wrong. L

Re:Starship will change access to space.

[CrappySnackPlane]

I am begging you to use some fucking linebreaks

Re:

[JaredOfEuropa]

He's a hard man to understand... I don't get going down the right wing rabbit hole either, but it happens. It might be him being snubbed a few times by liberal officials, and he seems to take that sort of thing personally. I remember seeing one of the astronauts of the old guard, telling him that SpaceX was moving in the wrong direction, and he was nigh on brought to tears by that criticism by one of his personal heroes.

I'm still hoping he regains some of his former focus. Shotwell seems to be doing

Re:

[drinkypoo]

even his investment didn't necessarily make any of this happen faster. SpaceX is not the only space flight Company out there. They are the most successful, but that's more a product of the size of investment than anything else.

I think Musk is a piece of shit with overrated intelligence even given the public's new opinion of him, but you need to realize that what you just said there is self-contradictory. Based on your own statements, Musk's investment clearly made this happen faster. Also, SpaceX was the only space flight company with a good plan, so it's not clear that dumping the same amount of money into any of the other ones would have borne as much fruit.

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[earl pottinger]

In fact we saw dumping way more money into SLS and they still have not have perfect flight. And if offered a free ticket to fly on the SLS I would turn it down. Fly on the Crew-Dragon yes, fly on any of the so far planned flights of the SLS no.

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[Immerman]

Yeah. I've got lots of issues with Musk as a person and political influence. But it's hard to deny the influence he's had as a businessman with a dream, and enough technical skill to hire and guide the people needed to pull it off.

I couldn't swear to it, but I think a huge number of the private space companies that are actually looking like they may become major players were founded (or only received significant investment) AFTER SpaceX proved it could be done with big-government money only being a custom

Re: Starship will change access to space.

[zmollusc]

I don't agree that Boeing lacked the funding to do what Spacex has done, Boeing is a collossal aerospace company with decades of experience and huge resources of facilities. Spacex wanted to build reusable rockets, and did so. Boeing wanted to make more money with the least effort and investment, and did so.

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[silentbozo]

I think it boils down to fundamental goals:

SpaceX wants to go to Mars... for reals. That's why they invested in techniques and methods for a market that did not exist at the time, and would have bankrupted the company had they not been able to capture progressively larger chunks of the launch market through a combination of launch frequency, reliability, and low cost.

Even now Starship/Superheavy would be considered a gamble, but they've managed to prove themselves enough that they've got a solid income str

The womenfolk will buy models of it

[Eunomion]

and put it in the drawer next to the bedstand, along with those horrific romance novels they read.

We're go'n 2 Mars!

[oumuamua]

Let's not forget why Starship was built: to go to Mars
For all Musk's faults it is so refreshing to have someone work toward a goal other than maximizing profit.
In case you are not seeing the big picture:
Cyber Truck - the transport for mars
Boring Company - the radiation-proof dwellings for mars
Starlink - the global communications for mars
Twitter - the global communications software for mars
https://www.genolve.com/design... [genolve.com]

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[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Slightly less known, Kimbal Musk (his brother) is working on the food source for Mars...modular hydroponic "vertical farms". [bizjournals.com].

Interplanetary Spaceship, yes

[Babel-17]

Starship, no.

And if you launch a probe that in several hundred years reaches another star system, it's still not a starship, imo.

I grew up reading SF that had been written in the 50s and earlier, and even back then they understood the distinction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

Having said that, my sincere congratulations to all involved with SpaceX.

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[Immerman]

And a Chevy Nova is countless trillions of times less powerful than its namesake. It's a name, can we get over it already?

There's liberal poetic license taken. And while I believe it's expected that it *could* launch an interstellar payload (escaping the sun without multiple huge gravitational assists like the Voyagers required), the poetic meaning is more significant: The first step to travel between stars is to industrialize space. The necessary energy, resources, and infrastructure just can't be deve

Re: Interplanetary Spaceship, yes

[mrchew1982]

Generation ships will undoubtedly come first, and probably won't be up to our current, north American, standards of living.

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[Immerman]

I suspect so on generations ships, but I don't know about standard of living - It's going to have to be pretty good to get anyone to consider committing to it for the rest their lives, their children's, etc, etc. The lifestyle would have to be different, for sure. Mass comes at a premium when you're moving, but I'm not sure owning a lot less stuff translates to a lower quality of life. Many minimalists would even argue the opposite is true. And if we figure a few centuries before it happens then things

The government bottleneck

[RogueWarrior65]

I'm curious as to why they have to wait for regulatory approval? How complicated can that possibly be? And why wasn't that process started a long time ago?
Seems to me that bureaucrats fiddle fart around far more than they should if for no other reason than to cover their own ass.

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[earl pottinger]

Would you like to be flying in a plane to your vacation, and suddenly someone decides to put a big rocket in your flight path? The regulations used today do seem to go too far at times, but if you look into the history of flight you find many of the earlier accidents occurred when there were no regulations covering some of the actions taken. Watch the show "Mayday" to see what I mean.

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[RogueWarrior65]

This is a super obvious thing that's easily avoided especially with available tools. Merely looking backward as a justification for regulation ignores the technological progress made since regulations were created.