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Space

SpaceX Prepares For Rehearsal, Test Flight of Starship Rocket (phys.org) 35

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.

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SpaceX Prepares For Rehearsal, Test Flight of Starship Rocket

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  • 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.
    • by Anonymouse Cowtard ( 6211666 ) on Saturday April 08, 2023 @02:19AM (#63434542) Homepage
      Won't be viable until they rename it SpaceSex and allow people to join the hundred miles high club.
  • and put it in the drawer next to the bedstand, along with those horrific romance novels they read.
  • by oumuamua ( 6173784 ) on Saturday April 08, 2023 @08:33AM (#63434812)
    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]
  • 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.

    • 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

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

  • 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.

    • 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.
      • 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.

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