posted 09-28-2019 08:31 AM               

SpaceX's Starship and Super Heavy launch vehicle is a fully, rapidly reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, and anywhere else in the solar system. On Saturday, September 28 at our launch facility in Cameron County, Texas, SpaceX Chief Engineer and CEO Elon Musk will provide an update on the design and development of Starship.

posted 09-29-2019 09:05 AM               

"This is, I think, the most inspiring thing I have ever seen," said Musk on Saturday (Sept. 28), admiring the 165-foot-tall (80-meter) Starship as it was lit by spotlights.

posted 09-29-2019 09:30 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by brianjbradley:
They've had how many launch failures in under a decade?

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posted 09-29-2019 10:02 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by brianjbradley:
...but focus on all ambitions shouldn't be lost either.

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posted 09-29-2019 04:56 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
According to Musk, only about five percent of SpaceX's workforce is assigned to Starship and Super Heavy at current. He said the company's priority and resources are focused on commercial crew and Falcon 9 operations.

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posted 09-30-2019 01:14 PM               

SpaceX's Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket (collectively referred to as Starship) represent a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond. Starship will be the world's most powerful launch vehicle ever developed, with the ability to carry in excess of 100 metric tonnes to Earth orbit. Drawing on an extensive history of launch vehicle and engine development programs, SpaceX has been rapidly iterating on the design of Starship with orbital-flight targeted for 2020.

posted 10-04-2019 08:06 AM               

SpaceX representatives declined to answer News 6's questions about how the private company will transport the spacecraft more than 20 miles between the two facilities or when the relocation will occur.

However, records obtained exclusively by News 6 reveal that in September the 180-foot-tall spacecraft could be towed along the State Road 528 Beachline Expressway before being placed on a barge in the Indian River for shipment to Launch Complex 39.

posted 10-04-2019 09:03 PM               

This image led me to wonder if the nose section in the article had already been transported.

The new image also shows what looks to be earthworks constructed to make an access road out of the facility on the southern side.

posted 11-20-2019 04:15 PM               

In a response on Twitter, Elon Musk said SpaceX will now move to the Mk3.

This [Mk1] had some value as a manufacturing pathfinder, but flight design is quite different.

posted 11-20-2019 06:19 PM               

The purpose of today's test was to pressurize systems to the max, so the outcome was not completely unexpected. There were no injuries, nor is this a serious setback.

As Elon tweeted, Mk1 served as a valuable manufacturing pathfinder, but flight design is quite different. The decision had already been made to not fly this test article and the team is focused on Mk3 builds, which are designed for orbit.

posted 12-03-2019 12:11 PM               

SpaceX confirmed last week that it has paused work on Starship at the Cocoa location and that the employees working there have been reassigned to either Boca Chica or other projects within the company in Florida. Work on the Mk2 vehicle (as seen in the above photos) has been halted in favor of the Mk3 build in Texas.

posted 02-29-2020 10:39 AM            

Aftermath video the following morning.

posted 03-05-2020 09:19 AM               

"The conventional space paradigms do not apply to what we're doing here. We're trying to build a massive fleet to make Mars habitable, to make life multi-planetary. I think we need, probably, on the order of 1,000 ships, and each of those ships would have more payload than the Saturn V—and be reusable."

Musk has thought about this a lot, obviously.

"The point at which one says the goal is to make life multi-planetary, it means that we need to have a self-sustaining city on Mars," Musk said. "That city has to survive if the resupply ships stop coming from Earth for any reason whatsoever. Doesn't matter why. If those resupply ships stop coming, does the city die out or not? In order to make something self-sustaining, you can't be missing anything. You must have all the ingredients. It can't be like, well this thing is self-sustaining except for this one little thing that we don't have. It can't be. That'd be like saying, 'Well, we went on this long sea voyage, and we had everything except vitamin C.' OK, great. Now you're going to get scurvy and die—and painfully, by the way. It's going to suck. You're going to die slowly and painfully for lack of vitamin C. So we've got to make sure we've got the vitamin C there on Mars. Then it's like, OK, rough order of magnitude, what kind of tonnage do you need to make it self-sustaining? It's probably not less than a million tons."

posted 03-31-2020 09:55 AM               

Starship has the capability to transport satellites, payloads, crew, and cargo to a variety of orbits and Earth, Lunar, or Martian landing sites. Potential Starship customers can use this guide as a resource for preliminary payload accommodations information. This is the initial release of the Starship Users Guide and it will be updated frequently in response to customer feedback.

posted 04-03-2020 08:25 AM               

This week, SpaceX workers in South Texas loaded the third full-scale Starship prototype — SN3 — onto a test stand ​at the company's Boca Chica launch site. On Wednesday night, they pressure-tested the vehicle at ambient temperature with nitrogen, and SN3 performed fine.

On Thursday night SpaceX began cryo-testing the vehicle, which means it was loaded again with nitrogen, but this time it was chilled to flight-like temperatures and put under flight-like pressures. Unfortunately, a little after 2am local time, SN3 failed and began to collapse on top of itself. It appeared as if the vehicle may have lost pressurization and become top-heavy.

Shortly after the failure, SpaceX's founder and chief engineer, Elon Musk, said on Twitter, "We will see what data review says in the morning, but this may have been a test configuration mistake."

posted 04-05-2020 11:41 AM               

Good news is that this was a test configuration error, rather than a design or build mistake. Not enough pressure in the LOX [liquid oxygen] tank ullage to maintain stability with a heavy load in the CH4 [methane] tank. This was done with N2 [nitrogen].

posted 04-24-2020 03:43 PM               

Starship SN4 tank on test stand.

posted 04-27-2020 11:44 AM               

SN4 passed cryo proof! 4.9 bar. Kind of a softball to be honest, but that's enough to fly!

posted 05-06-2020 09:43 AM               

After ignition, it appeared that the Raptor rocket engine burned for about 4 seconds. At the end of this test at the South Texas Launch Site, the vehicle still stood. About 90 minutes after the test, SpaceX founder and Chief Engineer Elon Musk confirmed the test firing was good, saying, "Starship SN4 passed static fire."

posted 05-28-2020 04:19 PM               

Space Exploration Technologies is authorized to conduct RLV missions to launch the Starship Prototype Launch Vehicle. The RLV missions authorized by this license commence and conclude at the Boca Chica launch and landing site, Boca Chica, Texas.

posted 06-08-2020 06:12 AM               

"Please consider the top SpaceX priority (apart from anything that could reduce Dragon return risk) to be Starship," Musk wrote in the email.

In his email, Musk asked SpaceX employees to "consider spending significant time" in Boca Chica to help further accelerate Starship development. "For those considering moving, we will always offer a dedicated SpaceX aircraft to shuttle people."

posted 07-30-2020 08:50 PM               

Starship SN5 just completed full duration static fire. 150m hop soon.

posted 08-03-2020 06:49 PM               

I'm in the Boca control room. Hop attempt in about 33 minutes.

Scrubbed for the day. A Raptor turbopump spin start valve didn't open, triggering an automatic abort. We'll figure out why and retry tomorrow.

posted 08-04-2020 07:11 PM               

Maximum altitude:

Smoke clears after landing, still standing:

posted 08-04-2020 08:35 PM               

Progress is accelerating. Mars is looking real.

posted 08-05-2020 12:48 AM               

Starship SN5 completes 150m Hop.