posted 10-21-2021 08:08 PM               

First firing of a Raptor vacuum engine integrated onto a Starship.

posted 10-22-2021 11:50 AM               

If all goes well, Starship will be ready for its first orbital launch attempt next month, pending regulatory approval.

posted 11-15-2021 12:45 PM               

First six-engine static fire test of Starship.

posted 11-15-2021 12:49 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
...the FAA will hold the first of two virtual public hearings

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posted 11-18-2021 09:23 AM               

Musk, speaking at a joint meeting of the National Academies' Space Studies Board and Board on Physics and Astronomy Nov. 17, said the company was in the final preparations of both the vehicle and its launch site in Boca Chica, Texas, ahead of a campaign of as many as a dozen test flights in 2022.

"We're close to our initial orbital launch," he said. "The first orbital flight we're hoping to do in January." Later in the discussion, he revised that, saying that flight would take place "in January or perhaps February."

That flight, as outlined in regulatory filings, would place the Starship in orbit, but the vehicle would complete less than one orbit before reentering and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean about 100 kilometers the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Both the Starship vehicle and its Super Heavy booster are now complete, he said, and the launch pad and tower should be complete this month. A "bunch of tests" will follow in December. ...

Musk later estimated SpaceX would attempt a dozen Starship launches next year, and possibly more. "The engine build rate is currently the biggest constraint on how many vehicles we can make," he said, given that Super Heavy requires 29 Raptor engines currently, and later 33, along with six on Starship. The company is building a new factory in Texas for high-volume production of Raptor.

If SpaceX is successful to recover and reuse Starship during those test flights, operational missions could begin in 2023. "We intend to complete the test flight program next year, which means that it's probably ready for valuable payloads — not for testing, basically, but actual real payloads — in 2023. So quite soon."

posted 11-18-2021 12:50 PM               

The Booster stage will separate approximately 170 seconds into flight. The Booster will then perform a partial return and land in the Gulf of Mexico approximately 20 miles from the shore.

posted 11-30-2021 10:46 AM               

He described a dire situation the day after Thanksgiving in a companywide email, a copy of which was obtained by CNBC.

"The Raptor production crisis is much worse than it seemed a few weeks ago," Musk wrote.

"We face genuine risk of bankruptcy if we cannot achieve a Starship flight rate of at least once every two weeks next year," Musk added later.

posted 11-30-2021 11:43 AM               

Unfortunately, the Raptor production crisis is much worse than it seemed a few weeks ago. As we have dug into the issues following exiting prior senior management, they have unfortunately turned out to be far more severe than was reported. There is no way to sugarcoat this.

I was going to take this weekend off, as my first weekend off in a long time, but instead I will be on the Raptor line all night and through the weekend.

Unless you have critical family matters or cannot physically return to Hawthorne, we need all hands on deck to recover from what is, quite frankly, a disaster.

The consequences for SpaceX if we can’t get enough reliable Raptors made is that we then can’t fly Starship, which means we then can’t fly Starlink Satellite V2 (Falcon has neither the volume *nor* the mass to orbit needed for satellite V2). Satellite V1 by itself is financially weak, whereas V2 is strong.

In addition, we are spooling up terminal production to several million units per year, which will consume massive capital, assuming that satellite V2 will be on orbit to handle the bandwidth demand. These terminals will be useless otherwise.

What it comes down to is that we face genuine risk of bankruptcy if we cannot achieve a Starship flight rate of at least once every two weeks next year.

posted 11-30-2021 03:56 PM            

...we face genuine risk of bankruptcy if we cannot achieve a Starship flight rate of at least once every two weeks next year.

posted 11-30-2021 04:22 PM               

On the "Raptor problem" —

It's getting fixed.

On SpaceX going bankrupt —

If a severe global recession were to dry up capital availability/liquidity while SpaceX was losing billions on Starlink and Starship, then bankruptcy, while still unlikely, is not impossible.

GM and Chrysler went bankrupt last recession.

The magnitude of the Starship program is not widely appreciated. It is designed to extend life to Mars (and the moon), which requires ~1000 times more payload to orbit than all current Earth rockets combined.

posted 11-30-2021 09:55 PM               

They may by the end of next year have a fully successful test mission, but I can't imagine any serious paying customer next year. Assuming a fully successful test mission, it would not surprise me if they started carrying partial Starlink payloads to both launch the satellites and get test data on "commercial" use of the Starship/Super Heavy system.

posted 12-03-2021 01:24 PM               

Construction of Starship orbital launch pad at the Cape has begun.

posted 12-08-2021 11:59 AM               

Now, the FAA is reviewing SpaceX’s plans to significantly expand the spaceport to allow for launches of the largest rocket known to man, an expansion that has alarmed many residents, environmentalists and wildlife conservationists.

SpaceX declined to respond to a detailed list of questions and allegations that it is lowballing homeowners and harming the environment, stating that the company did not have anyone available.

posted 12-28-2021 12:49 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
The FAA expects to conclude its environmental assessment of SpaceX's Starship operations in Boca Chica, Texas by Dec. 31, 2021.

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The FAA continues its Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) for the proposed SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy project in Boca Chica, Texas. The new target date for issuing the Final PEA is February 28.

posted 01-10-2022 08:42 AM               

Starship launch and catch tower.

posted 02-10-2022 08:04 AM               

Neither this spacecraft or booster are expected to fly to orbit. Photo shared by Elon Musk (via Twitter):

posted 02-10-2022 06:16 PM               

On Thursday, February 10 SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will provide an update on the design, development, and testing of Starship.

You can watch the event live at approximately 8:00 p.m. CDT.

posted 02-11-2022 08:09 AM               

Elon Musk took to the stage here on Thursday night (Feb. 10) to deliver what his company, SpaceX, billed as an "update on the design, development and testing of Starship" — the "it" to which Musk was referring and of what he further described as "really some some wild stuff." Towering behind him at SpaceX's South Texas Launch Site (or "Starbase") was the first fully-stacked Starship, comprising a prototype spacecraft of the same name mounted atop a mockup of its even taller "Super Heavy" booster.

The steel-skinned vehicle, which glistened in the spotlights that were illuminating it against the night sky, was itself poised atop its launch pad as if ready for flight.

posted 02-14-2022 12:54 PM               

The FAA is announcing that the new target date to complete its environmental review of the SpaceX Starship / Super Heavy is now March 28, 2022. The previous date was Feb. 28, 2022.

Completing the environmental review does not guarantee that a vehicle operator license will be issued to SpaceX. The environmental review is just one part of the FAA commercial space licensing process. SpaceX must also meet FAA safety, risk and financial responsibility requirements.

More than 19,000 public comments were received on the draft environmental review. In addition, the FAA is continuing consultation and coordination with other agencies.

posted 02-26-2022 08:21 AM               

...information acquired through a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request indicates that US Departments of Fish and Wildlife Services (FWS) and National Parks Services (NPS) are the primary sources of recent delays and the only real sources of discord this late in the process. As an example, as of the end of October 2021, the NPS had a list of at least 31 comments on SpaceX's Starbase Draft PEA, each of which would have required a detailed response and additional back-and-forth to refine each response. The critiques and requests cover virtually every aspect of orbital Starship launches from Starbase, including FAA launch license details, recent SpaceX land acquisitions, impacts on a local Civil War battlefield landmark, pad lighting, air quality, noise, paint colors, road closures, Raptor thrust, contingency plans, and more.

Meanwhile, in a general review, the Department of the Interior (DOI) – speaking on behalf of the FWS and NPS – raised concerns about "launch site blast area hazards, closure of FWS and NPS lands, environmental justice (EJ) concerns, NHPA Section 106 and 110(f), [endangered] species, air quality emissions, and climate change impacts.

posted 03-17-2022 12:14 PM               

For its first fully-integrated test, though, SpaceX appears to have put Starship through a fairly limited cryogenic proof – a test where flammable propellant is replaced with a similarly cold (cryogenic) fluid that's similar enough to subject a rocket to similar thermal and mechanical stresses.

For Ship 20 and Booster 4's combined debut, Super Heavy was filled maybe 10-20% and Starship around 25-50% of the way with either liquid nitrogen (LN2) or a combination of LN2 and liquid oxygen (LOx). It's difficult to tell but it's unlikely any methane (LCH4) fuel was involved.

posted 03-25-2022 03:11 PM               

With regards to schedule, he writes (via Twitter):

First Starship orbital flight will be with Raptor 2 engines, as they are much more capable and reliable. 230 ton or ~500k lb thrust at sea level.

We’ll have 39 flightworthy engines built by next month, then another month to integrate, so hopefully May for orbital flight test.

The FAA intends to issue the Final Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) for the SpaceX Starship / Super Heavy project on April 29, 2022. The previous target date was March 28, 2022.

The FAA is currently reviewing the Final PEA and completing consultation and coordination with agencies at the local, State and Federal level.

The completion of the environmental review will not guarantee that the FAA will issue a license to SpaceX to launch its Starship / Super Heavy vehicle. SpaceX's license application must also meet FAA safety, risk and financial responsibility requirements.

posted 03-25-2022 05:50 PM               

I've certainly felt that there's been a fair amount of behind the scenes lobbying and dirty tricks played on Starship/Elon Musk of late, notably the questioning of his links to China. In my opinion, Boeing (SLS), ULA (Vulcan) and Blue Origin (BE-4, New Glenn, lunar human landing) have been doing everything in their power to slow down SpaceX.

posted 03-25-2022 06:19 PM               

The FAA already provided its permission for SpaceX to launch Starship (with Super Heavy) from the Kennedy Space Center. If there truly was a secret effort to keep SpaceX grounded, then that too would have been delayed. It is SpaceX's desire to launch from Boca Chica (in part because of the number of regulations and eastern range oversight in Florida).

posted 03-25-2022 09:43 PM               

The Environmental Review has set SpaceX back on the rapid development plan, and a continued delay would cause onward delays that may impact the lunar landing plans.

SpaceX may be better off operating from the East Coast for a few reasons, one being the airspace closures whenever they conduct a flight test. The North-South American airways routes see heavy traffic, which gets diverted during a launch. Having two launch sites inside these flight paths seems crazy because the launches generally go East, so restricted airspace is generally East of the launch site, and having Texas and Florida active makes air traffic movements problematic.

I suspect that if SpaceX had maintained the Super Heavy development in Florida, they may have been further along in the development and test schedule by now.

posted 04-06-2022 05:23 PM               

The Army Corps informed SpaceX in a letter dated March 7 that it has closed the review of an application for a secondary launch and landing pad, along with other launch support infrastructure, for the Boca Chica site.

"Without the requested information, the permit process cannot continue," Lynda Yezzi, public affairs chief for the Army Corps, Galveston District, said Wednesday in an email to Bloomberg.

The process can be re-initiated once the data is submitted, according to the letter. SpaceX and Musk didn't immediately reply to emails seeking comment on the permit process.

posted 04-29-2022 12:20 PM               

The FAA is working toward issuing the final Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) for the SpaceX Starship / Super Heavy on May 31, 2022. SpaceX made multiple changes to its application that require additional FAA analysis. The agency continues to review around 18,000 general public comments.

The completion of the PEA will not guarantee that the FAA will issue a launch license. SpaceX's application must also meet FAA safety, risk and financial responsibility requirements.

posted 05-28-2022 11:55 AM               

Starship 24 rolls out to the pad at Starbase.

posted 05-31-2022 09:20 AM               

The FAA is working toward issuing the final Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) for the SpaceX Starship / Super Heavy on May 31, 2022.