FAQ
- When (first) orbital flight? First integrated flight test occurred April 20, 2023. “The vehicle cleared the pad and beach as Starship climbed to an apogee of ~39 km over the Gulf of Mexico – the highest of any Starship to-date. The vehicle experienced multiple engines out during the flight test, lost altitude, and began to tumble. The flight termination system was commanded on both the booster and ship.”
- Where can I find streams of the launch? SpaceX Full Livestream. NASASpaceFlight Channel. Lab Padre Channel. Everyday Astronaut Channel.
- What’s happening next? SpaceX has assessed damage to Stage 0 and is implementing fixes and changes including a water deluge/pad protection/“shower head” system. No major repairs to key structures appear to be necessary.
- When is the next flight test? Just after flight, Elon stated they “Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months.” On April 29, he reiterated this estimate in a Twitter Spaces Q&A (summarized here), saying “I’m glad to report that the pad damage is actually quite small,” should “be repaired quickly,” and “From a pad standpoint, we are probably ready to launch in 6 to 8 weeks.” Requalifying the flight termination system (FTS) and the FAA post-incident review will likely require the longest time to complete. Musk reiterated the timeline on May 26, stating “Major launchpad upgrades should be complete in about a month, then another month of rocket testing on pad, then flight 2 of Starship.”
- Why no flame diverter/flame trench below the OLM? Musk tweeted on April 21: “3 months ago, we started building a massive water-cooled, steel plate to go under the launch mount. Wasn’t ready in time & we wrongly thought, based on static fire data, that Fondag would make it through 1 launch.” Regarding a trench, note that the Starship on the OLM sits 2.5x higher off the ground than the Saturn V sat above the base of its flame trench, and the OLM has 6 exits vs. 2 on the Saturn V trench.
Quick Links
RAPTOR ROOST | LAB CAM | SAPPHIRE CAM | SENTINEL CAM | ROVER CAM | ROVER 2.0 CAM | PLEX CAM | NSF STARBASE
Relevant Reddit threads (though these likely won’t be accessible during the blackout).
Starship Dev 46 | Starship Dev 45 | Starship Dev 44 | Starship Dev 43 | Starship Thread List
Official Starship Update | r/SpaceX Update Thread
Status
Road Closures
No road closures currently scheduled
No transportation delays currently scheduled
Up to date as of 2023-07-09
Resources
- LabPadre Channel | NASASpaceFlight.com Channel
- NSF: Booster 7 + Ship X (likely 24) Updates Thread | Most Recent
- NSF: Boca Chica Production Updates Thread | Most recent
- NSF: Elon Starship tweet compilation | Most Recent
- SpaceX: Website Starship page | Starship Users Guide (2020, PDF)
- FAA: SpaceX Starship Project at the Boca Chica Launch Site
- FAA: Temporary Flight Restrictions NOTAM list
- FCC: Starship Orbital Demo detailed Exhibit - 0748-EX-ST-2021 application June 20 through December 20
- NASA: Starship Reentry Observation (Technical Report)
- Hwy 4 & Boca Chica Beach Closures (May not be available outside US)
- Production Progress Infographics by @RingWatchers
- Raptor 2 Tracker by @SpaceRhin0
- Acronym definitions by Decronym
- Everyday Astronaut: Starbase Tour with Elon Musk, Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
- Everyday Astronaut: 2022 Elon Musk Interviews, Starbase/Ship Updates | Launch Tower | Merlin Engine | Raptor Engine
I’ll attempt to keep this post current with links and major updates, but would be greatly helped by information supplied by the community. I hope this can be an alternate place to discuss Starship development. While the Starship Development Threads on Reddit are not party threads, Lemmy is still small enough that I don’t imagine that strict moderation will be needed in the short term.
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Unrolled tweet thread at threadreaderapp.com by Ryan Hansen Space @RyanHansenSpace. It’s a look at the details of the steel plate parts and assembly under the Orbital Launch Mount.
I’m really impressed by how quickly the plate is getting assembled. I didn’t expect the manifolds to get added for another week or so, and now they’re at 2 / 3.
I’m not sure what the bottleneck is at the moment. Once everything is lifted in place they can move B9 over, but they might want to wait until they hit stage adapter is added.
B9 could go through spin prime tests without the plane being ready, and the plate can get tested without all deluge water & gas tanks present. We’re also it sure how far along the other OLM repairs are (cryo pipes are still being replaced). So there’s a ton of stuff happening in parallel.
Musk said that he thought that FAA approval of a new FTS design was likely to be the long pole.
Elon thinks the next launch will be in 6 to 8 weeks
8 weeks to resume testing on the OLM perhaps, but there will be a lot of new stuff to test before launch
Looks like the Ship Quick-Disconnect is back!
And being lifted in place as we speak. NSF coverage: https://www.youtube.com/live/mhJRzQsLZGg?feature=share
RGV Sneak Peek shows some nice shots of the steel plates, as well as the pour under the OLM. Looks like a lot more concrete is needed though, wonder when that’ll happen.
The steel plates look ready for transport, so I bet this next pour will be soon — it seems to be the main hold up.
Ship 25 flaps were tested at 12:43 CDT
I’m leaving reddit permanently, so thanks for maintaining this!
Ship 25 completes a six-engine static fire test at Starbase in Texas
11 seconds. In the audio, only a little bit of HONK at the end.
Someone pointed out that the flames start out as a triangle, but then switch rotated 60 degrees when the vacuum engines start - V to ^.
A comment in The Other Place mentioned that it looks like a little spalled concrete at 4 seconds in.
The Other Place
The Place That Shall Not Be Named
This is great thank you, I started following spacex Reddit in the echologic (was that his name?) Days, but the sub got a bit, I dunno, it started to lack a certain something. Just got too big maybe.
I’m happy to see this here! Thanks for starting it, sorry for the off topic 😂
More pour info, this time from tweets from Zack Golden @CSI_Starbase. The truck counts basically match those from @LettuceTurnipTheBeet@lemm.ee’s post earlier.
SpaceX has received their final load of concrete for today’s Orbital Launch Mount foundation work. Here are the totals after the 15.3 hour marathon:
June 25th - 132 Truck loads
July 3rd - 171 Truck loads
Total Volume = 2,302 m^3 = 3030 yd^3
Total Weight = 5,411 Tons
For reference, a Fully loaded Starship ~ 5,000 Tons
Note: There were 4 additional trucks that showed up but were turned back around without offloading.
Shoutout to agents @VickiCocks15 and @SpmtTracker for keeping track of all these.
4:11 PM · Jul 3, 2023
and
Obviously this number is significantly greater than we predicted. For those who asked, that previous number was not considering the area in yellow, which were also completed today. This area is technically outside of the true foundation of the OLM
with a picture by RGV Aerial Photography.
So am I understanding this correctly that today’s pour was a) directly under the OLM (where the showerhead is going) and b) in the yellow area?
Yes that’s right
Yooooo
Road closure is now scheduled for tomorrow!
So the big news of the day and night was what is believed to be the center plate of the water deluge system. It is thought that it will be placed directly under the Orbital Launch Mount.
@LettuceTurnipTheBeet@lemm.ee already posted (at top level) “CSI Starbase video on new Deluge system”, a deep dive part 1. The URL I see for the post is https://lemmy.world/post/879748 , because that’s how I access this. The canonical one is https://lemm.ee/post/530280 .
CSI Starbase SPMT Tracker @SpmtTracker posted a tweet with a picture of what is very likely to be a vertical stand for the center plate. The image is on Imgur. The tweet is here. Ryan Hansen Space @RyanHansenSpace tweeted a rendering of how it might look under the OLM. This should be the image:
@LettuceTurnipTheBeet@lemm.ee posted below (if sorted by new) a link to a 13-minute video by Starship Gazer, of people working in the tent on the center plate. https://lemm.ee/comment/534238 . Someone commented that, from 4 minutes on, it’s comedy gold. People were grinning around them. I’m told that someone is standing on top of the cheater pipe at one point.
NASASpaceflight posted a video of the rollout of the center. It’s about 1 hour 26 minutes long. The stand / jig was on the first truck; the center plate with some people on it was on the next truck. The clearest views are about 17 minutes on.
Thanks for your updates @pigeonberry@lemmy.world. I know our community here is small so I’m glad some of us keep putting in the effort :)
Same to you, bud! I figure I’ll keep blowing on the embers. Either the flame will catch (& I get to boast “I was into Lemmy before it really took off”), or my lungs will get too tired.
As Zack Golden said, looks like a very tight fit. I’m very excited to watch this whole operation live on NSF
Starbase live-
9:15am cdt- 11 more loads of rebar have been lifted over to the OLM since midnight. LR11000 still holding the deluge pipe in position to be welded.
Edit-
10:48am- Deluge pipe is moved to the side of the underground pipe bunker and laid down on the ground.
11:50am- 8 more bundles of rebar have been lifted over to the OLM. Some presumably extra bent pieces have been lifted away as well.
1:11pm- Deluge pipe raised again and moved back to join the pipe that goes underground.
5:00pm- Since noon there has been 15 more loads of rebar craned over to the OLM. Most loads appear to be multiple pieces but there are several large bent pieces that have been moved one at a time.
9:00pm- 10 more loads of rebar have been moved over. (44 for the day so far and 56 in the last 40 hours)
It would be great if Mauricio could manage 2 flyovers this week. So much going on
Definitely!! Those piles of rebar by the OLM were huge. It’d be nice to see how big of a dent has been made in them. (I’d guess they’ve moved half of it but I bet I’m way overestimating)
In a Twitter Space with @ashleevance, @elonmusk shares that Starship will hot-stage during the next flight, lighting engines on the ship with some engines still running on the booster, as to Never Stop Thrusting!™️
“Hot staging” is firing the upper stage engines while it’s still nominally attached to the lower stage (like resting on or loosely attached). The advantages that I gather exist: It’s fast. It takes care of stage separation without needing springs or little rockets or a flip or anything. Before firing a liquid-fueled stage that may have gases in a tank (“ullage”), you have to settle the contents so that the engine intakes suck only liquid (maybe using “ullage rockets”), but if you’re still accelerating at separation, that’s automatically taken care of.
But if you intend to reuse the first stage, well, I wonder whether six engines igniting will be too hard on it.
Apparently U.S. Titan rockets, a lot of Soviet / Russian ones (Soyuz, Progress, N-1), and (some?) Chinese Long March rockets were designed with hot staging.
Joe Barnard @joebarnard replies: "‘okay so when I hot stage it’s “an anomaly” and I’ve “torched another flight computer” but when SpaceX does it it’s fine???’
Interesting, most of the Soviet rockets that uses hot staging had a truss between each stage to allow the exhaust to vent. As far as I know starship doesn’t have anything like this yet, I wonder if they’ll add some or if they’re just gonna see what happens without it 😂
Such a device has been spotted at the shipyard. It has been speculated that the reason the ship QD was removed was to adjust it for the height added by the vented spacer.
Oh cool, are there any pictures of it? I hadn’t heard of it but then I’ve been a bit out of the loop the last couple of weeks
If it truly offers a >10% payload to orbit boost, I’m super curious to know how the internal debate went. Wonder what changed.
I linked to two possible pictures in my reply here.
Thanks mate 👍
Hot staging also eliminates the gravity loss that otherwise would occur during the coasting phase during and after separation.
They may ignite only three engines at half thrust for the first second or so.
At stage separation how horizontal is Starship? If there was no vertical moment then how significant would the gravity loss actually be?
AFAIK most of the gravity loss is in the first few second of a launch but I don’t have any idea what you are losing by the time you get to stage separation.
I was summoned out of my Christmas lair for an update. I see the cladding was already mentioned.
Starbase live- Yellow crane to the left of OLM has been lifting rebar over to the pit most of the day.
(I missed part of the morning but I’ve counted at least 12 loads so far)
Rover 2-
20:43 cdt- The large deluge pipe that we saw test fitted last night has now been painted white and is lifted back over to where the pipes go underground by the tanks.
Ship 25 completed a flight-like chill and spin of the Raptor engine pumps, stopping just before engine ignition. As a result of the test, cryogenic liquid oxygen formed a visible cloud beneath the ship. This checked out vital systems in advance of the upcoming static fire.
