Wiki Super Heavy/Starship - General Development Discussion

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Grasshopper 80m was 3/7/2013.
First Falcon 9 landing was 12/21/2015.
I suspect that they've learned a lot about landing a rocket, so Starship development will be more about not exploding.

 

[ecarfan]

I always appreciate Scott’s comments and insights. Despite have watched the SpaceX video of the hop flight multiple times, I had missed the minor burning on some of the Raptor plumbing during the flight and that the vehicle did not end up sitting perfectly vertical after landing. Maybe one of the legs malfunctioned.

Hoping that SN8 gets three Raptors, a nose cone, and goes up at least 10km!

 

[JohnnyEnglish]

Grasshopper 80m was 3/7/2013.
First Falcon 9 landing was 12/21/2015.
I suspect that they've learned a lot about landing a rocket, so Starship development will be more about not exploding.

That is true for the first stage which will use the same grid fin and RCS approach for control. The 'skydiver' approach being used for Starship is mostly new and controlling that will pose new challenges. However SpaceX seem to be quick to learn and the challenge is what makes it interesting

 

[HVM]

It still look silly, flying silo, -need pointy end and fins : )

Official SpaceX Photos

Every SN show better and better building quality.

 

[ecarfan]

Latest (I think) video from BocaChicaGal. The scale of the Super Heavy VAB is huge. And there are four new nose cones sitting outside.

 

[Nikxice]

An apparent successful static fire of SN6 occurred Sunday night. SpaceX has scheduled the next hop testflight for Friday.

Michael Baylor
@nextspaceflight
SpaceX is targeting Aug. 28 for the 150-meter hop of Starship SN6, per the latest road closures. Backup opportunities are available on Aug. 29 and 30. Windows are 8 am to 8 pm central on each day.

 

[Grendal]

Solid Static Fire from today for SN6:

LabPadre slo-mo video:

 

[ecarfan]

In the first video @Grendal posted, the fire is at 28:27. Very short, appeared to be less than 2 seconds. Glad it was successful.

 

[EVCollies]

Great video of first Starship landing in Germany, at 1:20

 

[Grendal]

 

[ecarfan]

It’s hard to describe how excited just seeing that sign made me feel! My spouse thinks I’ve lost it.

That launch pad is going to go down in history as being as important as the pad that launched the Apollo moon missions.

Oh wait, that pad is now also a SpaceX pad...

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

It’s hard to describe how excited just seeing that sign made me feel! My spouse thinks I’ve lost it.

That launch pad is going to go down in history as being as important as the pad that launched the Apollo moon missions.

Oh wait, that pad is now also a SpaceX pad...

I'll get more excited when I see a sign like that on an artificial island off a nearby coast.

 

[ecarfan]

SpaceX is targeting Aug. 28 for the 150-meter hop of Starship SN6, per the latest road closures. Backup opportunities are available on Aug. 29 and 30. Windows are 8 am to 8 pm central on each day.

Anyone have an update on when the next hop might occur?

 

[Nikxice]

Anyone have an update on when the next hop might occur?

It would be surreal, but we could have three events on Sunday. With road closures still in effect, SN6 is apparently still somewhere in the queue. Suppose it could be sandwiched between Starlink-11 in the morning and SAOCOM-1B in the evening. Earlier today there was some speculation that SAOCOM-1B would be delayed due to the nearby Delta IV Heavy abort, but this no longer seems to be the case. A few hours ago SAOCOM-1B went verticle at SLC-40.

 

[ecarfan]

It would be surreal, but we could have three events on Sunday. With road closures still in effect, SN6 is apparently still somewhere in the queue. Suppose it could be sandwiched between Starlink-11 in the morning and SAOCOM-1B in the evening.

Starlink launch has just been postponed until Tuesday. But I don’t see how the timing of an SN6 test hop is related to the SpaceX launches pending in Florida. The Boca Chica launch team is likely completely independent of the SpaceX teams involved in the Florida launches.

 

[e-FTW]

Marcus House has a great video up that updates one on all of the happenings in Boca Chica:

 

[e-FTW]

Looks like this hop attempt was scrubbed:

 

[ecarfan]

Great Starship development progress graphic by Tony Bella http://tonybela.com/SN6 graphic 150dpi.jpg

 

[e-FTW]

Another great roundup of all of the coolness and goings-on: Starship SN6 hop delayed by local weather - Super Heavy is coming - NASASpaceFlight.com

 

[ecarfan]

Another great roundup of all of the coolness and goings-on: Starship SN6 hop delayed by local weather - Super Heavy is coming - NASASpaceFlight.com

The tempo of activity at Boca Chica is mind blowing?

I don’t understand how people are definitively assigning SN’s to the various Starships under varying degrees of completion at Boca Chica. I don’t see SpaceX announcing the numbers.