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Elon Musk tells SpaceX employees that its Starship rocket is the top priority now
SpaceX launched astronauts for the first time barely a week ago but CEO Elon Musk does not want the company resting on its laurels.
Instead, Musk urged SpaceX employees to accelerate progress on its next-generation Starship rocket "dramatically and immediately," writing Saturday in a company-wide email seen by CNBC.
"Please consider the top SpaceX priority (apart from anything that could reduce Dragon return risk) to be Starship," Musk wrote in the email.
[...] So far, the company's Starship development program in Boca Chica, Texas has suffered four dramatic setbacks. While SpaceX has made progress on each iteration, the most recent prototype exploded shortly after an engine test on May 29.
Also at Teslarati.
SpaceX's Starship Super Heavy booster needs a custom assembly tower
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has confirmed that Starship's Super Heavy rocket booster will get its own tower-like vehicle assembly building (VAB) – and work on the structure may have already begun.
While the only visible work SpaceX has thus far completed on its next-generation Starship launch vehicle is related to the more complex and unproven upper stage of the rocket, its Super Heavy first stage (booster) is just as critical. For SpaceX, Starship was the perfect starting point, itself following on the footsteps of a largely successful multi-year Raptor engine development program. Substantially smaller than Super Heavy and requiring 5-10 times fewer engines, Starship serves as a testbed for an almost entirely new suite of technologies and strategies SpaceX is employing to build massive rockets out of commodity steel.
[...] While Starship itself is not exactly small at ~50m (165 ft) tall and 9m (30ft) wide, the Super Heavy booster tasked with launching the ship on its way to orbit will easily be the largest individual rocket stage ever built. Currently expected to measure 70m (230 ft) tall, Super Heavy – just the first stage of the Starship launch vehicle – will already be as tall as an entire Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy and weigh roughly three times more than the latter triple-booster rocket when fully fueled. At liftoff, Super Heavy will produce more than triple the thrust of Falcon Heavy and double the thrust of Saturn V, the most powerful liquid-fueled rocket to reach orbit.
Thanks to the sheer size of the booster, SpaceX's existing Starship-sized vehicle/vertical assembly building (VAB) is far too small for Super Heavy and is even too short to fully stack a ~50m Starship. SpaceX's contractor of choice started assembling that VAB around January 15th and the facility was able to begin supporting its first Starship stacking and welding operations on March 2nd, just a month and a half later, with the structure fully completed by March 18th. As such, assuming the in-work foundation is as close to completion as it seems and SpaceX uses the same contractor for the next building, Super Heavy's VAB could be ready to build the first massive booster prototype as early as July or August. Things could take a bit longer given that Musk says the booster VAB will be 81m (265 ft) tall, nearly twice the height of Starship's VAB, but likely by no more than a few weeks.
Previously: Today WAS the Day -- Crew Demo 2 Launch Successful -- Heading to ISS [Updated]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday June 09 2020, @04:26PM (4 children)
I imagine you're similarly annoyed by Boeing's "Starliner" - which not only is *also*, not going to the stars, but is a few orders of magnitude too small to be called any kind of "-liner"?
Not to mention more terrestrial examples such as the Chevy Nova, which for all it's problems never once resulted in a planet-vaporizing explosion.
Names are marketing tools and tend to be, at best, hyperbolic. In the case of Starship I happen to think that hyperbole is even somewhat justified - we've had lots of rockets that let us begin to study space and utilize primitive orbital infrastructure, but Starship is the first ever built with the express goal of taking humanity beyond Earth to begin establishing permanent, sustainable outposts on other worlds. To take our first real steps toward the stars.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday June 09 2020, @04:31PM (3 children)
I wish SpaceX had chosen a better name that conveys meaning like that. Starship does not even sound original, let alone sounding misused or boastful.
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(Score: 4, Touché) by Immerman on Tuesday June 09 2020, @04:52PM
Well, if you want to get technical it *is* intended to go to the stars: "planet" is derived from the Greek term meaning "wandering star"
And metaphorically it is intended to take us to the stars - having outposts on other planets is what will push us to develop the technology needed to get beyond our solar system. How long has research into nuclear rockets and high-power ion drives languished for lack of any application for them? Not to mention the intense closed-system recycling technology that will be needed to survive such a (probably multi-generational) journey. And will incidentally likely be very valuable here on Earth as we begin to ameliorate and eventually repair the damage we've done to the Earth.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday June 09 2020, @07:32PM (1 child)
They should perhaps have called it one-sided bacon strip?
I wonder how you'd cut a Mobius bacon strip out of a pork belly.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday June 09 2020, @09:40PM
Details! Details!
Shirley, the pig and the butcher can work out those minor technical details.
And while I'm on my wish list, I would like the bacon to be 4D please.
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