SpaceX Starship launch countdown: all of the news on its first test flight:
Elon Musk's stated goal of putting humans on Mars relies heavily on the development of a next-generation reusable spacecraft, and Starship (formerly known as Big Falcon Rocket or BFR) is ready for its first orbital test flight. It's not the "six months" goal Musk projected in 2019, but after a number of suborbital tests that included some terrific successes and fantastic, fiery failures, the big day is finally almost here.
With just over five minutes to go before its first scheduled launch attempt Monday morning, SpaceX announced that due to a pressurization issue with the first stage, the attempt became a "wet dress rehearsal," and the countdown ended with 10 seconds to go. SpaceX now says it's targeting April 20th for another attempt, with a launch window between 8:28AM CT (9:28AM ET) and 9:30 AM CT (10:30AM ET).
If all goes according to plan, the Starship will fly to orbital velocity after separating from its Super Heavy booster rocket about three minutes into the trip, then splashdown in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.
The entire trip should take about 90 minutes to complete, and SpaceX is livestreaming the events on its YouTube channel.
Previously: SpaceX's First Orbital Test Flight of Starship Imminent [Scrubbed]
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship_orbital_test_flight
The Starship Orbital Flight Test is the planned first spaceflight of the SpaceX Starship launch vehicle. The planned launch site is Boca Chica, Texas. SpaceX plans on using Starship prototypes Ship 24 (second stage) and Booster 7 (first stage). The Starship second stage will enter a transatmospheric Earth orbit with a negative Earth perigee, allowing Ship 24 to reenter the atmosphere after completing most of one orbit without having to restart its engines for a deorbit maneuver. The earliest launch opportunity is currently scheduled for April 17, 2023 at 08:00 CDT (13:00 UTC).
SpaceX stream. NASASpaceFlight stream.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday April 19, @10:24AM
and toes...
(Score: 1) by Isia on Wednesday April 19, @11:52AM (1 child)
4.6 mio. tonnes fuel above 34 blazing hot flamethrowers.
What can go wrong ?
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday April 19, @05:38PM
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19, @01:03PM (6 children)
Not that I'm complaining... it's my birthday and I can't think of a better present.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Immerman on Wednesday April 19, @01:28PM (5 children)
I hadn't made the connection - but now I'm thinking it will actually fly, at least mostly successfully, tomorrow. Seems like 420 has cropped up a lot around prominent SpaceX milestones, and Musk swears it's not intentional.
3...2...1... the doobie is lighted! Let's ride the fire all the way to orbit!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday April 19, @02:21PM (1 child)
They needed at least 48 hours between attempts after they got too far into the propellant loading process. So 4/20 was almost inevitable after 4/17 fell through.
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(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday April 20, @10:06PM
There's always lots of room for more delays - we could easily have been waiting for weeks.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Tork on Wednesday April 19, @05:41PM (2 children)
Look, I'm gonna be blunt.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 3, Funny) by istartedi on Wednesday April 19, @08:38PM (1 child)
Any endeavor of that size has to be a joint effort.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday April 19, @08:42PM
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday April 19, @01:39PM (2 children)
From what I've heard SuperHeavy's flight plan is pretty much what they've been planning for years - launch, mostly return, and "land" on the ocean before falling over and being either recovered or intentionally sunk.
Starship though - it sounds like they've decided not to "land" it, instead belly-flopping all the way into the ocean where the impact will destroy it.
Any thoughts on why? I would think that they'd want to at least examine the heat shielding to see how well it actually handled reentry. E.g. by "landing" a little off-level so it would fall over onto its back to protect the tiles.
The only thing I can think of is that they figure there's a chance it will break up on reentry, and want the tanks as empty as possible to avoid the risk of launching debris on a path that hits Hawai'i
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday April 19, @02:22PM (1 child)
These are outdated prototypes compared to the other ones sitting around, and they want to keep the flight plan simple.
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(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday April 19, @02:36PM
The flight plan would be identical until the last few seconds. And *all* the existing prototypes were built after the first successful landing.
Heck, they even need the oxygen header tank to be full to keep enough weight in the during reentry. (though I suppose they could use an inert counterweight instead.)
It just seems like if they're going to destroy another quarter-billion dollar* spacecraft, they'd want to continue testing as many other things as possible after the main tests are complete.
* might be less by now - that construction price is from a year or two ago, and I'm pretty sure Musk has claimed that the construction cost will eventually be less than for a Falcon 9.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by squeedles on Wednesday April 19, @03:52PM (1 child)
I have tremendous respect for SpaceX because they revived an approach that worked well for the X-planes in the 1950's and 1960's but fell out of favor after the industry consolidation post Apollo. Simply put, design is the first step, but until you manufacture and fly something, you really don't learn the important things.
By building their own engine in Falcon, they took control of a key factor. By using 10 of them per flight, they had to build a lot of them, finding issues and improving with each iteration. Then at the same time they started flying disposable, they were testing landing, iterating and learning far more with each failure. Each thing they have done was iteratively manufactured, flown, and improved. They got good at falcon and then went back into the same pattern for starship. They themselves room to improve, rather than expect perfection on the first attempt. Even on monday, they scrubbed and immediately used the opportunity for more practice and test.
I'm very glad to see the "too big to fail" design forever, build once, fly once pattern that held since the 1980s finally being exposed as rubbish.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday April 20, @10:21PM
Yeah, building and flying nine identical engines every launch *really* accelerates the speed at which the design matures. I think the Russian N1 was the first to embrace that philosophy - sadly, between manufacturing difficulties and politics that ended up getting shelved. Had it made it to orbit the old space race might have looked very different.
(Score: 1) by squeedles on Thursday April 20, @01:50PM (3 children)
Cleared the tower, got all the way to staging, failed to stage. Looks like range safety eventually make it go boom.
Looks like they had at least five engines out on ascent. Lots of good data for the next iteration!
(Score: 2) by nostyle on Thursday April 20, @02:16PM (2 children)
Flew well for a minute or two. Looks like 5 engines did not light and control systems encountered oscillation in pitch control leading to spiral trajectory large enough to call for rocket destruct.
Given thirty-odd engines and possible permutations in engine-start-up failures, it is not clear that they will ever be able to foresee and/or prevent such harmonic failures with any certainty. Forensics will be interesting.
--
"Come on baby - light my fire" -Doors
(Score: 2, Informative) by squeedles on Thursday April 20, @02:33PM (1 child)
Just read up on what they are doing with starship.
That pitch up was intended to flick the upper stage off by angular momentum, but obviously didn't work. It would let them save weight by omitting springs or solid fuel rockets normally carried to separate the stages.
The upper stage rocket bells are inside the skirt, so they don't need to worry about collision during separation like an normal upper stage would.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday April 20, @10:33PM
I doubt the skirt is durable enough to take a blow of that magnitude without crumpling - it's only a few mm of sheet metal, plus reinforcements. It's designed to handle vertical loads, not horizontal ones.
I think the tumbling is likely more a matter of them getting comfortable with the strategy when launching Starlink satellites. It's like ice dancers spinning together - if they let go of each other, conservation of momentum *requires* that they immediately head in opposite directions, making a collision almost impossible unless something goes very wrong.
BUT. You then have both stages spinning through the (very thin) atmosphere, and need to be confident their avionics systems will be able to restore stable flight paths, without colliding, before they have to abort for safety reasons. And that's no easy thing to do - there's a reason flight abort systems are normally programmed to detonate the moment a rocket begins to tumble.