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.
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 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
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
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
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.
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 😂
If it truly offers a >10% payload to orbit boost, I’m super curious to know how the internal debate went. Wonder what changed.
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
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.
New comment from /u/santacfan on Reddit:
Starbase live-
8:57am- Black pipe lifted over towards the dog house area (most likely a cryo pipe but couldn’t tell for sure)
9:07am- LR11000 moves a deluge pipe. Lifted over to the work area by where the deluge stand is parked
9:30am- Second deluge pipe lifted. Moved to the same area
9:54am- 3rd deluge pipe moved
10:12am-4th deluge pipe moved (So apparently all of the pipes they moved to the side a couple weeks ago, they’re moving back over to be worked on)
10:20am- Looks like all of the boards have been removed and now they are starting to remove the metal poles of the scaffolding below the OLM.
10:26am- 5th deluge pipe moved. Crane didn’t swing back over this time so the Y pipe looks like it will stay in it’s current position
12:15pm- Scaffolding continues to be removed
2:15pm- Crane is starting to use the bucket to lift loads off of the top of the OLM as well as underneath.
5:15pm- Crane has lowered and left the OLM area. The 2 man lifts that have been working on the scaffolding have also lowered. Work continues around the base of the OLM.
6:30pm- Crane and man lift back up working on the BQD side of the OLM
9:15pm- Fireworks
9:25pm- SPI fireworks
(This gets synced)
I guess I expected today to be a slow day, allowing the concrete to set and with it being a holiday and all.
But nope, full steam ahead. I wonder when they’ll be ready to move that giant plate in?
Check out this RGV picture from the plate in the tent from above: https://twitter.com/rgvaerialphotos/status/1674925187437928450?s=46&t=Mj914Aam14loAYQOISZ9zQ
I know Twitter links are kind of impossible to follow right now, but don’t think I can embed an image in a comment. Anyway, that plate is huge, will be interesting to see them lift and transport it.
Let’s try:
I also saw this in The Other Place:
[Meta] Twitter is now throwing up a nag screen to force users to log in to view content, supposedly on a temporary basis. Since a lot of the content here links to Twitter, this could be inconvenient to those without an account.
A simple solution is to link to the embedded version of the Tweet, like so. Simply type:
And replace xxx with the Tweet id.
The other solution is to link to an archived version of a tweet.
(I think the last is like Internet Archive.)
Much lifting and lowering and all sorts of craney stuff, but it’s believed that all the manifolds are in place by now. A nice Imgur picture of a manifold being craned.
What about it!? @FelixSchlang tweet from 3:03 PM - Jun 29, 2023:
It happened!!!
SpaceX opened the wall to the inventory tent and revealed one of the water deluge plates to us up close and countless other things in there!
High res pictures for supporters on all platforms coming soon!
In a reply, they said it looks to be upside down.
In The Other Place, u/warp99 wrote,
Looks like the segments are around 400mm thick and constructed from 40mm (38mm=1.5"?) steel plate The overall shape is a hexagon about 10m across the flats with each corner notched out.
They also speculated on how to weld the edges together: maybe put them on a stand above the final location, weld them from above and below, attach cranes and remove the stand, lower into place.
Starship Gazer (as seen on Nitter) had more pictures.
This movie from Starship Gazer is also great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPMMlZFwypc
Apparently there’s a transport closure at 21:00 local time so wonder what’s going to happen.
TheSpaceEngineer @mcrs987 has a thread on Twitter about hot-staging. A lot of people have been assuming that the lacy structure in his second picture will be the interstage that lets the exhaust out. He argues that it’s unlikely, because (1) it doesn’t look structurally sound, (2) it has been marked for scrap and no others have been seen, (3) the stringer pattern doesn’t match the booster.
He advocates for another ring, which looks much more solid but has some reinforced holes. There have been two of them so far. He also says it resembles the hot-stage interstage of the Titan 2.
Also a fun bonus to this, if you make the vents able to open and close on command, you could use the thrust from the second stage to help flip the booster around (19/24)
This is hilarious and I love it.
The best part is no part. The next-best part is a part somewhere else.
I started out making a silly joke, but … hmm, actually, there’s something there. Starting your booster? Mostly stage 0. Flipping? Stage 2. Decelerating? Atmosphere, mostly. Landing? Ha ha, get this: stage 0 again.
Christian Schiffer - schiffer-soft @schiffer_soft tweeted a diagram of Super Heavy and Starship. It’s for something for @Senkrechtstart3; “Senkrechtstarter is the biggest german YouTube-Channel about spaceflight, rockets and newspace.” They asked for corrections. Errors have been noted: “Why did you keep the CH4 header tank on the common dome?”, and the shapes of the header tanks. But it looks like a good start.
New comment from /u/santacfan on Reddit:
Starbase live-
11:56pm- 2nd manifold is lifted off it’s stand (Who needs sleep anyways)
12:12am- Manifold is going up after some weight was added to balance the load
12:14:40am- Starts to swing over
12:18am- Lowering. This should go to the left of the plate installed earlier
12:23am- Trying to get it aligned
12:25am- Starting to bring it in closer to the OLM
12:31am- Lowered a bit more. (Looks like they’re at the 10ft mark where they paused for quite a while earlier. So I’m off to bed)
12:45am- Lowered into place.
1:21am- Raised again
1:50am- B10 turns into Massey’s
2:01am- Manifold is lowered again
2:20am- Manifold go up, Basket go down
2:25am- Manifold goes down
2:36am- Basket goes up
2:59am- Basket goes down
3:35am- Small crane swings what may have been the 3rd manifold into place under the OLM
3:51am- Grover moves a piece of small diameter pipe over to the left side of the OLM where the excavators are working
5:30am- LR11000 is disconnected from the manifold section
8:10am- Day shift off to a slow start
9:25am- White pipe is lifted by a small crane over by the berm. RGV’s pictures show that they might be running a new water line from the current vertical tank over to the OLM.
9:32am- LR11000 lifts the counterweight that was used to keep the last manifold level during the lift
11:04am- Basket goes up
11:21am- Retaining wall goes up where they’ve been excavating
11:24am- Basket goes down
11:36am- 2 workers carry a plastic pipe over to the pit being dug by the long reach excavator (if it’s metal, enter those guys in a body building competition)
11:55am- 2 dump truck loads of gravel dumped on the other side of the excavator
12:00pm- Nic is leaving NSF
12:53pm- Basket goes up
1:06pm- Basket goes down
1:24pm- Grover lifts a couple pieces of metal off of the top of the OLM
1:40pm- LR11000 moves another counterweight away from the OLM
2:11pm- LR11000 lifts another counterweight
2:17pm- Small crane lifts a piece of metal out of the excavation pit
2:53pm- In todays adventure of what’s stuck at Starbase. We have a small bulldozer hanging off the side of a low boy trailer.
2:53:54- Random kid says hi
2:58pm- The excavator wins again. Bulldozer is on the trailer.
3:34pm- Grover moves what looks like a long straight piece of rebar over to the cryo pit area
3:49pm- Grover lifts a triangular piece of metal to the top of the OLM.
4:13pm- Grover lifts another triangular piece of metal to the top of the OLM.
4:30pm- Grover lifts more rebar over for the cryo pit lid
4:50pm- Basket goes up (to the door on the side of the OLM)
5:02pm- Rocket cows hack the stream
5:03pm- Basket goes down
5:37pm- Basket goes up
5:44pm- Basket goes down
6:32pm- LR11000 picks up a deluge pipe
6:51pm- Grover swings out of the way
6:57pm- LR11000 Starts swinging deluge pipe over. Straight pipe with a curve on the end closest to the OLM.
6:59pm- Starts lowering pipe to the back left side OLM
7:47pm- Small crane lifts a short piece of pipe next to the bigger piece the LR11000 lifted over
7:51pm- Short piece swung back away
9:00pm- Looks like some work on the lid for the cryo pipe vault. Some people going in and out of the ring around the OLM. They’re hiding what we really want to see behind the tarps though.
9:15pm- LR11000 moves to pick up Y pipe
9:41pm- Lifting straps connected to the crane
9:56pm- Y pipe lifted
9:58pm- Swung around the OLM
10:06pm- Lowered to just above the OLM
10:08pm- Guide rope got stuck on smaller crane. Had to go back up.
10:09pm- Going back down
10:12pm- Sat on the ground right outside the pit.
10:14pm- Lifted Up slightly and rotated
10:15pm- Lowered into the pit
10:25pm- For those wanting to keep track, In Ryan’s renders, we’ve seen the bottom pipe that goes to the middle manifold and the Y section that goes over it lifted in so far. There should be 2 short pieces next to connect the Y to the other 2 manifolds.
(This gets synced)
