SpaceX Starship page

FAQ

  1. 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.”
  2. Where can I find streams of the launch? SpaceX Full Livestream. NASASpaceFlight Channel. Lab Padre Channel. Everyday Astronaut Channel.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.”
  5. 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

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.

  • pigeonberry@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    1 year ago

    John Kraus @johnkrausphotos:

    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???’

    • subtle_inquisitorEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      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 😂

      • clothes@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        If it truly offers a >10% payload to orbit boost, I’m super curious to know how the internal debate went. Wonder what changed.

      • John_Hasler@lemmy.oneEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • subtle_inquisitorEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          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

    • John_Hasler@lemmy.oneEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • few@sh.itjust.worksMEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        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.