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Tag Archives: Starship
Photos show just how big the SpaceX Starship mega-rocket is – msnNOW
- Photos show just how big the SpaceX Starship mega-rocket is msnNOW
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SpaceX’s Starship rocket blew a huge crater into the concrete launchpad during liftoff – Yahoo! Voices
- SpaceX’s Starship rocket blew a huge crater into the concrete launchpad during liftoff Yahoo! Voices
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Elon Musk’s wealth drops by nearly $13 billion — the biggest slide this year — after Tesla’s share prices slumped and SpaceX’s Starship rocket exploded – Yahoo! Voices
- Elon Musk’s wealth drops by nearly $13 billion — the biggest slide this year — after Tesla’s share prices slumped and SpaceX’s Starship rocket exploded Yahoo! Voices
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Elon Musk’s SpaceX Prepares for Starship Launch
SpaceX is gearing up for a key test of its immense rocket that is designed for commercial launches, as well as the Mars mission
Elon Musk
has long sought.
Near a beach east of Brownsville, Texas, employees at Mr. Musk’s space company are preparing for the inaugural orbital flight of Starship, the towering rocket system the company has been developing for years to one day launch into deep space. The initial test mission would last around 90 minutes, beginning with a fiery blast of the ship’s booster over the Gulf of Mexico, SpaceX has said in a regulatory filing.
It isn’t clear when SpaceX will attempt the first flight, after dates Mr. Musk has discussed came and went. Some officials at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, a customer for a version of Starship, previously said they thought the mission could occur in early December.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off this month with a payload of 40 satellites for OneWeb’s broadband-satellite network.
Photo:
John Raoux/Associated Press
Mr. Musk, who acquired Twitter Inc. and recently delivered Tesla Inc.’s first all-electric semitrailer trucks, has described getting Starship into orbit as one of his main goals. At SpaceX, which Mr. Musk founded in 2002 and still leads, he has said the rocket system is consuming significant resources and faces formidable technical hurdles.
The company is using new engines it developed on Starship and wants to be able to quickly and rapidly reuse the vehicle, akin to how airlines operate planes. Starship is also really big: Fully stacked, it stands taller than the rocket NASA recently used on its first Artemis moon mission.
“There’s a lot of risks associated with this first launch, so I would not say that it is likely to be successful, but I think we’ll make a lot of progress,” Mr. Musk said last year, during an appearance before a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine panel.
A spokesman for Space Exploration Technologies Corp., as the company is formally called, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
SpaceX’s Starship program has encountered setbacks on shorter-altitude flights, and it isn’t clear how much it would cost if something similar happened on an orbital mission.
Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa plans a journey around the moon on Starship.
Photo:
philip fong/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
The company’s strategy of accepting potential failures, and learning from them, has helped it develop spacecraft like Falcon 9, the workhorse rocket the company used on almost 60 launches this year through mid-December, former employees said.
“It’s better to lose them now than to lose them because you left data on the table, because you were too scared to have a failure in public during the development phase,” said Abhi Tripathi, who worked in several director roles at SpaceX and currently serves as mission operations director at the University of California-Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory.
At SpaceX, “risk taking, as long as it is safe to personnel and to property, is highly encouraged,” Mr. Tripathi said.
Jeff Bezos
‘ space company Blue Origin LLC is also working on its own large rocket, as is United Launch Alliance, the launch company jointly owned by
Boeing Co.
BA 0.53%
and
Lockheed Martin Corp.
SpaceX’s Starbase launch site in Texas.
Photo:
ADREES LATIF/REUTERS
If it works, SpaceX’s vehicle would lower the cost to get to orbit and give the company a sophisticated new rocket system, Mr. Musk said earlier this year. If it doesn’t, the program could threaten to become a money pit for a company that already has two proven rockets—Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy—that are partially reusable, according to space-industry analysts and executives.
NASA is a major backer for Starship, providing deals valued at more than $4 billion to use a moon-lander version of the vehicle for Artemis exploration missions. Senior agency officials have said the company has been meeting milestones under its contract.
Technology entrepreneur Jared Isaacman and the Japanese billionaire
Yusaku Maezawa
have both said they purchased flights using the vehicle. A Japanese satellite operator said in August that it would use Starship to deploy a company satellite.
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Starship is made up of a 230-foot-tall booster called Super Heavy that would power a 164-foot-tall spacecraft, also called Starship, into orbit, according to SpaceX. The latter ship is designed to carry cargo or crew, with a user’s guide touting room for up to 100 people. The spacecraft is designed to be refueled in orbit, enabling longer-distance flights, according to company and NASA presentations.
SpaceX is spending heavily on the Starship program, according to space industry analysts. The privately held company has raised significant funds lately, selling at least $6.1 billion in stock over the past three years, according to securities filings. SpaceX recently began marketing employee shares for sale at a price that would value the company at around $140 billion.
Mr. Musk has warned that SpaceX could face bankruptcy if a severe global recession made capital and liquidity difficult to obtain while the company was investing in Starship and Starlink, its satellite-internet business.
Technical challenges with new rockets are common. In July, the company had to deal with a fiery blast underneath one of the Super Heavy boosters, though last month SpaceX said it completed a significant engine test. SpaceX also has lost Starship prototypes. Two years ago, a Starship spacecraft flew a short-altitude test flight without a booster, but smashed into the ground when trying to land.
In May 2021, the company landed a Starship spacecraft for the first time after another short flight.
For the first orbital test, SpaceX expects to bring the booster down in the Gulf of Mexico and land the Starship spacecraft in the Pacific Ocean, near a Hawaiian island, according to a company filing with the Federal Communications Commission.
Jeff Thornburg, a former SpaceX propulsion executive, said the company’s biggest challenge is ensuring the Starship spacecraft can safely return to Earth. The vehicle will endure enormous stress and heat as it re-enters the atmosphere from orbit, he said, but is designed to be used quickly and repeatedly.
“Reusability brings a lot of complicated engineering, because it can’t just survive once. It’s got to survive 10, 20, 100 plus times,” he said.
Write to Micah Maidenberg at micah.maidenberg@wsj.com
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Squad-based co-op first-person shooter Starship Troopers: Extermination announced for PC
Offworld Industries” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/companies/offworld-industries”>Offworld Industries has announced Starship Troopers: Extermination, a 12-player, squad-based Co-Op [60 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/genres/multiplayer/co-op”>cooperative First-Person Shooter [2,212 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/genres/shooter/fps”>first-person shooter inspired by the 1997 film. It will launch in Early Access for PC [16,394 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/platforms/pc”>PC via Steam in 2023.
Here is an overview of the game, via Offworld Industries:
About
Starship Troopers: Extermination puts players on the far-off front lines in an all-out assault against the Arachnid menace. Squad up as a Trooper in the Deep Space Vanguard, an elite Special Forces group within the Mobile Infantry. And get ready to stomp some Bug because no Trooper will ever stand alone as they line up shoulder-to-shoulder with their fellow Vanguards—trusty Morita Assault Rifles in hand—to battle against hordes of bloodthirsty insectoid aliens on the hostile surface of the planet Valaka.
Work together to complete objectives, acquire resources, build and defend your base of operations, and then escape to the extraction point together. The battle will be intense but, as hardened warriors standing for all of humanity and the United Citizen Federation, leave no inch of ground safe for the Arachnids!
Suit up and ship out, Troopers! After all, the only good Bug is a dead Bug!
Key Features
- Cooperative Gameplay – 12 players can team up in squads of four to defend their base, complete objectives, gather resources, and try to kill every Bug in sight.
- Three Playable Classes – Choose from Assault, Support, and Defense classes to best suit your playstyle and support the rest of your squad.
- Build Defenses – Construct walls, towers, ammo stations, and more using resources acquired from planetside refineries.
- Class Progression System – Unlock new weapons, equipment, and perks for each class to become an elite warfighter among the Deep Space Vanguard.
- Five Unique Bug Types – At Early Access launch, encounter Drone, Warrior, Gunner, Plasma Grenadier, and Tiger Elite enemy Bugs during planetside missions.
- Escalating Infestation Levels – Increasing Bug threat levels during missions bring bigger and more dangerous enemies to the fight.
- Large-Scale Battles – A massive map with five unique zones, and swarm-based combat with hundreds of enemy Bugs on screen delivers the sense of an overwhelming planetary war.
- Ground War – Retake bases and refineries, destroy hives, and complete a variety of side objectives to wrest control of the map away from the Bug menace.
- Ping System – Communication is key! The “Ping” system gives players a quick and easy way to call out points of interest, objectives, incoming enemies, and more to teammates.
Watch the announcement teaser trailer below. View the first screenshots at the gallery.
Announce Teaser Trailer
SpaceX’s Starship Super Heavy booster test-fires 14 engines
SpaceX just conducted its most ambitious and powerful test to date with its Starship Mars rocket.
SpaceX ignited 14 Raptor engines on Booster 7, a prototype of Starship’s first-stage Super Heavy rocket, during a “static fire” test today (Nov. 14) at Starbase, the company’s South Texas facility.
“Full test duration of 14 engines,” SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk tweeted (opens in new tab) shortly after the static fire, which took place at 1:51 p.m. EST (1851 GMT) and lasted about 10 seconds. The test was captured on video by observers such as NASASpaceFlight (opens in new tab) and Rocket Ranch Boca Chica (opens in new tab).
Related: SpaceX fires up Starship Super Heavy booster again in long engine test
Static fires are common preflight trials in which a rocket’s engines are briefly ignited while the vehicle stays anchored to the ground.
And SpaceX is gearing up for a flight with Starship — the program’s first orbital test mission, which apparently will involve Booster 7 and an upper-stage prototype known as Ship 24. That landmark flight could launch before the end of the year, Musk has said.
Today’s static fire could be a big step toward the orbital liftoff: It doubled the previous highest number of Raptor engines that SpaceX has ignited during a Starship engine test. But there’s still considerable work to do to demonstrate Booster 7’s flight readiness; the vehicle boasts a whopping 33 Raptors.
Ship 24 sports six Raptor engines. SpaceX ignited all of them simultaneously during a Sept. 8 static fire.
SpaceX is developing Starship to take people and cargo to the moon and Mars, as well as perform a variety of other spaceflight tasks.
Starship prototypes have flown a handful of test flights to date, but none of them have gotten higher than about 6 miles (10 kilometers) in the sky. And none of them have involved a Super Heavy vehicle.
SpaceX has already inked a number of customers for Starship, including NASA, which picked the vehicle as the first crewed lander for its Artemis program of moon exploration. If all goes according to plan, astronauts will touch down on the lunar surface in 2025 or 2026 aboard Starship on the Artemis 3 mission.
Private customers have also signed up to ride Starship on missions around the moon (not down to its surface). Billionaire Yusaku Maezawa booked an entire flight, for example, and space tourism pioneer Dennis Tito and his wife Akiko bought two seats on a different mission.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out There (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or on Facebook (opens in new tab).
Watch SpaceX stack Starship megarocket using ‘chopsticks’ (video)
SpaceX’s “chopsticks” have been busy lately, and a new video shows them in action.
The chopsticks are arms attached to “Mechazilla,” the launch tower at Starbase, SpaceX’s facility in South Texas. Mechazilla lifts and lowers Super Heavy boosters and Starship spacecraft — the two elements of SpaceX’s giant, next-generation Starship vehicle — onto Starbase’s orbital launch mount using the chopsticks, as the new video shows.
The video, which SpaceX tweeted out on Friday (Oct. 21), captures the stacking of Ship 24 atop Booster 7 on Thursday (Oct. 20). SpaceX is prepping this duo for the Starship program’s first-ever orbital test flight, which could happen in the next few months if testing goes well.
Video: SpaceX ignites multiple engines on Starship Super Heavy for 1st time
Launch and catch tower stacking Starship at Starbase pic.twitter.com/KOpX8tZMHhOctober 21, 2022
“Launch and catch tower stacking Starship at Starbase,” SpaceX wrote in Friday’s tweet (opens in new tab).
As that note indicates, Mechazilla is envisioned to be a multipurpose structure, hosting Starship touchdowns as well as liftoffs. If all goes according to plan, the giant tower will eventually catch returning Super Heavy vehicles (opens in new tab), using the chopsticks to support the boosters beneath their steering “grid fins,” SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has said.
Mechazilla will then place Super Heavy directly onto the orbital launch mount, potentially enabling incredibly short turnaround times for Starship missions, according to Musk. (SpaceX is already known for the frequent reuse of its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, but these boosters touch down in landing zones or on ships at sea and then must be transported back to the launch pad.)
Thursday’s stacking of Ship 24 atop Booster 7 was actually a restacking, as the duo were first joined up on Oct. 11. Mechazilla de-stacked them on Oct. 16, presumably so SpaceX could perform some additional tests or maintenance work.
And a fair bit of work remains before Booster 7 and Ship 24 will be ready for their orbital moment. For example, SpaceX has yet to fire up all 33 of Booster 7’s Raptor engines; the company has been performing “static fire” tests with the rocket but so far has ignited a maximum of seven engines simultaneously. And none of the Booster 7 engine tests have occurred with Ship 24 attached.
SpaceX isn’t focusing all of its Starship energies on this particular duo; the company continues to build and test other prototypes as well. For example, SpaceX rolled the Ship 25 vehicle out to Starbase’s suborbital launch pad on Wednesday (Oct. 19), as NASASpaceflight’s Jack Beyer noted (opens in new tab).
Mike Wall is the author of “Out There (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or on Facebook (opens in new tab).
SpaceX rolls out Starship, stacks world’s largest rocket, and aces Starlink launch hours apart
In 15 hours, SpaceX has rolled a new Starship to its South Texas launch and test facilities, reassembled the world’s largest rocket, launched Starlink satellites to orbit, and recovered a reused Falcon 9 booster in port.
The burst of activity began around sunset at SpaceX’s Starbase rocket factory in Boca Chica, Texas when a new orbital-class Starship prototype left its ‘nest’ for the first time. SpaceX rolled the Starship – known as Ship 25 – a few miles down the highway to its nearby launch and test facilities, where workers connected it to a large crane and waited for daylight.
Around 9 am CDT the following day, October 20th, SpaceX lifted Ship 25 onto one of two Starship test stands, where it will eventually attempt to complete several qualification tests. While Ship 25 was still suspended in mid-air, the Starbase launch pad’s orbital launch tower began lifting a different prototype, Ship 24, into the air with a pair of giant ‘chopsticks’ – mechanical arms designed by SpaceX to replace one of the largest mobile cranes in the world.
Then, while it was stacking Ship 24 on top of Super Heavy Booster 7 and installing Ship 25 on a test stand, a Falcon 9 rocket carrying 54 new Starlink satellites lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Minutes prior, SpaceX finished craning a reused Falcon 9 booster off one of its drone ship landing platforms in a port ten miles south.
Starlink 4-36 was SpaceX’s 48th launch of 2022 and 56th launch in less than 12 months, so its Falcon launch program simply doesn’t have time to waste. Drone ship Just Read The Instructions (JRTI) returned to port with Falcon 9 booster B1069 about 12 hours before the rocket was transferred from the ship’s deck to a stand on SpaceX’s Port Canaveral dock space. The company will now be able to retract B1069’s legs and complete any necessary booster and drone ship refurbishment, ensuring that both will be ready for their next missions in the near future.
Back in Texas, SpaceX is scheduled to begin thoroughly testing a fully-stacked Starship rocket for the first time as early as Monday, October 24th. Ship 24 was reinstalled on Booster 7 for that purpose after SpaceX disassembled the pair for several days, possibly due to forecasts of high winds. The test campaign is expected to begin with the first full wet dress rehearsal (WDR) of a two-stage Starship, meaning that the rocket will be fully loaded with thousands of tons of liquid methane and oxygen propellant and run through a simulated launch countdown that ends just before engine ignition.
If successful, SpaceX will likely restart Booster 7 static fire testing and continue to work its way up to the first simultaneous ignition of all 33 of its Raptor 2 engines. If the pair survive WDR and static fire testing, SpaceX could begin preparing the same rocket for Starship’s orbital launch debut.
If significant issues arise during testing, SpaceX could choose to retire Ship 24 and/or Booster 7 and move on to a new and improved pair: likely Ship 25 and Booster 8 or 9. Already complete, Super Heavy Booster 8 has been sitting untouched at Starbase’s launch site for weeks, making it uncertain whether SpaceX actually intends to test or use the prototype. Booster 9 is just one stack away from completion, at which point it will be ready to begin proof testing. According to CEO Elon Musk, B9 features significant improvements that will make it more resilient to mid-flight Raptor engine failures. It could also be the first Super Heavy booster with no hydraulic system, thanks to a new version of Raptor that replaces hydraulic thrust vectoring with a battery-powered alternative.
Starship S25 could kick off its own proof testing as early as next week. Unlike Ship 24, Ship 25 went straight from the factory to a test stand that has been modified with six hydraulic rams. Those rams will simulate the thrust of six Raptor 2 engines (up to ~1400 tons or 3.1M lbf) while the Starship is simultaneously loaded with cryogenic liquid oxygen and/or nitrogen, combining peak mechanical and thermal stresses into one test. Once Ship 25 is done, it will be rolled back to the factory for Raptor engine installation and will eventually return to the pad for static fire testing.
SpaceX rolls out Starship, stacks world’s largest rocket, and aces Starlink launch hours apart
In 15 hours, SpaceX has rolled a new Starship to its South Texas launch and test facilities, reassembled the world’s largest rocket, launched Starlink satellites to orbit, and recovered a reused Falcon 9 booster in port.
The burst of activity began around sunset at SpaceX’s Starbase rocket factory in Boca Chica, Texas when a new orbital-class Starship prototype left its ‘nest’ for the first time. SpaceX rolled the Starship – known as Ship 25 – a few miles down the highway to its nearby launch and test facilities, where workers connected it to a large crane and waited for daylight.
Around 9 am CDT the following day, October 20th, SpaceX lifted Ship 25 onto one of two Starship test stands, where it will eventually attempt to complete several qualification tests. While Ship 25 was still suspended in mid-air, the Starbase launch pad’s orbital launch tower began lifting a different prototype, Ship 24, into the air with a pair of giant ‘chopsticks’ – mechanical arms designed by SpaceX to replace one of the largest mobile cranes in the world.
Then, while it was stacking Ship 24 on top of Super Heavy Booster 7 and installing Ship 25 on a test stand, a Falcon 9 rocket carrying 54 new Starlink satellites lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Minutes prior, SpaceX finished craning a reused Falcon 9 booster off one of its drone ship landing platforms in a port ten miles south.
Starlink 4-36 was SpaceX’s 48th launch of 2022 and 56th launch in less than 12 months, so its Falcon launch program simply doesn’t have time to waste. Drone ship Just Read The Instructions (JRTI) returned to port with Falcon 9 booster B1069 about 12 hours before the rocket was transferred from the ship’s deck to a stand on SpaceX’s Port Canaveral dock space. The company will now be able to retract B1069’s legs and complete any necessary booster and drone ship refurbishment, ensuring that both will be ready for their next missions in the near future.
Back in Texas, SpaceX is scheduled to begin thoroughly testing a fully-stacked Starship rocket for the first time as early as Monday, October 24th. Ship 24 was reinstalled on Booster 7 for that purpose after SpaceX disassembled the pair for several days, possibly due to forecasts of high winds. The test campaign is expected to begin with the first full wet dress rehearsal (WDR) of a two-stage Starship, meaning that the rocket will be fully loaded with thousands of tons of liquid methane and oxygen propellant and run through a simulated launch countdown that ends just before engine ignition.
If successful, SpaceX will likely restart Booster 7 static fire testing and continue to work its way up to the first simultaneous ignition of all 33 of its Raptor 2 engines. If the pair survive WDR and static fire testing, SpaceX could begin preparing the same rocket for Starship’s orbital launch debut.
If significant issues arise during testing, SpaceX could choose to retire Ship 24 and/or Booster 7 and move on to a new and improved pair: likely Ship 25 and Booster 8 or 9. Already complete, Super Heavy Booster 8 has been sitting untouched at Starbase’s launch site for weeks, making it uncertain whether SpaceX actually intends to test or use the prototype. Booster 9 is just one stack away from completion, at which point it will be ready to begin proof testing. According to CEO Elon Musk, B9 features significant improvements that will make it more resilient to mid-flight Raptor engine failures. It could also be the first Super Heavy booster with no hydraulic system, thanks to a new version of Raptor that replaces hydraulic thrust vectoring with a battery-powered alternative.
Starship S25 could kick off its own proof testing as early as next week. Unlike Ship 24, Ship 25 went straight from the factory to a test stand that has been modified with six hydraulic rams. Those rams will simulate the thrust of six Raptor 2 engines (up to ~1400 tons or 3.1M lbf) while the Starship is simultaneously loaded with cryogenic liquid oxygen and/or nitrogen, combining peak mechanical and thermal stresses into one test. Once Ship 25 is done, it will be rolled back to the factory for Raptor engine installation and will eventually return to the pad for static fire testing.