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.

    • LettuceTurnipTheBeet@lemm.eeMEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • John_Hasler@lemmy.oneEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        Musk said that he thought that FAA approval of a new FTS design was likely to be the long pole.

  • LettuceTurnipTheBeet@lemm.eeMEnglish
    11·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • pigeonberry@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • LettuceTurnipTheBeet@lemm.eeMEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      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 :)

      • pigeonberry@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        1 year ago

        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.

  • pigeonberry@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • LettuceTurnipTheBeet@lemm.eeMEnglish
    7·
    1 year ago

    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)

    • LettuceTurnipTheBeet@lemm.eeMEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      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?

  • pigeonberry@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • LettuceTurnipTheBeet@lemm.eeMEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

    New comment from /u/santacfan on Reddit:

    Okay, I was 3 hours into watching the replay and counting trucks when I noticed Rover 2 chat has picked up the count again. So let’s go with their numbers instead of me going cross eyed trying to watch this for 12 hours.

    Rover 2-

    12:45pm- 144 trucks

    13:15- 150 trucks

    13:32- First pump truck leaves site. 151 trucks

    13:43- Second pump truck leaves site. 152 trucks

    14:25- 160 trucks

    15:00- It’s the pour that never ends It goes on and on my friends Some trucks started pouring, not knowing how deep it was And they’ll continue pouring because 33 raptors tried to dig to china

    15:01- 168 trucks

    15:23- 3rd pump truck leaves. The concrete trucks though, they keep coming. 170

    15:35- 4th back up pump truck leaves. Truck 171 pulls in

    15:45- 174 trucks in. 5 trucks have left with their tag wheels down though indicating they are still full. So they might be done.

    16:00- I’m calling it. The last truck was stopped and diverted down to the electrical trench.

    174 trucks in. 6 trucks left loaded. So 168 trucks overall. Add in the 132 from the last big pour and we’re at even 300 truck loads.

    Starbase Live-

    12:23pm- First pump truck lowers

    1:13pm- Second pump truck lowers

    3:12pm- Third pump truck lowers

    (This gets synced)

    • LettuceTurnipTheBeet@lemm.eeMEnglish
      6·
      1 year ago

      Hey all, I’m trying something new here – I spoke with @SantacFan@sh.itjust.works on Reddit and they said that while they’d like to continue posting here, they don’t have the time – but we do have permission to copy the data to Lemmy if we want.

      I’ve set up a small automation on Val Town to automatically copy over their comments here. Let me know what you think – if feedback is bad then I’ll just disable it again.

      • clothes@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        Great work! My initial reaction is that I’ve never interacted with something like this before, and I’ll have to spend some time with it before forming opinions. But in theory I love it!

        (I’m guessing you know this, but your automation posted the same thing a bunch of times)

        • LettuceTurnipTheBeet@lemm.eeMEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          Yeah sorry about that! I’m not sure exactly what the bug is/was, I think something related to how Val Town works, but it wasn’t “writing” to the database properly, and thus creating a new comment every time.

          I hope I fixed it now, but unfortunately deleted comments still show up, so don’t think we can do anything about it…

          • pigeonberry@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            When I deleted a comment, it showed to me as something like [deleted], so you might try.

            There’s a more fundamental problem that there’s no context to the comment, and I can’t think of a good way to provide it. I think it might all be infeasible.

            • LettuceTurnipTheBeet@lemm.eeMEnglish
              4·
              1 year ago

              Yeah I meant to only publish comments that are “updates”, since hopefully those are relatively context free (like this one about the pour).

              Ideally I’d be able to edit the comment but keep the syncing going, but that requires a bit more work on my side.

          • Skjeggape @lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            Any update on where the wrecker went, and what it did went it got there? Inquiring minds want to know ! /s

            Seriously, thanks for helping to make it easier to not have to go back to ‘that other place’ ever again!

      • threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.worksOPMEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Thanks for setting this up!

        Just a heads up that both r/SpaceX and c/SpaceX have switched to Starship Dev thread 47, so you might need to tweak your scripts a bit.

  • LettuceTurnipTheBeet@lemm.eeMEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

    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)

  • LettuceTurnipTheBeet@lemm.eeMEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

    Exciting stuff happening right now (See Starbase Live).

    edit: And here’s the latest RGV Flyover video, which is the flyover from last week. Interesting content, but already heavily out of date.

    • pigeonberry@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      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:

      https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=xxx

      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.)