SpaceX assembling orbital Starship

 From Teslarati

SpaceX has begun rapidly assembling the first orbital Starship prototype and the Super Heavy booster set to launch it isn’t far behind.

SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas rocket factory seemingly turned a corner in early July as sections of Starship 20 (S20) began to pop up around the site. Though parts labeled Starship “SN20” first appeared as far back as March 2021, the only unequivocal work on SpaceX’s first purportedly orbital-class Starship began in mid-June with the integration of the first engine section with mounts for six – not three – Raptors.

However, in line with SpaceX’s strict focus on maximizing the speed of Starship development and shortening the path to orbit, the company has frequently built Starship hardware before firmly assigning that hardware to any given ship, booster, or tank. In other words, until SpaceX actually begins stacking multiple completed rocket sections, there’s always a degree of uncertainty about the fate of any given ring, dome, or tank barrel. With Starship S20, that process began earlier this month and Super Heavy Booster 4 is likely to follow suit within the next few days – if it hasn’t already.

Since SpaceX unceremoniously rolled Starship prototype SN16 to an empty lot in mid-May, the company didn’t stack a single Starship part until the first week of July – unusual after a frenetic seven months spent building, qualifying, and launching Starships SN8, SN9, SN10, SN11, and SN15 and testing test tanks SN7.2 a nd BN2.1. Around the same time as Starship SN15 became the first prototype to successfully complete a high-altitude test flight and land in one piece, news broke that SpaceX was striving to perform Starship’s first orbital test flight with Ship 20 (S20) and Booster 3 (B3) as early as July.

Eventually, Booster 3’s orbital launch assignment shifted to Booster 4 as it became clear that the former prototype wasn’t meant to fly, but Starship S20 remained. More likely than not, the almost two-month gap between Starship SN16’s instant retirement and the start of the next flightworthy prototype’s assembly can be explained by the significant changes, upgrades, and undecided design decisions required to jump to S20.

Two weeks after the first stack, Starship S20 is already approximately half-assembled and the last section of the vehicle’s tanks is almost ready for installation. What could be Starship S20’s nosecone is also in the late stages of assembly, though SpaceX has yet to even attempt to fully cover a nose in heat shield tiles and getting that process right could take an attempt or two.

Musk has emphasised that there will probably be several mishaps along the way before Starship orbital flights work.  In the first attempt to get Starship orbital, the booster will try to make a soft landing in the sea off Boca Chica,  and Starship will splashdown off Hawaii.  We're so used to SpaceX reusing its rockets that the apparent waste is actually quite shocking, but I expect SpaceX thinks that things could go wrong, possibly badly wrong, and doesn't want to completely destroy its Boca Chica base.   The Super Heavy booster and Starship itself are far too large to land on the drone ships that SpaceX currently uses for its Falcon 9 boosters, so that option is out.  It says a lot about how SpaceX has changed space paradigms that we should be surprised that the spaceships  from the first orbital Starship launch should be dropped into the sea, but of course that's exactly how all other rocket manufacturers still operate.

If the development of orbital Starship seems unbearably slow, that's because we are watching it happen in front of us, day by day.  Musk only announced the stainless steel Starship in January 2019, two and a half years ago.  By contrast, NASA's SLS was announced in 2011, uses old technology, and hasn't flown yet.  Oh, and when it does, the booster will be dumped in the ocean.  Plus each Starship launch will cost roughly $2 million while each SLS launch will cost roughly $1.5 BILLION.