5 ms·

Musk says Starship orbital stack to be ready for flight in few weeks

43 points by samizdis 5y ago

Lambdanaut 5y ago
The full tweet implies that the stack is ready for launch (and indeed has already been stacked once at the pad) but that the FAA's pending approval is the only bottleneck being waited on for launch.
- terramex 5y ago
  No, it needs few weeks to be ready for launch. They are still doing electric work and replacing thermal tiles on S20, did not perform cryo tests or static fires on either booster or ship etc. GSE (Ground Support Equipment) still needs finishing too.
- jeffparsons 5y ago
  A lot of people are interpreting what Elon posted to mean that the stack is ready for launch now and is held up by the FAA, but I'm quite confident that's _not_ what he actually meant. I can't speak to whether or not Elon is playing word games to imply that the FAA is holding things up, or if it was just sloppy phrasing on his part, but the full stack is definitely _not_ yet ready for launch. How am I so confident? I follow the updates posted by the fan community obsessively. There are several different people that take high resolution photos and video from public land adjacent the Boca Chica facility, hundreds who interpret that footage, and tens who post high quality summaries of recent progress. Combine that friendly neighborhood industrial espionage with things Elon said explicitly in his recent interview with Tim Dodd, and it becomes clear that there are at least a few weeks of work left before they could launch. So when Musk says... > First orbital stack of Starship should be ready for flight in a few weeks, pending only regulatory approval ...I think we should read it as "after a few weeks of remaining work, if the FAA has not yet approved the launch _then_ they will be the bottleneck".
  - lsaferite 5y ago
    Strange how people are misreading that. If I were to reparse that I'd say "It will be ready for flight in a few weeks. If we have FAA approval at that point, we will be able to launch."
inglor_cz 5y ago
Elon time, but on this occassion, I believe that few weeks means < 10. This is a huge development. Boca Chica is several timezones away from me, but I will be staying up in the night if the first launch happens to be in our wee hours. I only hope that they will tell us in advance, so that we can arrange our daily schedules :-)
- exDM69 5y ago
  Given that it's an orbital test with no set launch window (unlike ISS missions for example), they probably have an entire day booked for the attempt and might go through more delays and scrubs than usual. So there will not be a set minute accurate launch schedule. This has been the case for many previous test flights. You will have to set aside entire days if you wanna see it live.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    I know, I observed the previous Starship test flights and it is just like you say.
    - squintychino 5y ago
      Would you say they were worth the multiple day wait?
      - inglor_cz 5y ago
        Yay! A peek into the future that is stainless and glorious.
      - exDM69 5y ago
        I sometimes put the unofficial Livestream on the background when doing something else. But unless you enjoy watching a steel tube venting gas for hours, it's not really worth watching live. You will get to see it later. Which is awesome.
- Ftuuky 5y ago
gameswithgo 5y ago
Youtuber “everydayastronaut” has a series of 3 videos where he talks with Elon while walking around starbase. I really love the third one, where he meets up with the starbase operations lead “taylor” a seemingmly 20 year old woman, a hyped up Sam, and a Mexican guy who gives Elon a big hug. They are all so psyched in the middle of the night moving all this huge shit around gettin ready to go to Mars. Makes me want to dump my job drive down there and just start helping out. link to thid vid:https://youtu.be/9Zlnbs-NBUI https://youtu.be/9Zlnbs-NBUI
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  I think this is the difference between Bezos and Musk. Musk has enough of a vision that he can mobilize talented people and won't shush them away from the camera when giving interview to an amateur, but dedicated YouTuber. In Blue Origin, employees seem to be nameless ants or cogs in a huge machine and Bezos will only speak to big media, if at all.
  - senectus1 5y ago
    Don't disagree, but at what point does someone go from being an amateur to a professional "youtuber" ? I would argue that Everyday Astronaut is pretty darn professional.
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      Thank you for making me rethink my terminology. When talking about "amateur", I thought about the "amo" part first (=love, and Tim Dodd obviously loves rockets), then about the massive institutional support that organizations like BBC have and he doesn't. So I concede the point: Everyday Astronaut is every bit a professional, though with limited equipment.
- consumer451 5y ago
  My favorite tidbit from that series is that Musk wants to try to convince NASA to use the normal puck mounted Raptors to land on the moon. As opposed to engines mounted 2/3 of the way up the Starship as the original HLS render showed. He seemed to describe building a full scale lunar regolith mockup landing area, and testing Starship landing on it to see what happens. Simple and yet a bit crazy.

43 points by samizdis 5y ago

The full tweet implies that the stack is ready for launch (and indeed has already been stacked once at the pad) but that the FAA's pending approval is the only bottleneck being waited on for launch.

terramex 5y ago
No, it needs few weeks to be ready for launch. They are still doing electric work and replacing thermal tiles on S20, did not perform cryo tests or static fires on either booster or ship etc. GSE (Ground Support Equipment) still needs finishing too.
jeffparsons 5y ago
A lot of people are interpreting what Elon posted to mean that the stack is ready for launch now and is held up by the FAA, but I'm quite confident that's _not_ what he actually meant. I can't speak to whether or not Elon is playing word games to imply that the FAA is holding things up, or if it was just sloppy phrasing on his part, but the full stack is definitely _not_ yet ready for launch. How am I so confident? I follow the updates posted by the fan community obsessively. There are several different people that take high resolution photos and video from public land adjacent the Boca Chica facility, hundreds who interpret that footage, and tens who post high quality summaries of recent progress. Combine that friendly neighborhood industrial espionage with things Elon said explicitly in his recent interview with Tim Dodd, and it becomes clear that there are at least a few weeks of work left before they could launch. So when Musk says... > First orbital stack of Starship should be ready for flight in a few weeks, pending only regulatory approval ...I think we should read it as "after a few weeks of remaining work, if the FAA has not yet approved the launch _then_ they will be the bottleneck".
- lsaferite 5y ago
  Strange how people are misreading that. If I were to reparse that I'd say "It will be ready for flight in a few weeks. If we have FAA approval at that point, we will be able to launch."

inglor_cz 5y ago

Elon time, but on this occassion, I believe that few weeks means < 10. This is a huge development. Boca Chica is several timezones away from me, but I will be staying up in the night if the first launch happens to be in our wee hours. I only hope that they will tell us in advance, so that we can arrange our daily schedules :-)

exDM69 5y ago
Given that it's an orbital test with no set launch window (unlike ISS missions for example), they probably have an entire day booked for the attempt and might go through more delays and scrubs than usual. So there will not be a set minute accurate launch schedule. This has been the case for many previous test flights. You will have to set aside entire days if you wanna see it live.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  I know, I observed the previous Starship test flights and it is just like you say.
  - squintychino 5y ago
    Would you say they were worth the multiple day wait?
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      Yay! A peek into the future that is stainless and glorious.
    - exDM69 5y ago
      I sometimes put the unofficial Livestream on the background when doing something else. But unless you enjoy watching a steel tube venting gas for hours, it's not really worth watching live. You will get to see it later. Which is awesome.
Ftuuky 5y ago

gameswithgo 5y ago

Youtuber “everydayastronaut” has a series of 3 videos where he talks with Elon while walking around starbase. I really love the third one, where he meets up with the starbase operations lead “taylor” a seemingmly 20 year old woman, a hyped up Sam, and a Mexican guy who gives Elon a big hug. They are all so psyched in the middle of the night moving all this huge shit around gettin ready to go to Mars. Makes me want to dump my job drive down there and just start helping out. link to thid vid:https://youtu.be/9Zlnbs-NBUI https://youtu.be/9Zlnbs-NBUI

inglor_cz 5y ago
I think this is the difference between Bezos and Musk. Musk has enough of a vision that he can mobilize talented people and won't shush them away from the camera when giving interview to an amateur, but dedicated YouTuber. In Blue Origin, employees seem to be nameless ants or cogs in a huge machine and Bezos will only speak to big media, if at all.
- senectus1 5y ago
  Don't disagree, but at what point does someone go from being an amateur to a professional "youtuber" ? I would argue that Everyday Astronaut is pretty darn professional.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    Thank you for making me rethink my terminology. When talking about "amateur", I thought about the "amo" part first (=love, and Tim Dodd obviously loves rockets), then about the massive institutional support that organizations like BBC have and he doesn't. So I concede the point: Everyday Astronaut is every bit a professional, though with limited equipment.
consumer451 5y ago
My favorite tidbit from that series is that Musk wants to try to convince NASA to use the normal puck mounted Raptors to land on the moon. As opposed to engines mounted 2/3 of the way up the Starship as the original HLS render showed. He seemed to describe building a full scale lunar regolith mockup landing area, and testing Starship landing on it to see what happens. Simple and yet a bit crazy.