Musk: Expendable Starship is ‘an option’
Musk says SpaceX could eventually develop an expendable version of its next-generation Starship rocket.
Expendable upper stage may or may not fly, but it is an option
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 31, 2023
Starship is designed to launch up to 150 tons (330,000 lbs) to low Earth orbit while still recovering the orbital ship and suborbital booster for reuse (by comaprison, the Saturn V rocket could lift 118 tons). Musk says the reusable ship may be turned aoround in hours, enabling multiple flights a day, lowering the price of each launch. However, in early 2023, SpaceX updated the Starship section of its website, revealing that an expendable version of the rocket will be able to launch up to 250 metric tons (~550,000 lbs) to low Earth orbit in a single launch.
StarshipSpaceX’s Starbase factory is already building multiple intentionally-expendable Starships. Ship 26 and Ship 27 feature no thermal protection, have no heat shield tiles, and will not be fitted with flaps, making them impossible to recover or reuse. They will be used to test other crucial Starship technologies like orbital refilling and cryogenic fluid management. The first few Starship Moon landers may also be functionally expendable.
Starship completes first full ‘wet’ dress rehearsal
Starship completes its first full wet dress rehearsal, where it is loaded with more than 10m pounds of propellant. SpaceX says the test will help verify a full launch countdown sequence, as well as the performance of Starship and the orbital pad for flight-like operations.
Starship completed its first full flight-like wet dress rehearsal at Starbase today. This was the first time an integrated Ship and Booster were fully loaded with more than 10 million pounds of propellant pic.twitter.com/btprGNGZ1G
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) January 24, 2023
Musk post Starship night photo: ‘This is real’
Musk posts a night image of the newly-stacked Starship, on its launchpad at Boca Chica, Texas, with the caption:
This is real
This is real
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 13, 2022
Dennis & Akiko Tito join second SpaceX Moon mission
Dennis and Akiko Tito are the first two crewmembers announced on Starship’s second commercial spaceflight around the Moon. The flight will be Dennis’ second mission to space after becoming the first commercial astronaut to visit the International Space Station, for 7 days at a cost of $20 million, in 2001, and Akiko will be among the first women to fly around the Moon on a Starship. Over the course of a week, Starship and the crew will travel to the Moon, fly within 200 km of the Moon’s surface, and complete a full journey around the Moon, before returning to Earth. This mission is expected to launch after the Polaris Program’s first flight of Starship and dearMoon. Dennis:
I think another first that’s very important is that we’ll be the first married couple to fly around the moon. And hopefully that’ll be inspiring to other couples to do the same. And I think I probably will end up being the oldest person to go beyond Earth orbit, so that will be nice.
SpaceX fully stacks Starship rocket
For the first time in more than six months, SpaceX stacks both stages of Starship, creating the largest and most powerful launch vehicle ever fully assembled. SpaceX has conducted three other full-stack Starship demonstrations: in August 2021 and February and March 2022. This stack includes Super Heavy Booster 7 (B7) and Starship 24 (S24). The stacking is taking place at Starship’s orbital launch pad in Boca Chica, Texas.
After an aborted predawn attempt on October 11th, the Starship was lifted at sunset about 80 meters (250 ft) off the ground, translated over to Booster 7, and lowered on top of the 69-meter-tall (225 ft) first stage. After about two more hours of robotically tweaking their positions, the two Starship stages were secured together.
According to Musk, Booster 7 and Ship 24 will attempt Starship’s first full-stack wet dress rehearsal (WDR) once all is in order, which is a fully loaded countdown up to the point of launch.
Starship 24 and Booster 7 fully stacked on the orbital launch pad at Starbase pic.twitter.com/1VKn6juQor
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 12, 2022
Elon Musk