SpaceX is to launch Starship Super Heavy to Orbit this month…
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After years of blood and sweat in the making since the very first test flights at Boca Chica in 2019, SpaceX has now entered the final leg of its preparations to launch the single largest and most powerful rocket ever created: the Starship.
This month, December 2022 could be the golden time that we finally see a fully realized Starship Super Heavy launch into orbit.
Find out everything about this in today’s episode of Alpha Tech:
First publicly unveiled in September 2016, the fully-reusable, next-generation rocket that eventually became today’s stainless-steel Starship was tentatively scheduled to begin orbital flight testing in 2020.
About two years after that first announcement, CEO Elon Musk unexpectedly sacrificed years of development work on Starship structures when he decided to replace the rocket’s carbon fiber composite airframe with stainless steel. Years later, it’s still hard to say if that decision was the right one, but Starship development has been surprisingly unperturbed by such an immense last-second design change.
Towards more recent milestones, in August, Musk said that SpaceX’s first successful orbital Starship launch will “probably [occur] between 1 and 12 months from now”.
While Musk was saying almost the same thing last year, the CEO now believes that Starship’s first orbital launch attempt could happen as early as next month – September 2022. Simultaneously, Musk believes that the first orbital launch attempt could be “successful,” although it’s not entirely clear how he defines “success.” Less optimistically, his August 2nd tweet also implies that he wouldn’t be surprised if it takes SpaceX a year and multiple attempts to achieve Starship’s first successful orbital launch.
It’s even possible to interpret his tweet as a warning that Starship’s first orbital launch – while more likely to be successful – could be up to 12 months away.
Somewhere in the middle (4-8 months from that point) is a more reasonable bet for Starship’s first successful orbital launch.
Indeed, everything is looking promising as SpaceX and Elon Musk speed towards a potential Starship orbital launch later this month!
Actually, a senior NASA official also suggested that SpaceX wants to fly one of its Starship prototypes into space for the first time in December.
This week, SpaceX performed a static fire test of a prototype booster in which 11 of its 33 Raptor engines were briefly engaged.
SpaceX is to launch Starship Super Heavy to Orbit this month…
