Maybe I should be, but I’m really not worried about the first stage. Modeling is so good nowadays that I think all these system interaction issues just aren’t the hard problems that they were in the 60s. Both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy flew perfectly on their maiden flights despite people having the exact same worries (and neither has had these issues since then). Falcon Heavy in particular was IMO a far harder problem than Super Heavy. While 27<33, the fact that it’s three vehicles flying in close formation makes it the more difficult problem. Super Heavy is pretty simple in comparison.
Sure, a near-pad RUD is particularly bad here, but I think the probability is pretty low. I also suspect that damage from a fire wouldn’t be as bad as that from kerosene (being a light gas vs. a sticky liquid).
SpaceX has added information about an ‘expendable’ mode for Starship which can put 250 tons in LEO. That’s roughly half the mass of the entire ISS in one launch.
Why expend a Starship? Well, imagine you want to build one out as a space station. You could load it with 200 tons of equipment, 50 tons of fuel for station keeping, and leave it in orbit. Or some super-heavy payload might require it, I guess.
It may not ever get used that way, but it’s an amazing capability.
33 engine test fire is likely only a week or two away.
Musk has mentioned it a few times before. I don’t think it’s any more complicated than it being a more appropriate comparison against SLS or the Saturn V. 150 t doesn’t sound like much of an improvement over those. 250 t expendable gives a better sense of the size difference.
I do wonder if that’s fully expendable or not. I.e, are we talking about expending the booster, or just the Starship.
Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. It would be interesting to see how much performance loss there is from landing the booster vs Starship. I would think the booster would be more. It has to RTLS. There’s no drone ship to land it on to save some fuel. Starship’s Belly flop will also help slow it down. But I don’t know the numbers.
The FAA grants SpaceX license to launch Starship. “After a comprehensive license evaluation process, the FAA determined SpaceX met all safety, environmental, policy, payload, airspace integration and financial responsibility requirements.” https://t.co/rfKbvs1YzA
As unlikely as it seems, I don’t think there was more than minor fudging–and probably none at all–to hit the 4/20 date. They had no control over the FAA authorization release, which was years in the making. I can’t see them intentionally sabotaging a valve and then lying about it to delay. And it really does take >48 hrs for a recycle, due to the massive amount of propellant (it takes dozens of tanker trucks to refill).
About the only wiggle room is a delay from 4/19 to 4/20, but even the weather forecast is looking better for Thursday…
A cool shot from the inside of the interstage (the area between the two stages, showing the upper dome of the first stage and the engines of the second stage):
It might not look it, but that “room” is about 30 feet across.
