A SpaceX Starship booster has successfully fired up 14 of its 33 Raptor engines, likely becoming the most powerful active rocket in the world. Throughout the history of spaceflight, only three or four other rockets have produced as much or more thrust than Super Heavy Booster 7 (B7) could have theoretically produced on November 14th.…
The Information reports that SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell “will assume oversight” of the company’s Starship program and Starbase facilities, seemingly stepping in for Elon Musk as the CEO shifts his focus to Twitter. In his own words, Twitter appears to be in a precarious position after the Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder purchased the social media platform…
SpaceX is busy preparing for the orbital launch debut its next-generation Starship rocket, but the company’s South Texas rocket factory is also working around the clock to prepare several more sets of ships and boosters for the flight testing that will follow. That was more obvious than usual on November 8th, when SpaceX made moves…
A day after revealing the completion of the 200th Falcon upper stage and Merlin Vacuum engine, SpaceX has announced that it also recently finished building Starship’s 200th upgraded Raptor engine. Starship – and Raptor, by extension – has yet to reach orbit and is likely years away from scratching the surface of the established success and reliability…
In 15 hours, SpaceX has rolled a new Starship to its South Texas launch and test facilities, reassembled the world’s largest rocket, launched Starlink satellites to orbit, and recovered a reused Falcon 9 booster in port. The burst of activity began around sunset at SpaceX’s Starbase rocket factory in Boca Chica, Texas when a new…
SpaceX announced the first two crew members of Starship’s second commercial spaceflight around the Moon. Entrepreneur Dennis Tito and his wife, Akiko, purchased seats on a private trip on Starship. The couple joined SpaceX’s mission to contribute to its long-term goal of advancing human spaceflight and helping to make life multi-planetary, SpaceX said in its update. https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1580187420015722496?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1580187420015722496%7Ctwgr%5Ea8103167a515b499b9b49b2a9af036dc49939c8f%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.teslarati.com%2Fspacex-starship-2nd-commercial-spaceflight%2F…
For the first time in more than six months, SpaceX has stacked both stages of its next-generation Starship rocket, creating the largest and most powerful launch vehicle ever fully assembled. It’s not the first time. SpaceX has conducted three other ‘full-stack’ Starship demonstrations: once in August 2021 and again in February and March 2022. But…
CEO Elon Musk says that it’s “highly likely” SpaceX will be ready to attempt its first orbital Starship launch in November 2022, and possibly as early as late October. But many major hurdles remain. Adding to a welcome burst of insight into SpaceX’s fully-reusable Starship rocket program, Musk took to Twitter on September 21st to provide a…
SpaceX has successfully ignited all six engines on its latest Starship prototype, taking a significant step towards ensuring that the upper stage will be ready for the rocket’s first orbital launch attempt. Unfortunately, the same successful static fire of a Starship upper stage – potentially producing almost twice as much thrust as the booster of SpaceX’s Falcon…
SpaceX continues to work around the clock to prepare its latest Starship and Super Heavy booster prototypes for another week of testing – likely focused on firing up the Raptor engines installed on each vehicle. Known as Booster 7 and Ship 24, SpaceX has been slowly testing both prototypes for approximately four months, beginning in…