One of the highlights of my winter as a pirate was seeing all the development and testing of SpaceX’s Starship prototype at the SpaceX Starbase in Brownsville, TX.
SpaceX, if you don’t know, is a private space travel enterprise. They have had a lot of commercial success in the past few years. Some of their achievements include sending 21 unmanned resupply rockets to the International Space Station with their Dragon rockets. SpaceX also established the Starlink internet service with their Falcon rockets. Their most ambitious development to date is The Starship line of rockets, and its companion, the super heavy booster.
What Makes SpaceX Special?
One of SpaceX’s selling points is its rocket system’s reusability. Throughout most of our space exploration history, all spacecraft have been single-use. Often, spent boosters and lower stages crash into Earth’s oceans or stay in orbit, contributing to Earth’s orbital junkyard. The Saturn V program, NASA’s system for getting Astronauts to the moon in the late ’60s, was composed of 4 different stages! All of them were single-use. Every part of them, except a few pieces recovered for museums, are littered across the sea floor, low earth orbit, or scattered across the surface of the moon.
The Starship Program from SpaceX aims to replicate the achievements of the Apollo Program. However, by using a completely reusable launch system!
Testing the SpaceX Starship
While I worked as a pirate on The Black Dragon, we got to watch the development of the 1st orbital prototype of the starship! In mid-February, they did a static test fire of all 33 rocket motors on the super heavy booster. This means they fired off the rocket but at a fraction of its power. The rocket was secured to the launch pad. While we really wanted to see it ourselves, the test happened while we were at port. But we still heard it!
That was the last major test SpaceX had to perform before being granted a launch license by the FAA. Since then, SpaceX has rolled an engine servicing platform to the booster. They may be servicing or replacing a few of the rocket motors that didn’t behave as expected during the test. When that’s done, they should begin stacking the Starship on top of the booster in preparation for launch.
Updates
Hopefully, we’ll get to see the launch, which is currently scheduled for April (as of writing this post).
Update: Space X did finally launch the rocket on April 20th of 2023. The combined rocket cleared the tower and soared overhead nearly to the target altitude for stage separation before the rocket started to roll on its axis and ground control triggered its self-destruct. Below is the recording of the live stream!
A lot of people have been calling the launch a ‘failure’ as the rocket didn’t survive, nor did it complete the planned flight. The plan was for the Booster to take Starship about 1/4 of the way to orbit, then land in the Gulf of Mexico, with Starship going on to complete a sub-orbital flight to land off the coast of Hawaii.
The dissonance comes from the difference between goals, and plans. The goal for this test was just to clear the launch tower. Considering how much further into the plan the launch got it was a resounding success! The combined vehicle sent back tons of information to the engineers at Space X to pour over, making the next Starship and booster even better! It’s an exciting time to be a space nerd!