When will the first Starship reach orbit?

[QuantumG]

All of his ideas for space exploration use much larger rockets.

and full reusability, and in-space refuelling.

[Rocket Science]

May 2021 or later whichever "type of orbit" you feel to choose...

[David willis]

SLS has two rockets worth of lunar hardware, while starship has zero orbital hardware at all, its kinda silly in my mind for anyone to think starship can beat SLS to orbit

[freddo411]

SLS has two rockets worth of lunar hardware, while starship has zero orbital hardware at all, its kinda silly in my mind for anyone to think starship can beat SLS to orbit

OK.

But, there is a list of things that SLS hasn't done yet.   

The most relavent is "fly".   A starship related prototype has flown. 

SLS has never had fuel in it's tanks, or plumbing; SS prototypes have.

SLS avionics have never flown; SS prototypes have.


Yes, SLS has a substantial head start, a substantial lead at this point and substantially more resources.   Any reasonably urgent program would certainly get flying to orbit before SS. ....

Nevertheless, I would not be AT ALL surprised if SX roughly assembles SN1 or SN2 and flies to 100 km before Artemis 1 does.   There's an outside shot it will make orbit first too.

By the end of 2021, SS will have flown more orbital flights than SLS ever will

[Dalhousie]

We have not seen any prototypes for SS.  Just test beds.  One failed the first test. 

[meberbs]

We have not seen any prototypes for SS.  Just test beds.  One failed the first test.

Then you don't know the meaning of the word prototype.

Hopper was a prototype. Mk1 and Mk2 were prototypes, but it was decided they weren't worth flying, better to move on to the next one in line as they had already served to teach lessons (most of which the public won't know because it would be proprietary data).

[meberbs]

SLS has two rockets worth of lunar hardware, while starship has zero orbital hardware at all, its kinda silly in my mind for anyone to think starship can beat SLS to orbit

SLS is progressing at an unbelievably, incomprehensibly, slow pace. The silly thing here is the claim that the more than a year timeframe before SLS might be ready to fly has any relevance whatsoever to the timeframe to flight or SPaceX's rocket where they already demonstrated an ability to build it from scratch in a few months, while initially experimenting with build processes. Given the existing infrastructure, lessons learned, etc future builds should be faster.

[jadebenn]

I haven't seen the aforementioned "faster progression." I personally feel the Starship program as of current has been wasting its time solving issues that were already solved ages ago.

SpaceX knows how to build tanks that don't explode at flight pressures, and they sure as heck know how to propulsively land rockets. Those shiny steel fliers may be visually impressive, but there really doesn't seem to be much engineering rationale to them. There are a million other ways the things they're testing could've been verified with must less time and effort.

Like I said, they haven't exactly been testing any of the aspects Starship will be on the cutting edge of technology with yet. Pressure vessels and propulsive landings should be the easy parts. Yet here we are, a year later, and the program is barely any better off than it was at the beginning of 2019.

[su27k]

I haven't seen the aforementioned "faster progression." I personally feel the Starship program as of current has been wasting its time solving issues that were already solved ages ago.

SpaceX knows how to build tanks that don't explode at flight pressures, and they sure as heck know how to propulsively land rockets. Those shiny steel fliers may be visually impressive, but there really doesn't seem to be much engineering rationale to them. There are a million other ways the things they're testing could've been verified with must less time and effort.

Like I said, they haven't exactly been testing any of the aspects Starship will be on the cutting edge of technology with yet. Pressure vessels and propulsive landings should be the easy parts. Yet here we are, a year later, and the program is barely any better off than it was at the beginning of 2019.

If building tanks is the easy part, why did NASA give Boeing $6.2B, the largest SLS contract by 2x, to build the two SLS core stage tanks?

Whatever system that is on the SLS core stage, be it avionics or thrust structure or pipes/wires, they exist on those shiny steel fliers too. Except SpaceX built these shiny steel fliers in a few months, Boeing spent 8 years building the two SLS core stages (still not finished yet).

[jadebenn]

Consciously or not, you're engaging in whataboutism.

You want to complain about SLS? Take it to space policy. It does not change my point about Starship's timelines so far.

[su27k]

Consciously or not, you're engaging in whataboutism.

You want to complain about SLS? Take it to space policy. It does not change my point about Starship's timelines so far.

No, this is not a complain about SLS, this is using SLS as an example to show your assumption that tank is the easy part to build is wrong. Your point about timeline is also off give how long it took Boeing to build the SLS tank, comparing to Boeing's work on SLS, SpaceX has been remarkably fast.

[envy887]

I haven't seen the aforementioned "faster progression." I personally feel the Starship program as of current has been wasting its time solving issues that were already solved ages ago.

SpaceX knows how to build tanks that don't explode at flight pressures, and they sure as heck know how to propulsively land rockets. Those shiny steel fliers may be visually impressive, but there really doesn't seem to be much engineering rationale to them. There are a million other ways the things they're testing could've been verified with must less time and effort.

Like I said, they haven't exactly been testing any of the aspects Starship will be on the cutting edge of technology with yet. Pressure vessels and propulsive landings should be the easy parts. Yet here we are, a year later, and the program is barely any better off than it was at the beginning of 2019.

Building low cost flight weight tanks at this scale is not, and has never been, "solved". There are only 4 comparable tank designs ever built: The S-IC, the S-II, and the Energia and SLS core stages. I would argue that none of them were remotely in the cost range SpaceX needs to hit for Starship, judging by the "too expensive to fly and thus cancelled" status of the first 3, and the very high costs to date for SLS.

[envy887]

SLS has two rockets worth of lunar hardware, while starship has zero orbital hardware at all, its kinda silly in my mind for anyone to think starship can beat SLS to orbit

I'm fairly sure that some already existing hardware will reach orbit on Starship. Largely because SpaceX is going to recycle existing parts and use off-the-shelf components wherever they can, but also because they have already built almost 2 dozen Raptors and at least some of them are likely capable of an orbital flight.

What SpaceX doesn't yet have are the major structural components. Which they are betting they can crank out pretty quick, but we'll see...

[envy887]

Well at least we know how Elon would vote in this poll

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1230642008257069056

[jongoff]

Well at least we know how Elon would vote in this poll

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1230642008257069056

It's interesting to note, that in the 4 months since this poll came out, ~50% of voters are now more optimistic than Elon is today... Admittedly this was only a few weeks after Elon had claimed he was six months out from an orbital flight. But it is kind of interesting to see how this evolves over time.

~Jon

[envy887]

Well at least we know how Elon would vote in this poll

It's interesting to note, that in the 4 months since this poll came out, ~50% of voters are now more optimistic than Elon is today... Admittedly this was only a few weeks after Elon had claimed he was six months out from an orbital flight. But it is kind of interesting to see how this evolves over time.

~Jon

It's also worth nothing that this poll only references reaching orbit, while Musk wants to go right for full reuse which is considerably more challenging. I wonder if that will change. If they are cranking out Starships like sausages then going for partial reuse first has a lot of potential value for getting customer buy-in, while having rather little downside.

FWIW, I voted January 2021 in this poll. I still think that's a reasonable date after accounting for a possible partial reuse orbital attempt. 

[jongoff]

Well at least we know how Elon would vote in this poll

It's interesting to note, that in the 4 months since this poll came out, ~50% of voters are now more optimistic than Elon is today... Admittedly this was only a few weeks after Elon had claimed he was six months out from an orbital flight. But it is kind of interesting to see how this evolves over time.

~Jon

It's also worth nothing that this poll only references reaching orbit, while Musk wants to go right for full reuse which is considerably more challenging. I wonder if that will change. If they are cranking out Starships like sausages then going for partial reuse first has a lot of potential value for getting customer buy-in, while having rather little downside.

FWIW, I voted January 2021 in this poll. I still think that's a reasonable date after accounting for a possible partial reuse orbital attempt. 

I voted May 2021 or later, and am still feeling pretty good about it.

~Jon

[ZChris13]

Well at least we know how Elon would vote in this poll

It's interesting to note, that in the 4 months since this poll came out, ~50% of voters are now more optimistic than Elon is today... Admittedly this was only a few weeks after Elon had claimed he was six months out from an orbital flight. But it is kind of interesting to see how this evolves over time.

~Jon

It's also worth nothing that this poll only references reaching orbit, while Musk wants to go right for full reuse which is considerably more challenging. I wonder if that will change. If they are cranking out Starships like sausages then going for partial reuse first has a lot of potential value for getting customer buy-in, while having rather little downside.

FWIW, I voted January 2021 in this poll. I still think that's a reasonable date after accounting for a possible partial reuse orbital attempt.

If you permit me to attempt some interpretation of Elon here, I believe what he means is that he won't launch to orbit unless he thinks he can also attempt recovery.
It's only a short jump from full recovery to full reuse.

EDIT: I voted July 2020, because it's my birthday. That's probably a little bit optimistic now.

[high road]

SLS has two rockets worth of lunar hardware, while starship has zero orbital hardware at all, its kinda silly in my mind for anyone to think starship can beat SLS to orbit

Do you still think it's silly? SLS is now NET april 2021. Both are likely to slip, but it seems to me that SLS is slipping faster

[wannamoonbase]

I would not be so bold as to predict which month.  However, I am willing to predict the second half of 2021.

We need to see control surfaces, heat shield and super heavy and also some very series ground support equipment to handle a vehicle and some wicked large cryogenic storage for the CH4 and LOx.  Bigly water deluge system too.

We should start seeing that ground system work in the second half of 2020.