When will the first Starship reach orbit?

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

The key indicator of when is when we see the first East Coast SS build starting in a new manufacturing infrastructure that is in easy transport to 39A. Last build location is a difficult and expensive trip for a vehicle and is likely a non-capable for a taller SH. Infrastructure build up at a manufacturing site closer to the pad is the first but SS or SH build start would be the best indicator since existing timelines for builds in Boca Chica would give good estimates on when a finished vehicle would head for the pad for the first testing at 39A.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

Elon’s current thinking:

https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1317229714025623553

Elon Musk at @TheMarsSociety 2020:

"I'm 80% to 90% confident" SpaceX's Starship will reach orbit within the next year. "Probably 50% or 60% confident that we'll be able to bring the shuttle booster back" and land.

[QuantumG]

Options should be years, not months.

It's an annual poll. Think yaself lucky I bust it out to 18 months. 😂

Almost time to re-poll.

[armchairfan]

Elon’s current thinking:

https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1317229714025623553

Elon Musk at @TheMarsSociety 2020:

"I'm 80% to 90% confident" SpaceX's Starship will reach orbit within the next year. "Probably 50% or 60% confident that we'll be able to bring the shuttle booster back" and land.

My emphasis.
That's not quite* what Elon said. Getting the booster back isn't the hard part ... getting the ship back from orbit is. Beginning at 49:10

I'd say that I'm 80 to 90% confident that we will reach orbit with starship next year. I think probably 50 or 60%  ... 50% confident that we'll be able to bring the ship* and booster back. That's more of a dicey situation. We'll probably lose a few ships* before we really get the atmospheric return and landing right. Hopefully we don't lose any boosters because that's a lot of engines. Our initial booster flights will just have maybe two to four engines; not 28. Twenty eight is a lot of engines. I think we'll probably be doing high volume flights probably in 2022, so a couple of years from now.

Reading between the lines, it's pretty clear that the initial booster flights will be without a starship stacked on top. (That was a topic of debate a while back.)

Just think, a year(ish) from now starship will probably make it to orbit. Even if they don't quickly perfect recovery of the upper stage, they may still have one of the lower cost launch vehicles around simply because of their efforts to mass produce them. Even now they can crank out a new starship every one to two months. Even faster for airframes. Engine availability seems to be the current constraining factor and they're getting closer to dialing that in. IIRC, they're up to around to around Raptor SN 40 with SN 50 being around the point where Elon previously thought that they'd be happy enough with the design to up the production rate.

* The fact that "Starship" officially can mean either the upper stage or the entire stack continues to cause confusion. However, I think that Elon was using ship here to mean only the upper stage since he also explicitly mentioned the booster when appropriate.

[Zed_Noir]

<snip>
Reading between the lines, it's pretty clear that the initial booster flights will be without a starship stacked on top.
<snip>

Maybe with a double or triple height mass simulator hat. At least for the initial low altitude Super Heavy hops. 

[QuantumG]

New poll posted!

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=52134.0

[Negan]

Reading between the lines, it's pretty clear that the initial booster flights will be without a starship stacked on top. (That was a topic of debate a while back.)

I didn't know they could test a booster with only 2 to 4 engines. That's pretty cool.

[eeergo]

Bump for the conclusion of the follow-up poll (2021/22).

As usual, I advocate for some reflection upon what stakes Starship is raising, how much hinges upon it, and what it is delivering.