Author Topic: Starship Epoch Ecosystem Tweet History - UPDATES (Read 797932 times)

FutureSpaceTourist · « **Reply #460 on:** 04/15/2023 02:34 am »

April 14th 2023 Updates: First starship test flight details & licence

https://twitter.com/spacex/status/1646996041978507264
Tweet contents: Targeting as soon as Monday, April 17 for the first flight test of a fully integrated Starship and Super Heavy rocket from Starbase in Texas → spacex.com/launches

https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-test
Webpage contents: SpaceX is targeting as soon as Monday, April 17 for the first flight test of a fully integrated Starship and Super Heavy rocket from Starbase in Texas. The 150-minute test window will open at 7:00 a.m. CT.

[rest of page as previously posted for April 11th]

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1647028574250041344

https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/licenses_permits/media/VOL%2023-129%20SpaceX%20Starship-Super%20Heavy%20License%20and%20Orders%202023-04-14.pdf

https://www.faa.gov/media/27236

FutureSpaceTourist · « **Reply #461 on:** 04/16/2023 01:40 am »

April 15th 2023 Updates: Starship stacked for launch

https://twitter.com/spacex/status/1647366817361596416
Tweet contents: Starship fully stacked at Starbase

FutureSpaceTourist · « **Reply #462 on:** 04/16/2023 02:06 pm »

April 16th 2023 Updates: Starship first flight preparation

https://twitter.com/spacex/status/1647601303634460674
Tweet contents: Teams are completing final checkouts and reviews ahead of Starship’s first flight test attempt; weather is looking pretty good for tomorrow morning but we're keeping an eye on wind shear http://spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-test

Edit to add:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1647629006089461761
Tweet contents: Launch attempt tomorrow

https://twitter.com/spacex/status/1647767704177192961
Tweet contents: T-12 hours until the first flight test of a fully integrated Starship and Super Heavy rocket; targeting ~8:00 a.m. CT for liftoff → spacex.com/launches

FutureSpaceTourist · « **Reply #463 on:** 04/18/2023 03:27 am »

April 17th 2023 Updates: New launch attempt details

Tweet contents: Teams are working towards Thursday, April 20 for the first flight test of a fully integrated Starship and Super Heavy rocket → https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-test

Webpage contents: SpaceX is targeting as soon as Thursday, April 20 for the first flight test of a fully integrated Starship and Super Heavy rocket from Starbase in Texas. The 62 minute launch window opens at 8:28 a.m. CT and closes at 9:30 a.m. CT. [13:28 to 14:30 UTC]

FutureSpaceTourist · « **Reply #464 on:** 04/19/2023 10:32 am »

April 18th 2023 Updates: Latest on date for Starship first flight 2nd launch attempt

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1648550090330480640
Tweet contents: The team is working around the clock on many issues. Maybe 4/20, maybe not.

FutureSpaceTourist · « **Reply #465 on:** 04/20/2023 04:44 pm »

April 20th 2023 Updates: Starship full Stack first flight

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1649052609590992901

https://twitter.com/spacex/status/1649089801797378048
Tweet contents: First fully integrated Starship lifting off for the first time!

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1649050306943266819
Tweet contents: Congrats @SpaceX team on an exciting test launch of Starship!
Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months.

https://twitter.com/spacex/status/1649097087248891904
Tweet contents: Liftoff from Starbase

https://twitter.com/spacex/status/1649141462469312512
Tweet contents: Starship successfully lifted off from the orbital launch pad and climbed to an apogee of ~39 km over the Gulf of Mexico

https://twitter.com/spacex/status/1649172873494556679
Tweet contents: Slow mo video of liftoff from the tower

https://twitter.com/spacex/status/1649187977644630017
Tweet contents: View of Starship liftoff from South Padre Island

FutureSpaceTourist · « **Reply #466 on:** 04/22/2023 02:34 am »

April 21st 2023 Updates: Starship First flight and pad damage

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1649579313061154817
Tweet contents: Starship liftoff in slow motion

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1649537668177354754
Tweet contents: Here is an image we took in 2020 (left) of what the construction of the foundation looked like.
Right image is the aftermath.
All that’s left of the concrete lateral support beam is the rebar! Hopefully, this didn’t gronk the launch mount.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1649523985837686784
Tweet contents: The damage in Boca Chica at the Starbase launch site looks pretty serious, but a former senior SpaceXer from there says he believes the pad can be repaired; and a (water-cooled?) flame diverter installed in 4 to 6 months. Just passing on what I was told.
3 months ago, we started building a massive water-cooled, steel plate to go under the launch mount.
Wasn’t ready in time & we wrongly thought, based on static fire data, that Fondag would make it through 1 launch.
Looks like we can be ready to launch again in 1 to 2 months.

FutureSpaceTourist · « **Reply #467 on:** 04/22/2023 03:44 pm »

April 22nd Updates: Post first flight analysis

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1649800747834392580
Tweet contents: Still early in analysis, but the force of the engines when they throttled up may have shattered the concrete, rather than simply eroding it. The engines were only at half thrust for the static fire test.

FutureSpaceTourist · « **Reply #468 on:** 04/30/2023 12:06 am »

April 29th 2023 Updates: Elon briefing on first Starship flight

https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1652451971410935808
Tweet thread contents: Elon Musk is holding a Twitter Spaces discussion on SpaceX's first Starship launch.

Thread:

Musk: "The outcome was roughly in what I expected, and maybe slightly exceeding my expectations, but roughly what I expected, which is that we would get clear of the pad."

Musk: "I'm glad to report that the pad damage is actually quite small" and should "be repaired quickly."

Musk: "The vehicle's structural margins appear to be better than we expected, as we can tell from the vehicle actually doing somersaults towards the end and still staying intact."

Musk: From a "pad standpoint, we are probably ready to launch in 6 to 8 weeks.'
"The longest item on that is probably requalification of the flight termination system ... it took way too long to rupture the tanks."

Musk: Time for AFTS to kick in "was pretty long," about "40 seconds-ish."

Musk: "There were 3 engines that we chose not to start," so that's why Super Heavy booster lifted off with 30 engines, "which is the minimum number of engines."
The 3 engines "didn't explode," but just were not "healthy enough to bring them to full thrust so they were shut down"

Musk: At T+27 seconds, SpaceX [actually engine 19] lost communications due to "some kind of energy event." And "some kind of explosion happened to knock out the heat shields of engines 17, 18, 19, or 20."

Musk: "Rocket kept going through T+62 seconds" with the engines continuing to run. Lost thrust vector control at T+85 seconds.

Musk: Generated a "rock tornado" under Super Heavy during liftoff, but SpaceX does not "see evidence that the rock tornado actually damaged engines or heat shields in a material way." May have happened, but "we have not seen evidence of that."

Musk: "It was actually good to get this vehicle off the ground because we've made so many improvements" in Super Heavy Booster 9 "and beyond."
"Really just needed to fly this vehicle and then move on to the much improved booster."

Musk: After AFTS, "the ship did not attempt to save itself."

Musk: Big thing for next Starship launch is "insuring that we don't lose thrust vector control" with Booster 9."

Musk: "We're going to putting down a lot of steel" under the launch tower before the next Starship flight.
"Debris was really just basically sand and rock so it's not toxic at all ... it's just like a sandstorm, essentially ... but we don't want to do that again."

Musk: "We certainly didn't expect" to destroy the concrete under the launchpad.

Musk: Speculating, but "one of the more plausible explanations is that ... we may have compressed the sand underneath the concrete to such a degree that the concrete effectively bent and then cracked," which is "a leading theory."

Musk: Reason for going with a steel plate instead of a flame trench is that for payloads in the rocket, the worse acoustic environment doesn't matter to the payload since it's about 400 feet away.

Musk: Flight was "pretty close to what I expected."

Musk: "Got pretty close to stage separation ... if we had maintained thrust vector control and throttled up, which we should have ... then we would have made it to staging."

Musk: "Our goal for the next flight is to make it to staging and hopefully succeed."

Musk: "My expectation for the next flight would be to reach orbit." Next flight profile will be a "repeat."

Musk: "The goal of these missions is just information. Like, we don't have any payload or anything -- it's just to learning as much as possible."

Musk: "Definitely don't" expect lunar Starship (under the HLS project) to be the longest lead item for the Artemis III mission.
"We will be the first thing to really be" ready.

Musk: Probably an 80% probability of reaching orbit with Starship this year, and "I think close to 100% change of reaching orbit within 12 months."

Musk: Slowed down Raptor engine production "because we've got more Raptors than we know what to do with."

Musk: Expect to spend ~$2 billion this year on Starship.

Musk: "We do not anticipate needing to raise funding ... we don't think we need to raise funding." Will do the "standard thing where we provide liquidity to employees."
"But to my knowledge we do not need to raise incremental funding for SpaceX."

Musk: For the next flight, "we're going to start the engines faster and get off the pad faster." From engine start to moving Starship "was around 5 seconds, which is a really long time to be blasting the pad." Going to try to cut that time in half.

Musk: Starship didn't get to what SpaceX thought was "a safe point to do stage separation."

Musk: "I thought the SpaceX team did amazing work."
"This is certainly a candidate for the hardest technical problem done by humans."

Musk, on environmental response: "The rocket uses non-toxic propellants and ... scattered a lot of dust, but to the best of our knowledge there has not been any meaningful damage to the environment that we're aware of."

Musk: SpaceX has yet to make a final decision on which Starship prototype and Super Heavy booster will fly the next launch.

Musk: "Going to be replacing a bunch of the tanks in the tank farm, but these are tanks that we wanted to replace anyway."

Musk: "Tower itself is in good shape. We see no meaningful damage to the tower even though they got hit with some pretty big chunks of concrete."

Musk: Starship sliding laterally off the launchpad was "because of the engine failures."

Musk is signing off, and says he plans to do another Starship update in "3 weeks-ish"

Edit to add: twitter spaces recording

FutureSpaceTourist · « **Reply #469 on:** 05/13/2023 07:06 am »

May 13th 2023 Updates: Raptor 3

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1657249739925258240
Tweet contents: Raptor V3 just achieved 350 bar chamber pressure (269 tons of thrust). Congrats to @SpaceX propulsion team!
Starship Super Heavy Booster has 33 Raptors, so total thrust of 8877 tons or 19.5 million pounds.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1657254174218928129
Tweet contents: Epic! Was it the firing on the Tripod Stand? Been a busy day at McGregor!
Yeah. To be frank, we did not expect the engine to survive a full duration run at that pressure. It is uncharted territory.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1657254777691185152
Tweet contents: Raptor chamber wall might have the highest heat flux of anything ever made

https://twitter.com/nasaspaceflight/status/1657256725362233344
Tweet contents: Can Raptor 3 can be a drop-in replacement for Raptor 2, or will the vehicles require changes to cater for Raptor 3 engines?
Here's the full firing from the raw pull out of https://nsf.live/mcgregor

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1657253574555103232

Tweet contents: I wonder if Raptor V3 looks different or similar to V2
If we can delete & integrate enough secondary structure (small, fiddly bits), then we can locally protect rest & delete engine heat shields

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1657256693150154752

Tweet contents: As I’ve talked about in my “How to keep a rocket engine from melting” video and my video about Raptor 1 VS Raptor 2, SpaceX is employing regenerative cooling & a good amount of film cooling. Wonder if Raptor 3 completely eliminated the additional throat film cooling manifold yet
No, we still have it. Chamber converging section desperately wants to melt next-level. We also have thermal barrier coatings.

FutureSpaceTourist · « **Reply #470 on:** 05/18/2023 03:17 pm »

May 18th 2023 Updates: Starship 25 update

https://twitter.com/spacex/status/1659215242617044993
Tweet contents: Ship 25 moved to a suborbital pad at Starbase for an upcoming static fire of its six Raptor engines

FutureSpaceTourist · « **Reply #471 on:** 05/19/2023 04:42 pm »

May 19th 2023 Updates: Raptor and steel sheet test

https://twitter.com/spacex/status/1659599720761950208
Tweet contents: Raptor test firing into a water cooled steel plate

FutureSpaceTourist · « **Reply #472 on:** 05/24/2023 06:42 pm »

May 24th 2023 Updates: Revised Starship specs

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1661441658473570304
Tweet contents: Starship payload is 250 to 300 tons to orbit in expendable mode.

Improved thrust & Isp from Raptor will enable ~6000 ton liftoff mass.

FutureSpaceTourist · « **Reply #473 on:** 05/27/2023 04:06 am »

May 26th 2023 Updates: 1st flight recap & 2nd flight progress

https://twitter.com/spacex/status/1662251874936934400
Tweet contents: Another step closer to Mars — the first flight test of a fully integrated Starship and Super Heavy rocket

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1662263704262680577
Tweet contents: Major launchpad upgrades should be complete in about a month, then another month of rocket testing on pad, then flight 2 of Starship

skyflyer81 · « **Reply #474 on:** 06/13/2023 02:52 pm »

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1668622531534934022?s=20

Response to this one;
https://twitter.com/TeslaSynopsis/status/1668481963903324160?s=20

FutureSpaceTourist · « **Reply #475 on:** 06/22/2023 05:08 pm »

June 22nd 2023 Updates: Starship 25 testing

https://twitter.com/spacex/status/1671927404619767808
Tweet contents: Ship 25 completed a flight-like chill and spin of the Raptor engine pumps, stopping just before engine ignition. As a result of the test, cryogenic liquid oxygen formed a visible cloud beneath the ship. This checked out vital systems in advance of the upcoming static fire.

FutureSpaceTourist · « **Reply #476 on:** 06/24/2023 04:05 pm »

June 24th 2023 Updates: Starship Upgrades for next flight

[tweets summarising Elon’s remarks on twitter spaces with Ashlee Vance]

https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1672631442776670208
Tweet contents: Musk said SpaceX has made a "late-breaking" change to Starship/Super Heavy stage separation, switching to a hot-staging approach where the ship lights its engines while a few booster engines are still firing. He estimates a ~10% increase in payload performance with this.
That will involve an extension to the booster with vents for the ship exhaust and shielding to the top of the booster, he says. He estimates both the vehicle and pad upgrades will be complete in about six weeks. [Recall in late April he expected to be ready to fly in 2 months…]

https://twitter.com/nasaspaceflight/status/1672631387201912832
Tweet contents: Elon says there's a much higher chance of getting to orbit with the second test flight due to vast amount of mods.

Late breaking change to staging - now hot staging(!).

"Never stop thrusting" - Elon Musk 😅

Ship engines will fire up before all the Booster engines shutdown. Now need vents for hot staging. Adding an extension to the booster that is all vent and more shielding to the top of the booster. It's the most risking thing for the next flight.

Launch pad upgrades and Booster/Ship ready in six weeks.

1000 cubic meters of steel reinforcement below the OLM. Then a steel sandwich water suppression system on top, with overkill to help the base of the pad.

FutureSpaceTourist · « **Reply #477 on:** 06/27/2023 06:01 am »

June 26th 2023 Updates: SS25 static fire

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1673564912948326400
Tweet contents: Ship 25 completes a six-engine static fire test at Starbase in Texas
Key milestone completed for flight 2

https://twitter.com/nicansuini/status/1673491613333561346
Tweet contents: S25 breaths fire for the first time 🔥
-@NASASpaceflight

Edit to add:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1673580231217618946
Tweet contents: STATIC FIRE! Ship 25 fires up what appears to be six Raptors for a decent duration in a key test ahead of the second Starship test flight.
Good performance @elonmusk?
Looks good so far

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1673587083267518465

https://twitter.com/spacex/status/1673808523497721856
Tweet contents: Additional views from yesterday’s Ship 25 static fire

FutureSpaceTourist · « **Reply #478 on:** 06/27/2023 01:36 pm »

June 27th 2023 Updates: More on hot staging

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1673684418974609410
Tweet contents: I just put this together as to what the hot staging of Starship might look like. I’m curious as to how many Raptors would be used. In this illustration I depict it with the 3 sea-level Raptors firing only, I guess it all depends at what stage an abort would be necessary.
Three center Raptors of Booster will fire at ~50% thrust during hot staging

Edit to add: revised graphic attached

FutureSpaceTourist · « **Reply #479 on:** 07/10/2023 03:49 am »

July 9th 2023 Updates: Future Starship upgrades

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1678205301349130240
Tweet contents: 3 more engines for the meaning of life

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1678244906119184384
Tweet contents: Can’t wait for this
Inner engine gimbal angle is limited in some directions, due to impacting outer engine nozzle, but probably ok

Edit to add:

twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1678276840740343808
Tweet contents: Looks like we can increase Raptor thrust by ~20% to reach 9000 tons (20 million lbs) of force at sea level

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1678278811186544640
Tweet contents: And deliver over 200 tons of payload to a useful orbit with full & rapid reusability.
50 rockets flying every 3 days on average enables over a megaton of payload to orbit per year – enough to build a self-sustaining city on Mars.