NASA and the Private Sector - Page 170

SpaceX has applied for an FCC Special Temporary Authority license to authorize rocket communications during what is likely Crew Dragon’s In-Flight Abort (IFA) test, now scheduled to occur no earlier than November 23rd.

In line with recent comments from SpaceX executives, a November or December In-Flight Abort test would almost certainly preclude Crew Dragon from launching with astronauts in 2019, pushing the Demo-2 mission into the Q1 2020. Nevertheless, it would serve as a good sign that Crew Dragon remains on track if SpaceX can complete the critical abort test – meant to prove that Dragon can whisk astronauts away from a failing rocket at any point during launch – before the year is out.

The FCC application describes “SpaceX Mission 1357” launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Launch Complex 39A, leased by SpaceX and primarily dedicated to launches involving either Falcon Heavy or Crew Dragon. Most tellingly, the STA request describes the mission as involving a “simulated orbital second stage”, an unusual phrase for SpaceX applications that almost certainly reveals it to be Crew Dragon’s IFA.

In the history of Falcon 9, all booster launches from Florida or California have carried functional Falcon upper stages. The FCC application’s “simulated” descriptor implies that this particular mission’s upper stage will not actually be capable of flight – a fact Elon Musk confirmed for the In-Flight Abort test in February 2019. Although the upper stage will otherwise be orbit-capable, the stage on Crew Dragon’s abort test is never meant to ignite and will thus feature a mass simulator in place of a functioning Merlin Vacuum (MVac) engine. A flight-proven Falcon 9 Block 5 booster – likely B1046.4 – will power the mission and both it and the upper stage are very unlikely to survive.

During the In-Flight Abort test, the Falcon 9 stack will lift off like any other launch, flying for approximately 60-70 seconds on a normal trajectory. Shortly thereafter, during a period of peak aerodynamic stress known as Max-Q, Crew Dragon’s SuperDraco abort system will somehow be triggered, causing the spacecraft to rapidly speed away from what it perceives to be a failing rocket. As Crew Dragon departs its perch atop Falcon 9’s upper stage, the rocket’s top will be instantly subjected to a supersonic windstream, akin to smashing into a brick wall. If the upper stage is quickly torn away, the booster will find its large, hollow interstage subjected to the same windstream, likely tearing it apart. The mission will undoubtedly be a spectacle regardless of how things transpire.

Specifically, Musk estimated that Crew Dragon capsule 03 (C203) and its expendable trunk would be sent from SpaceX’s Hawthorne, CA factory to Cape Canaveral, FL as early as October. Crew Dragon capsule C204 is then expected to follow around one month later, arriving in Florida for preflight preparation as early as November.

Crew Dragon is an upgraded, human-rated follow-up to SpaceX’s highly successful Cargo Dragon, an uncrewed spacecraft that has successfully completed 19 orbital launches since December 2010. Over the course of those missions, Cargo Dragon has delivered almost 40 metric tons of cargo (39.5t, 87,000 lb) to the International Space Station (ISS) under SpaceX’s NASA Commercial Resupply Services 1 (CRS1) contract.

SpaceX executives have stated several times that Cargo Dragon (Dragon 1) and Crew Dragon (Dragon 2) barely have a single shared part between them, but Crew Dragon nevertheless shares the heritage built by its predecessor’s successful career. Like Dragon 1, Dragon 2 is comprised of two main sections – a capsule and a service section (known by SpaceX as a trunk). The capsule is designed to be recovered and reused, while the trunk is detached in orbit to eventually burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

Same as Cargo Dragon, Crew Dragon’s trunk serves three main purposes aside from its basic structural role, providing power to the spacecraft with a solar array, regulating spacecraft temperature with a built-in radiator, and storing unpressurized cargo bound for the ISS.

Unlike Cargo Dragon, Crew Dragon features a launch abort system (LAS) powered by eight Super Draco engines, nominally capable of carrying astronauts to safety in the event of a Falcon 9 failures at any point during launch. On April 20th, recently flight-proven Crew Dragon capsule C201 suffered a catastrophic explosion as a result of a design flaw in its high-pressure propellant system. Eventually blamed on the use of a leaky, titanium valve in a high-pressure, oxidizer-rich environment, that explosion significantly delayed SpaceX’s Crew Dragon test flight schedule.

Prior to April 20th, SpaceX anticipated launching Crew Dragon’s In-Flight Abort (IFA) test as early as July 2019, followed by the spacecraft’s crewed demonstration launch (Demo-2) in September or October 2019. Capsule C201 was supposed to support the IFA test and its destruction forced SpaceX to reconfigure its spacecraft flight order, reassigning the capsule (C203) originally intended to fly astronauts on Demo-2 to IFA, while the Dragon (C204) meant for SpaceX’s second astronaut launch (known as PCM-1) was reassigned to Demo-2.

As of early September, SpaceX and NASA had nearly completed Crew Dragon’s static fire explosion investigation. The next few Crew Dragon spacecraft could have almost certainly been completed months ago, but SpaceX had to pause their integration to preserve access in the event that significant modifications were needed to recertify the capsules for flight. With the IFA Dragon set to arrive as early as October, SpaceX will have up to one month to prepare for the abort test, currently scheduled to occur no earlier than (NET) November 23rd according to recent FCC applications.

Assuming that Dragon performs flawlessly during the IFA, NASA could give Demo-2 – Crew Dragon’s inaugural astronaut launch – permission to launch as early as Q1 2020.

There is no question that there are many companies racing to develop rockets to deliver small satellites into low-Earth orbit. And there is no doubt that the small satellite market—from governments through commercial constellations—will likely only support a handful of private companies.

This has complicated fundraising for companies during the critical juncture when they need additional funding to complete development of their rockets and get into flying operational missions.

Amidst this market, however, Relativity Space announced Tuesday that it has closed a $140 million Series C funding round led by Bond and Tribe Capital. With this funding, Relativity chief executive Tim Ellis tells Ars the company is fully funded to complete development of its Terran 1 rocket, and reach orbit.

"Fundraising is always a process," Ellis said, noting the participation of new investors Lee Fixel, Michael Ovitz, Spencer Rascoff, Republic Labs, and Jared Leto, along with participation from current investors Playground Global, Y Combinator, Social Capital, and Mark Cuban. It speaks to the quality of Relativity's plans, he said, that such a diverse group investors are backing the ambitious firm. "These investors are very sophisticated when it comes to the financial business case," Ellis told Ars in an interview.

Relativity has ambitious plans to 3D print the entirety of its rockets, reducing workforce costs and increasing the company's ability to iterate on rocket design. By using 3D printing the company can evolve its rocket design from mission to mission, incorporate more complex geometries, and basically try more things, more quickly. "I don’t think we’re at the pinnacle of where rocket design is going to get," Ellis said.

A schedule slip

As part of the fundraising announcement, Ellis also acknowledged that the first flight of the Terran 1 rocket will slip from the end of 2020 into early 2021. Part of the reason for this delay, he said, is a change to increase the width of the payload fairing from 2 meters to 3 meters, which will double the available volume.

Progress is being made on other parts of the rocket. Ellis said the company recently printed and assembled an entire second stage of the rocket, as well as performed more than 200 engine hotfire tests at NASA Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.

Relativity Space has managed to answer a lot of questions about its operations so far. It has plans to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, and it will announce a launch site for polar missions by the end of the year. It also said it will build a large factory in Southern Mississippi.

The main question, then, is whether Relativity can ultimately make 3D printed technology work on a large scale. By announcing a new round of funding, key investors certainly believe in their path forward. But by also announcing a schedule slip, the company has raised a few concerns about the technology leap needed to entirely automate the fabrication of a large rocket capable of lifting 1.25 tons to low-Earth orbit.

International Astronautical Congress. Washington DC. 21 October 2019 – Rocket Lab, the global leader in dedicated small satellite launch, has today unveiled plans to support extended range missions to medium, geostationary, and lunar orbits with the company’s Photon satellite platform.

Less than two years after opening access to low Earth orbit (LEO) for small satellites with the Electron launch vehicle, Rocket Lab is now bringing medium, geostationary, and lunar orbits within reach for small satellites. Rocket Lab will combine its Electron launch vehicle, Photon small spacecraft platform, and a dedicated bulk maneuver stage to accomplish extended-range missions and deliver small spacecraft to lunar flyby, Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO), L1/L2 points, or Lunar orbit. These capabilities can then be expanded to deliver even larger payloads throughout cis-lunar space, including as high as geostationary orbit (GEO).

Rocket Lab Founder and Chief Executive, Peter Beck, says there is increasing international interest in lunar and beyond LEO exploration from government and private sectors.

“Small satellites will play a crucial role in science and exploration, as well as providing communications and navigation infrastructure to support returning humans to the Moon – they play a vital role as pathfinders to retire risk and lay down infrastructure for future missions,” he says. “Just like LEO small spacecraft, many potential exploration instruments and full satellites are on shelves waiting for launch to deeper space. In the same way we opened access to LEO for smallsats, Rocket Lab is poised to become the dedicated ride to the Moon and beyond for small satellites.”

The experience gained through multiple orbital Electron launches, and iterative performance improvements to Photon’s Curie propulsion system, enables Rocket Lab to undertake extended range missions with proven technology and significant experience. All systems for extended missions are derived from high-heritage flight-proven equipment, including the Curie engine, Kick Stage, Electron composite tanks, and demonstrated expertise in launch and spacecraft guidance, navigation and control.

Rocket Lab’s most recent mission, ‘As The Crow Flies’, was the company’s 9th Electron launch and it saw Electron’s Kick Stage deploy a payload to an altitude of more than 1,000 km. The mission successfully demonstrated recent upgrades to the 3D-printed Curie propulsion system for Photon, including the move to a bi-propellant design for greatly improved performance.

Photon in particular was architected for use in both LEO and interplanetary missions, with radiation-tolerant avionics, deep space-capable communications and navigation technology, and high-performance space-storable propulsion capable of multiple restarts on orbit. The combination of Photon and Electron has been designed as a complete solution for responsive LEO, MEO and cis-lunar missions, as early as Q4 2020.

SpaceX now has three of its next-generation Starship rockets under construction, as aerial video shows the latest developments at the company’s facility in Florida.

The first bands of stainless steel for another Starship rocket were put on a stand Thursday, and were captured in a video taken from a flying drone. Former commercial pilot John Winkopp took the video and gave CNBC permission to use his footage.

Starship is a massive rocket that SpaceX is developing to eventually launch cargo and people to the moon and Mars. The rocket is designed to be reusable so SpaceX can launch and land it multiple times, like a commercial airplane.

SpaceX is building three Starship rockets simultaneously: One in at its facility in Boca Chica, Texas and two at its facility in Cocoa, Florida.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk last month gave an update on Starship’s development, standing in front of the first assembled rocket in Texas. That’s also where SpaceX has completed short test flights of a prototype Starship rocket, which is called Starhopper.

While the next Starship flight is expected to reach about 65,000 feet altitude, Musk is pushing SpaceX to fly to space in the coming months.

The company is using stainless steel to build Starship, giving it the reflective appearance seen in the video.

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and space venture Blue Origin, unveiled plans on Tuesday for his company to work with industry giants Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper to build a human-capable lunar landing system.

“We have put together a national team to go back to the moon,” Bezos said, speaking at the 70th International Astronautical Congress in Washington, D.C.

The coalition plans to bid the system for NASA’s Artemis program, which plans to send U.S. astronauts back to the surface of the moon. Artemis has recently been accelerated, with President Donald Trump’s administration tasking NASA with landing astronauts on the surface by 2024.

Blue Origin is the group’s prime contractor, leading the program’s management and mission assurance. Bezos’ company will also provide its lunar lander, called Blue Moon.

Lockheed Martin will build the vehicle that will then return astronauts from the surface of the Moon, also known as the “Ascent Element.” That Lockheed vehicle will be reusable, Blue Origin said. Lockheed will also lead operations and training of the flight’s crew.

Northrop Grumman will provide a vehicle to bring the landing systems into position in lunar orbit, called the “Transfer Element” vehicle.

Draper, the Cambridge, Massachusetts research and development organization, will lead development of the descent guidance system, as well provide flight avionics.

“We could not ask for better partners,” Bezos said.

Bezos earlier this year unveiled Blue Moon, as well as the rocket engine that will power the lander. .

The conference’s organizers awarded Bezos with the “IAF Excellence in Industry Award,” recognizing Blue Origin’s space tourism division “for its significant and sustainable contribution towards enabling an enduring human presence in space through its New Shepard launch system and BE-3 liquid hydrogen rocket engine.”

Aside from a general improvement to the overall visual fit-and-finish of the v1.0 spacecraft, SpaceX’s official comments on the matter indicated that the most substantial changes between v0.9 and v1.0 were more related to each spacecraft’s advanced electronics and payloads. In the case of Starlink, each satellite’s primary payload is a high-performance suite of electronically-steered phased array antennas. Initially developed to improve the flexibility of tracking and scanning radars used by military fighter aircraft, phased array antennas (and radar) allow multiple beams to be aimed without physically moving the antenna.

SpaceX says that Starlink v1.0 satellites added a number of Ka-band antennas alongside upgraded Ku-band hardware similar to what was installed on Starlink v0.9. Ka and Ku refer to similar but different communications frequencies, with Ku-band generally offering greater reliability and cloud/rain tolerance, while Ka-band is a bit more sensitive to environmental factors but offers a substantially higher theoretical bandwidth.

According to SpaceX engineers speaking during the Starlink-1 launch webcast, Starlink v1.0 satellites offer an unexpected 400% increase in overall bandwidth, meaning they can theoretically transmit four times as much data per any given second. Additionally, Starlink v1.0 satellites were said to feature antennas with twice as many steerable beams, meaning that they can effectively serve two times as many regions simultaneously. It’s unclear if the addition of Ka-band antennas is the sole source of these substantial improvements.

Furthermore, during the Starlink v0.9 launch, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk indicated that the 60 satellites represented a bandwidth of more than 1 terabit per second (Tbps), translating to ~17 Gbps per satellite. More likely than not, Musk was speaking aspirational and the v0.9 satellites actually represented more like ~200-300 Gbps worth of throughput, with the additional of Ka-band antennas and perhaps general technology upgrades bringing v1.0 satellites to a nominal ~17 Gbps apiece.

KENT, Wash. — Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture is rapidly expanding on several fronts, ranging from its headquarters facility south of Seattle to a new beachhead in the Los Angeles area — within the orbit of its main competitor, Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Just three and a half years ago, Blue Origin’s workforce amounted to 600 employees, and even then, Bezos said his company’s 300,000-square-foot office and production facility in Kent was “busting out of the seams.”

Now the employee count is at around 2,500, heading toward 3,500 in the next year. That’s according to a report from a Bangkok space conference quoting Clay Mowry, Blue Origin’s vice president for global sales, marketing and customer experience.

To be sure, there are lots of places to put those employees — including a rocket test facility nestled amid 165,000 acres of Bezos-owned ranch land in West Texas; a 750,000-square-foot New Glenn rocket factory in Florida, plus a leased launch complex and a servicing center; a 200,000-square-foot BE-4 engine factory in Alabama; and a business office in Arlington, Va.

Now you can add Los Angeles to the list: Blue Origin is ramping up a California propulsion system design and development operation in the L.A. area to support the teams in Kent, Texas and Alabama.

For now, the Engines Design Office accounts for only seven of the nearly 700 open positions at Blue Origin. Most of the openings for propulsion engineers (and other jobs, for that matter) are still at the Kent HQ. And the exact location for the L.A.-area office isn’t mentioned in the job listings or current California business filings. But the fact that there’ll be a California presence seems to serve as recognition of Southern California’s continuing importance as a locale for rocket development.

For what it’s worth, SpaceX’s headquarters is located in Hawthorne, Calif., just a few blocks beyond Los Angeles’ city limits. Virgin Orbit is headquartered down the road in Long Beach, Calif. And Relativity Space, which was founded in Seattle by Blue Origin alumni, now has its home base near Los Angeles International Airport.

We’ve reached out to Blue Origin for comment on their expansion plans, in L.A., Kent and elsewhere, and will update this report with anything we can pass along.

We also paid a visit to Kent last weekend to check in on the status of the 400,000-square-foot facility that’s being built across the street from the original campus.

The twin sloped-roof buildings are still nowhere near finished, but they’ve come a long way since our previous visit seven months ago. Both buildings appear to be fully enclosed, and a facade for the entrance doors is taking shape.

A black monolith emblazoned with Blue Origin’s logo has been erected at the entryway. I’m not sure if that’s an intentional tribute to “2001: A Space Odyssey,” but I wouldn’t put it past a guy who has the spaceship from “2001” as well as a Starship Enterprise model, a miniature “Silent Running” biodome and a Jules Verne rocket on display at his company’s headquarters.

There’s a duck pond behind the buildings, in keeping with Blue Origin’s pledge to restore wetlands on the property. And stripes have already been painted on the parking lot, with at least two spaces set aside for expectant mothers.

In an April tweet, Bezos described the site as “our new HQ and R&D facility.” The paperwork that’s been filed with the City of Kent suggests that the facility will include more than 235,000 square feet of warehouse-style space (presumably for research and development) and more than 100,000 square feet of office space.

The 26-acre plot of land was purchased for $14.1 million in 2017, but Blue Origin hasn’t provided any figures on construction cost. Blue Origin’s 120,000-square-foot warehouse and shipping center is adjacent to the construction site, and by all appearances, that’s coming in for a lot of use as well.

What’ll be done at the expanded HQ? Kent is already the nerve center for much of what goes on at Blue Origin, including construction of the crew capsule, propulsion module and BE-3 rocket engines for the New Shepard suborbital spaceship.

New Shepard hardware is shipped to West Texas for testing, and Blue Origin is expected to transition from uncrewed to crewed test flights next year. A more precise time frame for that first crewed flight hasn’t yet been announced. “We want to be very careful about this,” Space Intel Report’s Peter B. de Selding quoted Mowry as saying last week.

For now, Kent is also the locale for building the more powerful BE-4 rocket engines that’ll be used on Blue Origin’s orbital-class New Glenn rocket. But the focus of that effort is expected to shift next year to Huntsville, Ala., once the factory that’s being built there is finished.

BE-4 engines would be shipped to Blue Origin’s facilities in Florida, for assembly at the New Glenn factory in Cape Canaveral and blastoff from Launch Complex 36.

The other big piece of Blue Origin’s plan for the future relates to its Blue Moon lunar landing system, which is being proposed for NASA’s use in the Artemis program to send astronauts to the moon’s south pole by 2024.

Blue Moon is the focus of Blue Origin’s advanced concepts team, which is based in Kent. Will Blue Moon be built in Kent as well? What else will all that R&D space be used for? It’ll be interesting to see how the future of space exploration beyond Earth orbit is shaping up just south of Seattle, for the second time in a half-century.

Rocket Lab launched seven spacecraft early Friday as the builder of small rockets completed its main task, but the mission also came with a significant additional achievement.

After launching from New Zealand, the company successfully returned the Electron rocket’s booster — the lower portion and most expensive part of the rocket — through Earth’s atmosphere. By navigating the booster through reentry, Rocket Lab is one step closer to becoming one of the few in the world able to recover a rocket booster.

It’s a critical development in Rocket Lab’s plan to catch the booster with a helicopter in midair and reuse it for future missions. Additionally, if successful, Rocket Lab would join SpaceX as the only private company to return an orbital-class rocket booster.

Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck broke down the results of the test in a call with CNBC on Friday, explaining how the company got the booster through the atmosphere’s dense “wall” during reentry.

“The real challenge in this program has been ‘can we get through the wall’ and today we punched through the wall and came out the other side in great shape,” Beck said. “We knew that we had a chance of getting it through the wall and all the way down to the water but with anything reentry it’s hugely difficult to model.”

Beck’s company, much like Elon Musk’s SpaceX, wants to recover the boosters so it can launch more often while simultaneously decreasing the material cost of each mission. But Rocket Lab’s approach to recovering its boosters is notably different than SpaceX’s, which uses the boosters’ engines to slow it down during reentry and add wide legs to land on large concrete pads.

Rocket Lab, instead, is testing a technology Beck calls an “aero thermal decelerator” — essentially using the atmosphere to slow down the rocket. After separating from the upper stage of the Electron rocket, which carried the spacecraft into orbit, Rocket Lab’s onboard computer guided the booster through reentry, successfully flipping it around 180 degrees.

“We maintained control of the stage and guided it through the narrow corridor with the heat shield and the right orientation, the right angle of attack,” Beck said. “And, not only we were able to hold telemetry on it all the way to impact at sea, we had tremendous amount of instrumentation on board that said the stage was very healthy when it impacted the ocean.”

The booster remained stable through the intense reentry, slowing to a speed of less than 560 miles per hour.

“We had absolutely no decelerators on board; this was coming in as hot as it could ever come in,” Beck said.

The booster then smashed into the ocean and disintegrated, a move that Rocket Lab planned if the reentry process was successful.

“We had the team in an aircraft out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean circling with a whole lot of telemetry on board,” Beck said. “The team’s pouring over the data now to see what was in a good shape and what wasn’t but the preliminary results show the stage was remarkably healthy.”

Next up for Rocket Lab’s recovery attempts will be adding parachutes, which will deploy once the booster reenters the atmosphere. The company then plans to use a helicopter to snag the parachute in midair, to carry the booster back to a soft landing on a Rocket Lab boat.

“What we can say categorically from today’s flight is that reusability for Electron is viable and we’re pretty confident it’s going to happen,” Beck said.

Rocket Lab is the leading private company that builds small rockets — its Electron is about a fifth the size of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The company specializes in launching batches of small spacecraft, which are often about the size of a microwave oven.

Including the seven satellites from customers Alba Orbital and ALE on this 10th mission, Rocket Lab has successfully put 47 small satellites into orbit.

A launch on Electron goes for about $6.5 million to $7 million per rocket. The company has its headquarters in California, with launch facilities in New Zealand and Virginia. It produces one Electron rocket about every 20 days, with launches nearly once a month. But Rocket Lab is looking to accelerate production, aiming to produce a rocket every other week by the end of 2020.

The company is aiming to launch its 11th mission in the first weeks of next year.

“The next flight is a repeat of this flight ... it did such a great job on the first one that we’ll fly the second exactly the same and gather more data,” Beck said. “We’ll try and get a parachute and decelerator on this thing as soon as we can.”

Rocket Lab’s webcast of Friday’s flight showed some live video from the booster just before it began reentry. While Beck explained the company turned that camera off for this test to get as much data as possible, Rocket Lab will probably show more footage on the next flight.

“Now that we have a lot more confidence in the data, we’ll probably hold on to the videotapes a bit longer,” Beck said.

After successfully delivering Starship hardware and manufacturing tools to SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas rocket factory and launch facilities, the company has begun preparing a second load of parts to be shipped from Florida to Texas in the near future.

This is the latest chapter in a saga that began when SpaceX revealed that it would effectively pause its Florida Starship manufacturing operations and reassign most of its affected employees. Since SpaceX’s early-December confirmation, the company’s Cocoa, Florida Starship production hub has been more or less at a standstill, only interrupted once and awhile by efforts to either scrap hardware that is no longer needed or send it to Texas, where SpaceX has redoubled efforts to build the next series of Starship prototypes.

Teams in Florida are still working tirelessly to construct a massive Starship launch mount at Pad 39A believed to be capable of supporting full-scale Starship and Super Heavy static fires and launches, confirmation that SpaceX is likely only temporarily halting Starship production in the region. Nevertheless, the focus is now unequivocally on SpaceX’s Boca Chica facilities, where the company is rapidly building and expanding manufacturing facilities and constructing the next full-scale Starship prototype (SN01).

Although manufacturing operations have been paused in Florida, the existing Cocoa facility still has a huge amount of Starship hardware strewn about, most of which appears to be bound for scrapyards. Some of that hardware and infrastructure, however, can be salvaged and used elsewhere by SpaceX, and that is exactly what the company is now doing.

Most recently, SpaceX loaded transport ship GO Discovery with two giant steel stands and a completed Starship dome and transported that hardware from Port Canaveral, Florida to Port of Brownsville in early-December 2019. After arriving, SpaceX moved the rocket parts and infrastructure by road to its Boca Chica facilities, where they have since been stored until they’re needed.

At the moment, the almost-finished Starship Mk2 prototype remains at SpaceX’s Cocoa factory in three giant pieces – a cylindrical tank and engine section, the start of a curved nose section, and the tip of that nose section. It remains to be seen what the fate of those rocket parts is, as much of the structure could theoretically be sent to Texas to expedite Starship SN01 production and assembly. However, the utility of those parts is likely almost entirely dependent on their quality and the design and fabrication delta between them and whatever SpaceX has in mind for the next phase of prototypes.

SpaceX continues to develop Starship in largely the same way it worked on Falcon 9 booster landings, beginning with a minimum viable product (Grasshopper/Starhopper) and gradually improving the test hardware into something much more reminiscent of the real deal (F9R/Starship Mk1, Mk2). Ultimately, all the experience gained and lessons learned from building and flying those increasingly more complex prototypes is merged with true orbital-class flight hardware.

Eric Ralph
ByEric RalphPosted on January 6, 2020
After successfully delivering Starship hardware and manufacturing tools to SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas rocket factory and launch facilities, the company has begun preparing a second load of parts to be shipped from Florida to Texas in the near future.

This is the latest chapter in a saga that began when SpaceX revealed that it would effectively pause its Florida Starship manufacturing operations and reassign most of its affected employees. Since SpaceX’s early-December confirmation, the company’s Cocoa, Florida Starship production hub has been more or less at a standstill, only interrupted once and awhile by efforts to either scrap hardware that is no longer needed or send it to Texas, where SpaceX has redoubled efforts to build the next series of Starship prototypes.

Teams in Florida are still working tirelessly to construct a massive Starship launch mount at Pad 39A believed to be capable of supporting full-scale Starship and Super Heavy static fires and launches, confirmation that SpaceX is likely only temporarily halting Starship production in the region. Nevertheless, the focus is now unequivocally on SpaceX’s Boca Chica facilities, where the company is rapidly building and expanding manufacturing facilities and constructing the next full-scale Starship prototype (SN01).


SPadre
@SpacePadreIsle
SpaceX ship Go Discovery loading up for another trip to Boca Chica this morning …

John Winkopp
@John_Winkopp
@SpaceXFleet the base has been loaded onto #GoDiscovery 5 January 2020

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Although manufacturing operations have been paused in Florida, the existing Cocoa facility still has a huge amount of Starship hardware strewn about, most of which appears to be bound for scrapyards. Some of that hardware and infrastructure, however, can be salvaged and used elsewhere by SpaceX, and that is exactly what the company is now doing.


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SpaceX ships Starship hardware from Florida to Texas to shorten next prototype's path to flighthttps://www.teslarati.com/spacex-ships-starship-hardware-florida-to-texas/ …


SpaceX ships Starship hardware from Florida to Texas to speed up production
After appearing unexpectedly at SpaceX’s Port Canaveral docks last month, several large pieces of Starship flight and manufacturing hardware were successfully shipped from Florida to Texas, arriving...

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Most recently, SpaceX loaded transport ship GO Discovery with two giant steel stands and a completed Starship dome and transported that hardware from Port Canaveral, Florida to Port of Brownsville in early-December 2019. After arriving, SpaceX moved the rocket parts and infrastructure by road to its Boca Chica facilities, where they have since been stored until they’re needed.


While they may look rather small on GO Discovery, the steel assembly rings she transported to Texas are absolutely massive. (NASASpaceflight – bocachicagal)
At the moment, the almost-finished Starship Mk2 prototype remains at SpaceX’s Cocoa factory in three giant pieces – a cylindrical tank and engine section, the start of a curved nose section, and the tip of that nose section. It remains to be seen what the fate of those rocket parts is, as much of the structure could theoretically be sent to Texas to expedite Starship SN01 production and assembly. However, the utility of those parts is likely almost entirely dependent on their quality and the design and fabrication delta between them and whatever SpaceX has in mind for the next phase of prototypes.

SpaceX continues to develop Starship in largely the same way it worked on Falcon 9 booster landings, beginning with a minimum viable product (Grasshopper/Starhopper) and gradually improving the test hardware into something much more reminiscent of the real deal (F9R/Starship Mk1, Mk2). Ultimately, all the experience gained and lessons learned from building and flying those increasingly more complex prototypes is merged with true orbital-class flight hardware.



It appears that SpaceX (or at least CEO Elon Musk) believes that the company may have already learned enough from Starhopper and Starship Mk1/Mk2 to graduate directly to some form of serial production – implied by his statement that the next Texas prototype will now be known as Starship SN01. Formerly Starship Mk3, Starship SN01 will be built with an array of refined or fully-new production and assembly processes, hopefully resulting in a prototype that is significantly more refined than Starship Mk1, which is believed to have been intentionally destroyed during pressure testing in November 2019.

In line with that strategy, SpaceX is preparing to ship more upgraded Starship hardware and infrastructure from Florida to Texas.

Based on photos taken in the last few days by local photographer and observer John Winkopp, GO Discovery’s next shipment will include a number of rolls of stainless steel stock, another steel stand for Starship ring assembly, and parts of another unfinished Starship tank dome.

Altogether, it’s possible that Starship SN01 assembly will end up taking far less time than Starship Mk1 or Mk2. Musk believes that that new and improved Starship prototype could be ready for flight testing as early as February or March 2020.