SpaceX Starship missions 1

[thebard3]

Starting a dedicated thread here. After a pretty smooth flight test today, assuming no big anomalies occurred with the ground systems, it looks like SpaceX is back on track with testing and development. We should see more flights in the near future.
Both vehicles were lost before completing their full mission but a huge step forward today to see both executing the primary flight goals.

Brad Waybright

The more you know, the more you know you don't know.

 

[WKTaylor]

CPC... civil aircraft get shot at all the time.

During a discussion of MIL Acft battle damage/repairs with a Boeing-commercial guy from Wichita... he casually confided in me that 737 fuselages transported by railroad enmasse [+/-10-Acft per rail shipment] to SEA WA regularly arrive with one or more bullet holes.

AND there are regular reports of aircraft and helos taking 'hits' on departure and arrival or low-level flight... usually in thin skins, but sometimes critical systems. Once in a great while someone is injured or scared senseless.

HOWEVER, pressurized PAX aircraft with service lives measured in +100,000-hrs, durability and damage tolerance, have 'built-in' damage-tolerance, making them relatively immune to critical structural damage from one or two 'random hits'. AND Jet-A fuel-vapors in a confined tank are 'relatively hard to light-off' [unlike JP-4]... by conventional bullets. Thankfully, tracer/incendiary bullets are rarely ever available/used for 'pot-shots'. I do admit that AAA, SAM's and AAM's are pretty effective at destroying civil Acft.

This is in contrast to relatively 'thin-skin'/fragile extreme high-value missiles/launch-vehicles... loaded with hundreds-of-tons of LOX and fuels [RP1 or methane] or hypergolic fuels/oxidizers.... and easily 'go boom'. I do admit, though, that SpaceX boosters made from welded SStl seem to be pretty tough, surviving re-entry and landing... and even the first-generation 'self-destruct charges'... for a short while. HOWEVER, the heavy oxidizer/fuel load is ultimately an Achilles-heal.

 

[WKTaylor]

Well... RE SpaceX 'Star Base, south tip of Texas'... there goes the neighborhood...

SpaceX Seeks Approval to Turn Texas Starbase Site Into New City​

MSN

​

Bloomberg) -- Elon Musk is attempting to turn the Starbase site in Texas where SpaceX builds its Starship rockets into a new city and officially move his space company there.

SpaceX’s headquarters are currently in Hawthorne, California, but the company has over the past few years been building out a massive facility in Texas in an area on the southern tip of the US state near the Mexican border. The site in Boca Chica is the primary location where SpaceX builds and launches its huge Starship rocket system, and it recently added a large warehouse known as the Starfactory, which replaced many of the site’s production tents.
Starbase, as SpaceX refers to it, now serves as the main production and testing site for the Starship moon and Mars rocket, and SpaceX’s operations in the area have created more than 3,000 jobs, according to a 2024 economic impact report.

Despite Musk’s post, there are several steps that need to occur before Starbase can actually be created as a new city in Texas, including permission from local authorities.
... ...
... ...