SpaceX is building two competing versions of the new Starship rocket in Texas and Florida. The two SpaceX construction teams will cooperate but also compete on the construction of reusable Starships.
Elon Musk indicated that one focus is ramping the build rate of the new Raptor rocket engines as they build the 6th through the tenth engines.
Elon plans to complete the first 100 Raptor engines early in 2020.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 with 60 Starlink satellites has an 80% chance of launching late today.
Weather is 80% favorable for tomorrow’s Falcon 9 launch of Starlink. Launch window opens at 10:30 p.m. EDT → https://t.co/gtC39uBC7z pic.twitter.com/RHveMmfOi9
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 15, 2019
Static fire test of Falcon 9 complete—targeting May 15 for launch of 60 Starlink satellites from Pad 40 in Florida
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 14, 2019
SpaceX is doing simultaneous competing builds of Starship in Boca Chica Texas & Cape Canaveral Florida
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 14, 2019
Both sites will make many Starships. This is a competition to see which location is most effective. Answer might be both.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 14, 2019
SN4 is done. Hawthorne is working on SN5 now, but focus is ramping build rate of SN6 through SN10.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 15, 2019
That’s about right
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 15, 2019
SOURCES- Twitter Elon Musk, SpaceX
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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Especially considering that the prototype SLS hasn’t even made it to the launch pad yet…
Yes, and he did make a point of saying “could be both” – so it’s not automatically a hacksawing contest – it’s just about not letting anybody get too cocksure and complacent.
A 90% reusable F9H beats SLS every day of the week.
Well they sure crank out the Merlins so i’m sure they will master making the Raptors.
28 Merlins per F9H!
Don’t forget reusability, that’s another factor they would need to add to beat SpaceX and Blue Origin (when they get their act together).
And it’s also a mind game for the competing managers and teams he surely put in place at both sites.
Cutting edge companies tend to do that, to prevent anyone to feel too secure of their role and importance.
The competing builds bit is very cool. Sounds like Musk is willing to burn major money to speed things along.
Well. The good news is if Bezos and SpaceX pull it off, and it seems more likely by the day, the next generation of competitors will have to build even more impressive kit. We have seen 100 mton payload rockets before, internationally, but with this commercial generation we can actually afford to use the rockets AND afford to build their payloads. What will the next gen look like?
And this is just the beginning!
SpaceX is seriously betting on production in series of everything, rocket engines, Hall thrusters, satellites, etc.
And they need to, given they want to replace everything they have with SH/SS, going beyond with the Starlink idea.
For me it looks they want to have Superheavy and Starship tested ASAP and use them for putting parts of Starlink faster than the FCC and most expect, probably as early as 2021.
It’s nowadays the most feverishly active factory of space technologies in the World.
Yep. If they want to have a fleet of these, they will need proportionally more Raptors.
So making Raptors quickly in series really is a skill they want to use and develop.
Remember that they want to replace everything they have with BFR, and launch
thousands of Starlink satellites.
Isn’t it the movie “Contact”?
Why build one, when you can build two, twice the cost.
The math works out to two superheavy boosters (31 x 2) and three Starships (7 x 3) with three engines left over, so not excessive
Redundancy is great, but 100 engines seems excessive.