SpaceX Orbital Starship Structure Nearing Completion

The structure of the SpaceX orbital starship appears to be nearing completion. SpaceX will then need to add in about seven Raptor engines.

14 thoughts on “SpaceX Orbital Starship Structure Nearing Completion”

  1. Elon already said it would get there “horizontally”. I did a quick check on Google Maps to simulate driving to the river bridge.
    They would have to take down a bunch of power/phone lines, but that’s normal with house movers and other projects like that. They could make the lines go underground permanently if needed, with a bit of work.
    There is already something of a down-pass to the water by both sides of the bridge across the Indian River. It would need a bit of improvement to the base and a lateral barge dock, but the basic shape and size needed to add one is pretty workable. The footing of the bridge seems to be wide on both sides to accommodate people fishing off the area, though it looks suspiciously like it was build for the purpose of unloading large items from highway to water if needed someday. It might even be possible to bring in a few cranes or a crane barge and do it with only the power lines being temporarily disconnected.

  2. naa… the Chinese will beat nasa to mars because spacex likes to show people all the details on how to assemble a mars spaceship then everydatastronat goes on like and tells them how they did it….

  3. It will be interesting to see. It would have much easier in this regard if they did this in an actual shipyard and thus on the shore.

  4. I wonder what is made in the loooong skinny tent to the left of the first photo??
    Wire harnesses?

  5. How are they going to get that thing out of their little shipyard (or whatever they call it) there in Cocoa, Florida. It seems so inaccessible. Are they going to use a giant helicopter or something. Or blast it off from the yard!
    EDIT: Here is the location
    https://www.google.com/maps/place/Coastal+Steel.+Inc./@28.4118841,-80.7751986,3767m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x13432e1bbad70b2b!8m2!3d28.4118841!4d-80.7751986
    If they can get to the river they can barge it the rest of the way to Kennedy Space Center. I imagine they have a plan, but it will be a project.

  6. Nope. It’s Agile, applied to hardware as well as software. With Agile, you develop/test/deploy, develop/test/deploy, develop/test/deploy, in relatively small increments. With old-timey aerospace, you develop, develop, develop, then test, test, test, then finally deploy, in one giant spasm. If that last test comes back bad (and it always does), then you have to go all the way back to develop the workaround. If a test comes back bad with Agile, you may just decide to skip the feature you were adding for the time being and go on to the next one. Critical paths are short, and customers get the benefits sooner.

  7. The reason SpaceX is faster at development is from its lateral thinking. Unlike NASA, test, test, and test for tests. Parallel development for fast advancement and deployment. I wouldn’t be surprised the Chinese will beat everyone to Mars as they secretly develope and have already stolen the technologies and making it cheaper, faster and better.

  8. I’d rather the Super-Heavy had been tested first. More nozzles=finer adjustments.

    Use the work-arounds learned from Super-Heavy to dial in Starship.

  9. CNET seems to be confused. It’s the hopper that is ready for a test hop on 16th July.

    Not Starship.

  10. I’ve got to say that one is looking a LOT spiffier than the stuff we’ve seen up until now.

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