Nearly Complete SpaceX Starship Orbital Prototype

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Elon Musk tweeted out photos of the nearly complete SpaceX Starship Orbital prototype. There are three Raptor engines in it. The main work to complete appears to be adding the nosecone.

Elon Musk will be presenting on the SpaceX orbital starship design on Saturday at noon PST (California time). This is in a mere two days.

SOURCES- twitter Elon Musk, SpaceX
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

29 thoughts on “Nearly Complete SpaceX Starship Orbital Prototype”

  1. Yep. He’s way behind the curve now.

    Musk is almost obsessed – and has definitely thrown darn near everything in on SpaceX.

    Bezos is waiting for Musk to fail spectacularly… but if he doesn’t, he’s lost years.

  3. A dramatisation, as the name says, needs some drama. But Musk
    has shown a pic of a crater with enough water ice to supply a small
    base for centuries.

  5. Water could be in short supply, at least in the initial missions when they’re still exploring what is around. See the National Geographic Mars dramatisation to get a feel for how hard it might be to find first water. Once they’ve found it and a minimal base is up and running, I agree, it should not be a problem moving forward from there.

  7. Metal can to protect the food in case ship tumbles and there
    is small explosion. Of course, nobody forbids putting dehydrated food
    in cans.

  8. Maybe that’s true, but it would still make no sense to send canned food to Mars, when water isn’t going to be in short supply there.

  10. It’s not tricky to design cans that won’t burst.

    Normal cans will burst, because they can’t accomodate 10% volume expansion as the water turns to ice. But just make the can sides with appropriate corrugations and/or dished end caps and the problem isn’t a problem any more.

    This is a solved problem.

  18. You can do an incredible amount of design, but you’re never going to do anything if you don’t actually construct what you design.

  20. 100 tons of canned food. Doesn’t require R&D spending and is
    perfectly usable even if first spacecraft tumbles. Also, Curiosity 2,
    without building the spacecrane.:)

  21. Everybody thinks MK1 and MK2 are just for competition, and the benefits of that. My guess is that if they both survive testing, one will be used for refueling the other.

  22. AFAIK going to mars requires refueling in orbit or am I wrong? If this is the case next year would really stretch it 🙂

  23. They will not expend an starship, they will probably fly in an falcon 9 first stage profile for their most extreme tests without superheavy.
    In short burn west and up, then do an boostback

  27. Changes in technology and the world in general tend to happen slowly over time, and then very quickly. I believe we’re now in a very quick phase, and I think Elon’s Starship announcement this Saturday is going to be very ambitious.

  28. Quick but not that quick.

    What I believe achievable are suborbital tests this year, orbital tests early next year, first with Starship (expendable mode) and later with the Super Heavy booster (full stack).

    They could avoid wasting a Starship and go straight to the full stack tests with Superheavy and Starship together.

    In any case, this and the next year will see several tests until they can do a full launch, return of booster, orbit and return of Starship.

    After that, they will be in business.

  29. SpaceX builds quick. I’m betting they’re ready to launch in time for the Mars Close Approach next year. First Starship to Mars will be unmanned, but it could hold tens of thousands of pounds of cargo. I wonder what it should be, maybe a bunch of drones and robots that could use the Starship as a hub while they explore and analyze Martian geology.

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