SpaceX Starship SN10 Prototype Has Raptor Engines Installed

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The SpaceX Starship SN10 has all three of its Raptor engines installed. The Starship SN11 is in the high bay and has had its nosecone installed.

SOURCES- Bocachicagal, Brendan2908, NASA Space Flight
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

69 thoughts on “SpaceX Starship SN10 Prototype Has Raptor Engines Installed”

  2. That will prob be solved with Moon to Moon power beaming, a simple task given the short distances. It is the gravity of the Moon that hurts any process extremely. We don't see that, because we are mostly planet chauvinists, and *expect* gravity, but ISS is already showing what an advantage orbital 0 g can be. O'Neill understood. And of course the constant sunlight is even better than the power beaming. Obviously, all solar system possible planet/moon surfaces are too tiny in total to matter anyway, in the O'Neill/Bezos future with trillions in Space living the good life.

  4. SpaceX got the FH launch of the first two Gateway pieces, but the lander is not due to decide until next month, delayed. Three bids probably down to two, but that is crewed, and the cargo stuff will go on anyway, Bezos or Musk. Crew will ride the same ship as cargo for both plans. Not FH, except perhaps for big capsule at start, if no SLS avail. edit: these are early Artemis, before Gateway is going, I believe. Land and leave.

  5. They might just have been growing grain on the Moon because of lingering contamination from that nuclear war. But, yes, hard to believe that would be economical.

  7. Yeah. The only parts I outright thought were wrong was
    – It was cheaper to grow food in tunnels on the moon, where they had to mine for increasingly rare water, than to make identical tunnels on Earth, with no transport issues, and limitless water for free.
    – A community with mostly men will automatically develop very pro-feminist attitudes and laws. I guess he's never been in a mining camp, military, or even a boys school.

  8. It's that Shakespeare syndrome you mentioned. It was a path breaking book at the time, the path is now heavily trampled. All sorts of authors borrowed heavily from it.

  9. Sort of like the rocket equation, the first stage just has to be as cheap as possible to do x. The second stage, and on, also have to be light, or else the first stage would also have to be made bigger for overall task. SRBs sort of split this, allowing lighter first stage (core) to make a difference to the SRB task. But the SRBs don't gain by being light, just cheap. (Of course, light helps cheap).

  10. Yes, I was wondering about big H rocket engines that would be reusable, as these current ones were on Shuttle. If, even reusable, the big H engine is not needed, then there is NO reason for further SLS work.

  11. The reusability of a craft FAR outweighs a marginal improvement in ISP. 100% reusable is far superior to the 20% improvement in ISP that comes from Hydrogen fuel.

  13. That is certainly possible, but many of these notices are put up based upon Musk time, the very earliest it could possibly be, then are removed as the event is *delayed*. They have a lead time for notification, so it feeds into this sort of loop.

  14. Apparently so. But it does appear that there's some kind of tug of war going on in terms of regulatory burden: One hand is cooperating with SpaceX's efforts, the other obstructing.

  15. Probably when they announce Orion launching on Falcon Heavy. Which is known to be possible.

    Then SLS will be dead.

  18. He was a pornography writer on the side, under a pen name, for much of his early career, it tended to leak into his later SF.

    His early stuff and the juveniles were really the best. I found his last few novels really pretty bad, the last one I finished was The Number of the Beast.

  20. I interpret annon downvotes to people totally in denial at what I have said, an indication that what I said was important and needed. Otherwise, say why!

  21. from Yahoo- "
    Europa Clipper will now launch to the moon in October 2024, arriving in April 2030.

    The spacecraft was to have launched on Nasa's Space Launch System (SLS)
    rocket. But the space agency is reported to no longer be considering
    that launch vehicle.
    It will instead lift off on a commercial rocket.

  22. As of yesterday, they HAD a TFR. 1/2172 for Thursday through the end of March is still in place, but three other TFRs for unlimited altitude launch operations were displayed yesterday, but are gone today. 1/2178-2180 are still accessible through direct link, but no longer in the list.

    Looks like they yanked them after not deciding to issue a safety waiver, would be my guess.

    https://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_1_2180.html

  24. Earlier, you all convinced me that the H ISP advantage was also less than the raw thrust advantage of CH4 for lift off, too. Boosters can be made a little bigger easier than made for H. BUT, Musk also uses CH4 for second stage, which is also the first stage for suborbital. Ideally, Musk will set up factory for lunar C and H2O recovery.

  27. That's probably it. I read it close to when it first came out, and it seemed original. Much better than some of Heinlein's later works, when he was too famous for editors to have the leverage to rein in his flaws.

  29. It is considered one of the top 5 libertarian works, not just sci fi but overall. Naturally, it is planet chauvinist, but what isn't?

  31. They are going to narrow the three plans down pretty soon, but both Bezos and Musk have said they will continue no matter what.

  32. Sorry for the lack of context, I was thinking that NASA might want Gateway as a backup plan, not quite ready to accept SpaceX's capability for transit direct to moon with return lift off.

  33. What "giving up"? Like I said, we're a big species, we can do more than one thing. And what Musk is doing aids all of it.

  34. I thought "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" was way overrated.

    But it may suffer from Shakespeare syndrome. Ie. By the time you've actually read the original, you've already encountered dozens of later works that copy all the good bits, so it seems very pedestrian and unoriginal.

  35. My country is still happy to refer to ourselves as The Colonies.
    You are being culturally insensitive to disparage our prefered nomenclature.
    Write out 100 times "I will not try to impose my cultural imperialism on other people's language."

  36. I resisted the temptation to just downvote this.

    But actually I agree.
    What does a downvote mean? You disagree with the whole comment? You disagree with one part? You still nurse a grudge from a comment 3 weeks ago? It's fairly meaningless.

  38. It is too important to give up on Musk. You are in an ideal position to contribute as belt and Mars have the required but otherwise troublesome distance from ground zero. If Musk wants rotating trains on Mars he is over the limit, sorry! And, please don't say "colony". Only some see that as a positive thing. OTOH, they are banning the word "breastfeed" for "breast/chest feed", or, you understand?

  39. SN 10 has passed its pressure test, and is just waiting on the bureaucrats to give permission. Might launch on the 12th.

  41. I'm an asteroid belt proponent. Alas, I did NOT win that two billion powerball, so my opinion doesn't matter. The richest man in the world thinks Mars is better, and it's his money.

    Since he's spending it on tech that's useful for almost any destination, why should I complain? We're a big species, we can colonize more than one destination.

    Sure they probably could; Might take some rehab. Like, a generation of it.

  43. Now, that is one great book. Anybody who has not read it should soon. But O'Neill plans are not driven by launch cost. They are driven by much bigger reasons, amount of resources on Earth, such things. You start Space activities with as large an effort as launch allows, but the same sequence of projects. If you are not using extra terrestrial resources, you are spinning your wheels. If you are on a planet, get off!

  44. Mars turns out to be a poor backup, compared to say belt. Could 1/3 g Mars kids return to Earth to repopulate it?

  45. Interesting to read how Heinlein evolved from projecting superabundance of lift in the late 40's/early 50's to a more accurate model by 1966 and "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress". Seems now like he undershot in 1966.

  49. So, the main focus is H fuel, as that makes all else possible, given reusable tugs, before mass driver. H fuel is 8/9 O by weight, and plenty of O avail in rego, if you have heat, such as solar in Space, to cook it out. Then, Musk merely has to bring H until the H is also coming from the rego. No reason to cook the rego in a lunar factory. Really. It is all useful (mass) in orbit. So much easier to deal with! Also, the/any valuable stuff that can only be made in 0 g can only be made in 0 g.

  50. The orbit is the main thing, not the particular hardware, as they have not yet let go of setting up a gravity prison shelter. Halo great for bringing material from Moon to further L5 or beyond cis lunar, and itself a mfg base for initial processing of rego. Things get a lot easier when in orbit.

  51. If you assume the goal is to be on Moon or Mars, Gateway is useful for going to Mars with Moon resources, which is NOT Musk plan. Only if you understand that we DO NOT have a goal of being on Moon or Mars, but rather in Space, does Gateway seem the great idea it is. See O'Neill for details.

  52. Musk builds a custom SS that lands on the Moon, then winches itself to horizontal. Then, cutting tools chop the back off, leaving the first ring of a mass driver sitting there, that was built into the rocket. Cells on the rocket skin collect energy until more can be added. The rest of the rocket is winched along until the second ring is in place, and it is cut off. On and on until one launch mass driver is in place.

  53. That is certainly a part of the equation. I think a main question is whether LCROSS hit a *dry* spot as many have said it appears. IF the % of *water* avail is even greater than the ~5% seen where they hit, you can start to say the *other* % is also useful at first, say radiation shielding, not dross, and bring a load up to ISS to study. Musk SS in particular will have own CH4 fuel for return, not rare lunar resources. Then, the question is "is the surface of a planet the right place. . ." for a factory. Only if unavoidable! Building factory at ISS and tug to LG seems a LOT easier than on Moon, the wrong place. It is inherently easier than on Earth, and we are here already. Of course, once we get started, it all gets easy, if we don't get stuck in a gravity prison. Do you notice that the O'Neill plan is never mentioned, even in coverage of Bezos leaving Amazon to do much more Blue Origin? A lunar base guy had to say that they *could* send resources to orbit for mfg, but it was an aside, he had just thought of it!

  54. But if you make the factory out of lunar material, it might as well be on the moon. Then build a mass driver for products.

    At least it makes sense to do the initial materials processing at the mine, and not launch the dross. Especially so long as you're using up rare volatiles to launch. Until that mass driver is up and running, you want to minimize mass taken up from the Moon.

  55. TFR for rocket launch issued Thursday through Sunday. So looks like they plan a flight later this week.

    I swear, their test cadence is reaching the point where you could just camp out there any random week, and expect to see a launch.

  56. They're in a divide and conquer mindset, they want to break everything into the smallest feasible steps, then test each step before moving onto the next. But at this point they're just inserting unnecessary steps that actually make the project harder: It costs extra delta-v to pause in orbit around the Moon before landing, or after taking off.

    It made some sense to do that in the Apollo program, because they were relatively resource limited, everything for the mission had to go up on one rocket. But if you can relax that limitation with in orbit refueling, as SpaceX intends, the delta-V to go direct to the Moon's surface and back again isn't so high you need to drop pieces along the way.

    Though I do think SpaceX should develop a drop tank accessory to the Starship, to extend its capabilities. But they don't NEED anything like that to go to the Moon.

  57. I've read some of the articles in which NASA discusses the merits of Gateway. Very difficult to follow their reasoning. I still don't know what exactly Gateway does. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say, I understand what they say Gateway does, but I don't see the merits of those functional capabilities.

  58. There is now an interesting, as in requires $$$, reversal of perspective. We have always seen launch into Space as the hard part, being on Earth. But now that we have decided to go to the Moon, *landing* is the hard part, being in orbit. What are we trying to do *in* Space? If we can indeed do it *in* Space, do it there! Only if it is needed should we land on a planet, such as the Moon. Trying to stuff on a planet is such a bother. Impossible, if 0 g needed.

  59. I doubt he reads those. Posts get old fast here. He posts many articles every week. After a few days I doubt he goes back and looks at them. Also, those articles generate lots of comments in return. How would he see mine unless he took to time to scroll thru all of them.

  60. Well then how about commenting in one of the "many posts" you say Brian wrote on the topic. It seems that would be a more appropriate place than a spacex post, or do those generate error messages too?

  61. Well, there is a similarity to the various Moon landing plans of the 60s. Everybody assumed that a big rocket landing on the Moon and then a stage of it returning would be the way to do it. But it is so hard to launch from Earth, that leaving the return capsule in lunar orbit saved dramatically on the size of the initial launch. I think LG even has a tug to get lander from Halo to low lunar orbit, so the lander can haul more. But these are market type considerations, we want a product, lunar access.

    Now, the bigger question is whether the LG is the goal itself, or is the Moon's surface? ISS is finally getting experimental *space* workable, and there is much enthusiasm for 0 g stuff, only present in orbit. Lunar resources brought to LG can be experimented upon, made into fuel, tanks, habitat shields. Lunar access is needed, but only to get the resources to LG or beyond. And science/prospecting, very similar projects. No factories on the Moon!!! Live and work in Space.

  62. Aside from the fact that it would probably be a violation of the contract to use the SS instead… It would be amusing if he did use the SS, and dropped the gateway off on the way to landing on the Moon.

    The Lunar Gateway is a symptom of what's wrong with Nasa: They probably establish a base camp in the parking lot of Dunkn Donuts when somebody goes on a donut run.

    It really is just a waste of delta V.

  63. The question is when is that last tic? Senator Shelby has recently announced he is retiring. He's been a big supporter of SLS because of the jobs its brought to Alabama. I wonder if the next elected Senator from that district will try to keep the program alive. I surmise NASA would have ended SLS long before now if it wasn't for Congress foisting it on them. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.

    Chris68

  64. Perhaps if you bothered to try that link yourself you would have learned that it generates an error msg, or it at least it did for me when I tried to use it earlier today. Perhaps in the future before you decide to scold someone by using the word perhaps, you might perhaps realize you don't know as much as you think you do.

  69. Hi Brian, I apologize for the off topic comment, but I'm wondering why you haven't posted a story about President Biden's recent comments regarding Iran. Over the weekend he clearly stated he would not remove sanctions until the Iranians halted their uranium enrichment efforts. This clearly destroys their hopes that the sanctions will be lifted. They've been hoping for months that Biden would get elected and would unilaterally lift the sanctions. That idea is dead. You've written many posts about this topic, and clearly this interview is a major addition to the narrative. Why no comment??

    Chris68

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