Elon Musk Says SpaceX Will Be Approved for Friday Starship Launch

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Elon Musk was just informed that approval to launch should happen in time for a Friday launch.

15 thoughts on “Elon Musk Says SpaceX Will Be Approved for Friday Starship Launch”

  2. Wish them all the best, but if they won’t succeed this time, (by that I mean reaching orbit), which will probably mean another 6 or so months of learning and changes in design before another try, I think we will have AGI, even ASI before working Starship.

    We all thought it will be moving way faster, remember “Mars 2020”?, other predictions from 2019/2020. We’re barely starting. This rocket needs to work flawlessly hundreds of times, before we even can think about putting people inside it.

    So if we’re talking about people on Mars, 2030 seems possible, but in my opinion we will have AGI and ASI well before that and if ASI will be what I think it will be (basically Singularity) we should have by then(designed by ASI) tech millions of times more advanced than Starship.

    If you believe AGI is almost here (2024-26), and fast takeoff, Starship will be with us only for a couple of years, maybe less. If they will figure out AGI in late 2024, and ASI will be here in month after it or in 2025, in such case Starship won’t even reach Mars, it will be put into museum. All these plans like – in late 2020’s Starship will move cargo or transport people from city to city, or be used to build city on Mars will sound funny to us 🙂

    • Interesting comment, because part of the reason for Musk to build Starship is to ‘save humanity from an extinction event’. If ASI is developed well before a functional colony is set up on Mars, so well before 2035, then yes humanity could destroy itself before becoming a multi-planetary species.

      • How would colonizing Mars save humanity from an ASI?

        If for some reason an ASI decided to wipe out humanity, reaching Mars would be easy for it.

        Furthermore, even if we reached Mars very soon, it would still take MANY DECADES for a self sustaining Mars colony. Which would probably have to run with an AGI or ASI supervising everything…

      • a functional colony on Mars is VERY DIFFERENT from a self sustaining colony on Mars, which won´t exist well until the 2100s. Unless you have an ASI to help run the colony.

        And anyway, as I said in the other comment, how the hell would a Mars colony set up by humans in the nearest planet, save humans from an Artificial SUPER Intelligence? Maybe the OTHER SIDE OF THE GALAXY might save us… for a while.

    • “We all thought it will be moving way faster, remember “Mars 2020”?, other predictions from 2019/2020. ”

      That was, of course, before Musk bought Twitter, and became public enemy #1 so far as the Democratic party was concerned. With the change of administration he started to be subject to bureaucratic delays that really slowed down his development schedule. Not that Elon time hasn’t been a thing for a long while; He IS fond of best case schedules. But it’s entirely possible that Starship would have made orbit by now if not for the lawfare waged against him.

      “we should have by then(designed by ASI) tech millions of times more advanced than Starship.”

      Current AI seems to be well suited to scraping public records like the internet, and applying what is found there. I’m not seeing much sign yet that it’s capable of much in the way of original work, outside of narrow fields with specialized AIs, like protein folding. Rather, it seems to be automating the drudgery.

      That’s valuable, of course, and frees up engineering resources for doing more original work. But the very fact that it IS dependent on scanning and applying existing practice means that it’s mostly going to be pulling up the bottom, not lifting the top.

      It doesn’t seem to me to be a singularity inducing style of AI at this point.

      • That’s conspiracy theory. Starship delays are much more related to the destruction of the pad and engineering aspects than with the democratic party or anything. It was not the democratic party that excavated a huge crater under it and really… everybody knew something like that would happen. Several years ago people were already asking how it would work without water deluge systems or flame diverters.

        Plus, SpaceX investigations showed the engines failed without being hit by concrete, it were internal parts that led to the failure. So again, that was one extra thing SpaceX had to carefuly test. And it weren´t the democrats doing anything.

        • Like heck it’s a conspiracy theory. The regulators literally put Starship testing on hold for over a year on the basis that a rocket had exploded, during a test where the rocket was halfway expected to explode. Did you maybe forget that?

          I’ll grant that it was somewhat foolish of SpaceX to launch without a deluge system in place, or at least lining the concrete with steel plates. But THIS ENDANGERED NOBODY, so how was it a regulatory issue? Let alone an issue that would force the repaired and upgraded launch pad to sit idle for months.

          The justification for the regulation is public safety. SpaceX could destroy the launch pad on every launch without endangering anybody but stockholders, so that simply wasn’t a proper basis for a regulatory delay.

    • It’s very unlikely to to take six months before another launch attempt if this one fails. Unless there is again severe damage to the launch facility.

      I think you don’t understand how SpaceX develops things. The rocket sitting on the launch pad right now getting ready to launch is a prototype that is already obsolete. SpaceX has something like 5 more prototypes of the Starship and at least 3 of the Super Heavy booster in various stages of construction ranging from complete to mostly complete, and more in the pipeline.

      Each new prototype has significant changes compared to the previous. SpaceX doesn’t work like the traditional US aerospace contractors, which tend to take many years to build a rocket that is expected to work and be mission capable the first time it launches. SpaceX, instead, starts trying to fly things as soon as they can build the simplest, bare bones prototype. They test frequently, often to failure, and use the data gained to inform the continuing development process. If you look at the previous Starship prototypes (there have been 24 prior to the one sitting on the pad right now), their method becomes clear. The first prototype was a short, fat cylinder with rigid landing legs and a single engine.

      In addition to developing the Starship and Super Heavy vehicles SpaceX has also at the same time been developing the production methods and facilities to build the vehicles in large volume. They don’t plan on building just a few. They plan on building hundreds.

      • “It’s very unlikely to to take six months before another launch” it’s unlikely, that’s why I said “probably”, I hope it will be much faster. I know well how SpaceX is working, I am a fan and following them closely from the start.

        6 months worst case scenario is based simply on previous event, last launch if I remember correctly took place in april. It’s mostly, like Brett is saying bureaucracy.
        Although damage of the base was severe, without all these permits they could probably shave of 2-3 months.

        So if rocket will blow up this time and make some damage to launchpad, like last time, it may take months.

        I am optimist, so I hope that even if rocket will blow up, this time launch pad won’t be damaged in any significant way and we will see next attempt in a few weeks.

        • If successful, the Starship and booster will be landing in the ocean, doing simulated “catches” by high precision GPS.

          The booster is supposed to do a flyback using spare fuel, but ditch in the ocean off Boca Chica while doing a simulated “catch” via high precision GPS, only without a tower to destroy if it’s off target. If that’s successful on the next occasion they might try catching it.

          The Starship will be doing the same only near, I believe, Hawaii. In the case of the Starship they need to improve their reentry models so that they can make sure it reliably targets the intended landing point, since it will inevitably approach the tower at Boca Chica over land; They can’t have it come down five miles off course and land on an occupied area.

          I think this is the part that’s going to be legitimately hardest to get regulatory approval for: Starship coming down over inhabited land to approach the catch tower. Hardly needs any hostility at all for the regulators to say “NO!” to that.

          But Starship can be an economic improvement over Falcon even with the upper stage being treated as disposable, so long as the booster is at least reused. So they can be launching cargo profitably even while building up a long enough record of precision landings to get regulatory approval.

          Or if that’s not happening, maybe it will be time to build those offshore platforms, so that Starship can land far enough offshore to put the regulators’ minds at ease, be partially refueled, and do a powered hop back to Boca Chica.

        • It was not as Bret said, mostly bureaucracy. It was a LOT of work on details.

          Those details would have to be worked out sooner or later. Even if they launched before, they would have to fix those details later ANYWAY.

          And bureaucracy sometimes is needed, when you are dealing with the energy of a nuclear bomb. The N1 explosions were the largest non nuclear explosions ever. It’s not something trivial.

          • [ Starship and Booster stage contain ~5-10kt energy equivalent

            N1 ‘0.3–1 kt (1.3–4.2 TJ); some sources suggest as much as 29 TJ’ while debris flew up to 10km/6mi and ~85% of propellant and LOX were not involved with that explosion/detonation,
            ‘The launch escape system had activated at the moment of engine shutdown (T+15 seconds) and pulled the L1S-2 capsule to safety 2.0 kilometers (1.2 miles) away. Impact with the pad occurred at T+23 seconds.’
            ‘Launch crews were permitted outside half an hour after the accident and encountered droplets of unburned fuel still raining down from the sky.’

            about comparable energy release with

            catastrophe of Beirut harbor explosion 2020, estimations ~0.2-0.5-1.1kt TNT equivalent, seismic event magnitude ~3.3 ML (~100000 seismic events a year of that intensity), 218d/gt7000injured/~300000homeless/~$12billion damage cost, surface event affected area ~6mi/10km diameter, crater ~120m_diameter/43m_depth

            ideally, ~bureaucracy has to justify it’s decisions and precautions and is responsible for settings of useful rules ]

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