No, not yet. That’s the design goal. No starship has been able to re-enter the Earths atmosphere and land. The Super Heavy booster is reusable, and starship
maybe some day, but they still have a ways to go to demo that.
But I’ll agree, the age of the expendable rocket may be quickly coming to an end.
SpaceX revenue to surpass NASA’s budget in 2026 LINK
When does spaceX do its IPO?
Will it ever IPO, one blow up with people in board will tank the stock.
Now that was a big bang.
That looks like a big set back for starship testing and getting back to the moon.
The need for 10-20 launches for refueling in space is a tall order for the lunar mission. Be interesting to see how fast they can get back to testing.
The fourth, fifth and sixth test flights were partially successful, but two of the three most recent flights ended with Starship explosions before the spacecraft could reach its planned sub-orbital trajectory. The third, most recent flight on May 27 reached its planned trajectory but spun out and broke up during atmospheric entry.
NASA is counting on the giant rocket to launch a Starship variant carrying astronauts to a landing near the moon’s south pole in the next two or three years.
To get the Human Landing System – HLS – Starship variant to the moon, SpaceX will need to launch 10 to 20 Super Heavy-Starships to refuel the lander in low-Earth orbit before it can head for the moon to await the arrival of the astronauts aboard a Lockheed Martin-built Orion crew capsule.
Given the complexity of the architecture, the need to launch multiple Super Heavy-Starships, perfect the autonomous transfer of super cold propellants and new technology to keep the cryogenic liquid methane and oxygen from warming up and boiling away in space, failures like Wednesday’s will make the schedule all the tougher to meet.
Dang ! Am in SPI starting Saturday. Just missed it.
Still operating a LNG plant so close seems foolish
Hydrogen?
Really interesting, even for an old BBA like me.
That was a good article, but factually inaccurate (imho) on the Falcon rocket
turnaround time.
Another problem with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rocket is it’s not rapidly reusable. After every flight, this rocket needs extensive refurbishment before SpaceX can use it again
That is false now (article from 2023).
Here is latest on Falcon only 9 day turnaround time.
The last of those lifted off on March 12, just nine days before the launch of NROL-57 on Thursday night. With this launch, SpaceX handily beat the former record for turnaround of a Falcon 9 first stage booster, which was set by B1080 at 13.5 days.
The more players the better.
I didn’t know Honda was in this version of the space race, though maybe it gets more press at home than here.
There’s Jalopnik again, writing anti Elon stuff. That’s great journalism.
Helium3 was discovered by NASA in the 60’s and now the chinese dictatorship has a leg up on us. Their moon intent is clear. We have to catch up fast. Interesting milestone:
The article here is about Germany’s research on this. Is NASA currently doing or sponsoring any research on this? Or where is the US research efforts on this happening? I’m asking you, since you seem to have some knowledge of this subject.
The ccp Chinese space program has one goal. Harness helium 3 from the moon.
What is NASA doing to counter?
As you can read from these articles this is not new. What is new is the ccp Chinese aggressive goals. They have landed multiple lunar landers in the past 10 years.
We are told that Mars is the goal. Harnessing Helium 3 might indeed be our top priority. Hence Space X and others private space engineering companies rapid development.
Helium 3 is the new gold/oil rush. To understand its capabilities explain why the ccp Chinese want Helium 3. They are “all in” India is getting there too.
We are on the clock.
We discovered Helium 3 in the 60’s. Our last maned Moon flight was 12/72…At the same the ccp Chinese was still a basic rural economy with famines killing millions yearly.
Unfortunately, that didn’t answer any of my questions.
There you go. Space X and Blue Origin:
©Copyright 2017 Coogfans.com