Spacex Boca News Today

On April 20, SpaceX wantonly launched its Starship megarocket without the benefit of a flame diverter or water deluge system, resulting in significant damage to the launch pad and hurtling dust and debris into the surrounding areas. Looking to prevent a recurrence, the company is building a powerful deluge system, which underwent its first test yesterday.

Starship SN11 prepares to fly as SpaceX pushes for Orbital flight this summer March 15, 2021 Starship SN11 will re-attempt a Static Fire test Thursday – following a scrub on Monday – ahead of a potential flight as early as the weekend or the start of next week. Forever subject to change due to numerous considerations – ranging from weather, hardware parameters, and paperwork approval – SN11 will mark the final test of this iteration of Starship before the program moves into the next pha...

Starship SN11 arrives at Pad B as SpaceX plans for the future March 7, 2021 Just days after SN10 completed the first – albeit hard – Starship prototype landing, SN11 rolled out to the launch site for its own attempt. Incremental progress is being made with the test flights, with another tweak to the landing sequence set to be implemented, based on data gained from SN10. Meanwhile, the first Super Heavy prototype continues stacking operations while parts for up to Starship SN20 are being sta...

February 7, 2021 The three Raptor engines tasked with Starship’s third high altitude test flight have been installed into the aft of SN10. Pending acceptable results from an upcoming Static Fire test, SN10 will be tasked with repeating the flight of her deceased sisters, SN8 and SN9, before a landing attempt that will utilize a slightly different approach to the flip ahead of landing – allowing for redundancy in the event one Raptor suffers an issue, as was the case with the loss of the pre...

The first test involved filling the vehicle with nitrogen, usually in a two-step fashion. Initially, the vehicle will be filled with gaseous nitrogen – called the ambient test, ahead of being loaded with super-cold liquid nitrogen (LN2) for the cryo test. This test sequence is expected early in the week, with preparations for testing already ongoing on Monday morning. By Monday evening, the ambient test had completed. However, the cryotesting element was still outstanding by the time the test...