Remember the Apollo 11 launch?

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The long and "exciting" run out of the rocket on the huge platform running at 1.5mph? Leading up to the eventual launch.

All these new things the Apollo brought us with the Saturn V.

Well last night SpaceX created a new first. they stacked their Starship on top of the super heavy booster on the orbital launch pad using the lifting arms on the launch tower. The SpaceX watchers are calling them chopsticks.

https://youtu.be/mhJRzQsLZGg

You may want to skip quite a bit. It is just as slow as the old Satrun V roll out.

The next first will be when they use the same arms to lift the booster followed by stacking the starship on top.
The third first will be when they catch the booster using those same arms and place it back on the orbital launch pad (if it doesn't all go boom)
The fourth first will be when they land a starship next to the booster, pick it up with the arms and place it back on top of the recently landed booster.

For those interested in the numbers, when they get 32 of their Raptor 2 engines on the booster it will have twice the thrust of a Saturn V. Currently it has 29 first gen Raptor engines on the booster and will only generate about 1.5 times the thrust of a Saturn V.

Next step is the FAA completing their environmental assessment of Starbase so that they can launch the thing. Musk is very pragmatic in terms of success criteria. He says if it actually lifts off and doesn't blow up destroying the tower and the tank farm, that will have been a success. The goal of the first test flight is for the booster to come down under power and hover over the sea near Hawaii before gently dropping into the sea and for the Starship to reach orbit and then re-enter without blowing up, also hovering above the sea before a gentle drop into the ocean. I don't think the drone landing ships are specced for a Starship landing, much more mass than a Falcon 9 booster.

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For those who are interested, Musk gave a starship update last night.

You can access the youtube here.

It has about 30 minutes of intro covering the progress over the last 3 years.

I think the update, for anyone who is interested, is a really good chunk of info. The short version, though, is don't expect Starship operations before the end of this year and most of those will come from Cape Kennedy where they have just begun building the required infrastructure. Also I expect they will hold some of it until some more tests have happened in Texas to prove out the infra they have already built. Note Elon said that if the arms could not catch the booster, that would be the last you heard about arms on the tower.

He did expand a bit on their sea launch platforms (former oil rigs) and they expect that to be their most flexible launch capability and there to be a LOT more of them.

Huge amount of info in there. Including the fact that their raptor engine kicks out a gigawatt of power and is melting the chambers at the moment.....

If you don't get the 4 20 humour, it is a reference to when Elon, as both CEO and Chairman of Tesla, Tweeted that he was considering taking Tesla private at $420. He was doing this to upset the shorts and cause them to lose money. However he compounded the error by tweeting "funding secured" when it wasn't. Tesla shares were, at the time, still in the $300's. Elon was taken to court by the SEC and he was removed as chairman for 3 years (now expired) and had to have his twitter posts on Tesla reviewed before posting.

The irony is that the pre 5 way split shares (there was a 5 way split back last year), would now be worth $4,500 each. He takes every possible opportunity to rub the noses of the SEC and the shorts in it. At one point Tesla even sold "short shorts", one of which was patterned with flames. After that event the shorts have lost more than $50bn betting against Tesla. Musk keeps on producing 4 20 meme's and seems to be happy to keep reminding the authorities that sometimes they screw up. Prices of cars, all sorts of stuff. Here it is booster 4 and Starship 20.

This is why everyone was laughing.