Fully stacked SpaceX Starship is a ‘dream come true’

Elon Musk’s SpaceX stacked a Starship prototype rocket on top of a Super Heavy rocket thruster for the first time on Friday morning, giving a glimpse of the scale of the combined vehicle nearly 400 feet tall.

Musk, to whom CNBC asked what he thought about witnessing the milestone at the company’s Boca Chica, TX facility, responded simply.

“The dream comes true,” Musk replied in a tweet.

SpaceX is developing Starship to launch cargo and people on missions to the Moon and Mars. The prototypes of spacecraft are about 160 feet tall, about the size of a 16-story building, and are constructed of stainless steel, which represents the first version of the rocket unveiled by Musk in 2019.

The rocket takes off above a Super Heavy booster, which is the bottom half of the rocket and is approximately 230 feet tall. Together, Starship and Super Heavy stand almost 400 feet tall when stacked for launch.

SpaceX has performed several short test flights of prototype spacecraft over the past year, but reaching orbit represents the next step in rocket testing. The company revealed in May its plan for the first orbital flight, which would launch from the company’s facilities in Texas and aim to land off the coast of Hawaii.

Musk described four “big things” that SpaceX aims to complete over the next two weeks to prepare for the launch of Starship 20.

He said SpaceX needed to add the “final heat shield tiles” to the ship, add “heat shield” to the Raptor rocket engines in Booster 4, finish work on the “ground propellant storage tanks” and add a Quick disconnect arm atop the newly constructed launch tower. The quick disconnect arm connects the supply and fuel lines to the rocket before launch.

While SpaceX’s fleet of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets are partially reusable, Musk’s goal is to make Starship fully reusable – a rocket that’s more akin to a commercial aircraft, with short lead times between flights, so the only major cost is fuel.

An important part of making Starship fully reusable is improving its durability to survive the intense process of re-entering Earth’s atmosphere. The small hexagonal heat shield tiles are SpaceX’s answer to this problem, with the previously shiny Starship 20 rocket now covered in thousands of tiles.

Musk noted that the tile work is approximately “98% done” for Starship 20, because “the remaining tiles are unique shapes that require machining.”

The US space agency has paid close attention to the development of Starship, especially since NASA earlier this year awarded SpaceX a controversial $ 2.9 billion contract to deliver astronauts to the moon’s surface. using rockets.

Dr Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s senior official for science missions, told CNBC he continues to monitor Starship’s progress.

“Yes, I have been following all of this from the start and I am delighted that @SpaceX is taking this step! I can’t wait to see it fly!” Zurbuchen wrote in a tweet.

Musk responded to Zurbuchen in another tweet, touting Starship’s intended abilities.

“Because of its size and ability to return scientific instruments even from deep space, Starship will enable a whole new class of science missions,” Musk wrote.