SpaceX Starship prototype SN4

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Starship chilled. Starship pressurized. And for the first time, it didn’t explode

Now the company will mount a single engine to the Starship prototype.

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Late on Sunday night, SpaceX completed a critical cryogenic test of a Starship prototype at its launch site in South Texas. The successful test, during which chilled nitrogen was loaded into pressurized fuel tanks, was reported on Twitter by SpaceX founder Elon Musk.

The vehicle, dubbed SN4—which stands for Serial Number 4—was pressurized to 4.9 bar, or 4.9 times the atmospheric pressure at the surface of the Earth. This pressure is not as high as Starship's fuel tanks and plumbing system are designed to withstand, but it is enough for a basic flight.

  Read More: Ars Technica

 

See also:

SpaceX’s Starship prototype suffers failure

SpaceX’s Starship SN1 prototype blows up

Yet Another SpaceX Starship Fails During Test

[Jon the frog]

1 minute ago, Waspie_Dwarf said:

Starship chilled. Starship pressurized. And for the first time, it didn’t explode

Now the company will mount a single engine to the Starship prototype.

 

See also:

SpaceX’s Starship prototype suffers failure

SpaceX’s Starship SN1 prototype blows up

Yet Another SpaceX Starship Fails During Test

Good news, they are building them at an amazing pace. It's like a ''build try and advance'' type of development for this one.

[Waspie_Dwarf]

2 minutes ago, Jon the frog said:

Good news, they are building them at an amazing pace. It's like a ''build try and advance'' type of development for this one.

They may be building them at an amazing pace but they are destroying them at an amazing pace too.

When you consider that the Starship will have no launch escape system and is supposed to carry 200 people, and that 3 prototypes have been destroyed before a test launch has even been attempted the question you have to ask is, would you buy a ticket?

[Jon the frog]

1 minute ago, Waspie_Dwarf said:

They may be building them at an amazing pace but they are destroying them at an amazing pace too.

When you consider that the Starship will have no launch escape system and is supposed to carry 200 people, and that 3 prototypes have been destroyed before a test launch has even been attempted the question you have to ask is, would you buy a ticket?

Not for the first flight for sure ! lol

But they are test rig after all... if they stop after some tanks fails, it will be sad like the x-33 and the rest will go to the junkyard. 

 

[Waspie_Dwarf]

7 hours ago, Jon the frog said:

But they are test rig after all... if they stop after some tanks fails, it will be sad like the x-33 and the rest will go to the junkyard.

They aren't going to stop, but there must come a point where continued failures dent confidence in the product. We'll see how they progress once they get to the flight test stage.

As for buying a ticket, there are a few things about the Starship that I would want to see work many times before I was willing to fly on it.

[Waspie_Dwarf]

SpaceX test-fires Raptor engine on Starship test rocket

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A test-firing of a Raptor engine on the latest in a series of Starship test rockets Tuesday night in Texas moved SpaceX closer to performing a low-altitude “hop” to gather data on the vehicle’s launch and landing characteristics.

The single methane-fueled Raptor engine on the bottom of the Starship vehicle ignited a few minutes before 9 p.m. CDT Tusesday (10 p.m. EDT; 0200 GMT). The engine fired for several seconds, producing a blast of brilliant orange exhaust as the Starship stood on a test stand at SpaceX’s facility in Boca Chica, Texas.

  Read More: Spaceflight Now

 

[Waspie_Dwarf]

SpaceX Starship test vehicle explodes moments after test-firing

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A full-size prototype of SpaceX’s Starship violently exploded in South Texas moments after a test-firing of its Raptor engine Friday, dealing a setback to the company’s next-generation reusable rocket program.

The fiery explosion at SpaceX’s test site at Boca Chica, just east of Brownsville near the U.S.-Mexico border, occurred at 1:49 p.m. CDT (2:49 p.m. EDT; 1849 GMT) Friday, around two minutes after a brief firing of a Raptor engine mounted to the base of the Starship vehicle.

  Read More: Spaceflight Now

 

[bison]

Ah, well. You can't make a cake without breaking a few eggs!  Spaceflight is still a very demanding pursuit, quite near the limits of what we can do. Failures like this are to be anticipated, especially in working out the kinks in a new rocket. SpaceX has managed to blow up four up four of its prototype Starships. A steep learning curve, but a very valuable one, if the lessons afforded by these failures can be learned.