Posted on 03/14/2024 12:02:29 AM PDT by linMcHlp
March 14 Starship • Orbital Flight Test 3 (OFT-3)
Launch time: 7:00 a.m. CDT (8:00 a.m. EDT, 1200 UTC) for 110-min. window
Launch site: Starbase, Boca Chica Beach, Texas A SpaceX Super Heavy booster and Starship vehicle will make a third fully-integrated test flight during a 110-minute launch window.
The plan is for the Starship to achieve near-orbital before reentering the atmosphere and splashing down in the Indian Ocean.
The Super Heavy booster will target a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.
Say what you will about Elon Musk......the dude gets things done.
SpaceX Super Heavy booster and Starship vehicle
Looked up Boca Chica and found this...
Boca Chica was a small, seaside village at the mouth of the Rio Grande on the Mexican border with just a few streets before SpaceX moved in, promising to turn the town into a terrestrial terminus for space travelers.
The company broke ground on its launch facility in 2014 and started testing rockets there in 2019. As work on the project progressed, SpaceX gradually bought up most of Boca Chica’s three dozen homes, though a few homeowners held out, according to reports.
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“Creating the city of Starbase, Texas,” Musk tweeted in March 2021. “From thence to Mars. And hence, the stars.” Starbase, he added, “would encompass an “area much larger than Boca Chica.”
“Something could go wrong on Earth,” he said at an event on the Starbase launchpad last year [2022], according to The Sunday Times.
“We are life’s guardians,” he said. “The creatures that we love, they can’t build spaceships but we can bring them with us.”
I did not know that. Tx.
It’s extraordinary what he and his team have accomplished. They first managed to make reusability of rocket boosters routine, by landing them under power like some 1950s sci-fi movie. They also produced, in Falcon 9, the safest and most reliable rocket ever built. And now they’ve created their own private space program, while ULA’s vastly more expensive SLS/Orion combo continues to flounder.
Small minds compete with people
Big minds compete with standards
Great minds compete with dreams
[4K] Watch SpaceX launch Starship, LIVE up close and personal!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixZpBOxMopc
South Padre Island - Weather and Surf Conditions
Brownsville, Brownsville / South Padre Island International Airport (KBRO)
Current Weather Conditions: BROWNSVILLE/SOUTH PADRE IS, TX, United States
[TIME SUBJECT TO CHANGE] This is the third fully integrated full stack test flight of Starship and the mighty Super Heavy booster, the largest and most powerful rocket to ever fly. It produces over twice as much thrust as the Saturn V that took humans to the moon.
The goal of the test is to get further along than IFT-2 in November, 2023, which didn't see either the ship or the booster make it to reentry. If all goes well, Starship will re-enter in the Indian Ocean about 65 minutes after it lifts off from Starbase, TX, on a suborbital trajectory.
This test features a few new things like opening and closing a small payload door, a propellant transfer demonstration and a Raptor engine relight demonstration.
At times, Elon Musk has to teach/remind people that he is an engineer. Some of the first Falcon 9 rocket motors had X amount of parts. The next engine model had X minus 30% parts. One of SpaceX’s mottos is: the best part is no part.
The rocket engines on the super heavy are 3 times as powerful as the first Falcon engines. AND, there are 33 engines on the super heavy.
One of the main challenges to serious space occupation is moving tonnage into space. When the super heavy becomes reusable, moving tonnage into orbit becomes a reality. Musk/SpaceX plans on refueling in orbit, and elsewhere.
Musk talks about becoming a multi planet species. Eventually, our Sun will expand, and we need to be far enough away to survive.
Each Starship could be its own, small space station. Spin the Starship, and there will be gravity.
One of the larger Mars rovers had a proof-of-concept experiment that tested whether or not we can make oxygen out of the Martian atmosphere. We can. The first humans will have to bring all of the oxygen (tonnage). Eventually, we will make it from the atmosphere.
During President Trump’s first term, SpaceX was testing sometimes once a month. The Hussein/Biden Regime has slowed that down greatly, but success is at hand.
“Eventually, our Sun will expand, and we need to be far enough away to survive.”
I’ll place my bet on Other-Stupid-Things requiring interstellar migration before the sun’s helium expansion in 5 billion years.
Booster 10 and Ship 26
ck
Mist. Visibility 6 miles. Winds SE 14 mph. 72 deg F
Starship IFT - 3
T-47 seconds
There is also a Boca Chica in the FL Keys.
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