15 Hours of Movement

In fifteen hours, from around sunset at Boca Chica on October 19th, until 10:50AM EDT at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, SpaceX rolled a new Starship, ship or S 25 from the ship yard to the test area on Boca Chica, replaced (re-stacked) S24 onto booster B7, cycled booster B1069-3 from recovery ship onto the deck at Port Canaveral as they prepare to refurbish it, and launched another load of Starlink Satellites on mission 4-36 atop B1062-10 - indicating its 10th flight.  

B1062 launches with Starlink 4-36 while B1069-3 sits at Port Canaveral.  Jenny Hautmann photo. 

As Chris Bergin at NASA Spaceflight (.com) put it:

I watch the Lab Padre and NASA Spaceflight feeds pretty much everyday, if not for long periods then just checking in.  It was a bit of concern when S24 was unstacked from B7 earlier in the week, but I never saw an official reason of any kind; rumors run from forecasts of high winds to the tiles on Starship moving its center of gravity and making the whole stack crooked.  My only conclusion was that there probably wouldn't be anything dramatic going on this week.  Wednesday evening when I looked at Lab Padre and found S25 moving to the test area, with a road closure that just sprung into being, all I could tell was that something was up. 

I keep saying that it looks like something interesting may be happening in the test campaign at Starbase Boca Chica and keep getting it wrong.  Teslarati reports that ship 25 was lifted onto a test stand with the rams that test the ship's ability to withstand the thrust from the engines, and there are probable road closures next Monday through Friday along with a Marine Safety Information Bulletin warning from the 21st to the 28th, 6AM to 8PM for the first few hundred yards offshore the test area, all of which could imply some sort of static firing.

Or not.

The optimistic view is that we expect to see B7 and S24 go through testing to a Wet Dress Rehearsal, and then a static firing that lights all 33 engines.  If the pair survive the WDR and static fire testing, SpaceX could begin preparing the same pair for Starship’s orbital launch debut.  It's not known what would cause SpaceX to stop on this pair and move onto a different booster/ship combination, but B8 has been at the test area for weeks and not been touched with any testing.  B9, on the other hand, is said to feature significant improvements that will make it more resilient to mid-flight Raptor engine failures. It could also be the first Super Heavy booster with no hydraulic system, thanks to a new version of Raptor that replaces hydraulic thrust vectoring with a battery-powered alternative.  B9 is said to be nearly complete.  

Meanwhile, back at the range, the next Starlink mission (4-37) doesn't have a fixed date that I can find but since it's from SLC 40 like yesterday's flight, it seems like it would have to be at least a week later, maybe more.  There are rumors that the Falcon Heavy mission, from SLC 39A, has been moved from Friday, 10-28, to Monday - Halloween.  That mission is for the Space Force and carries two payloads to geosynchronous orbit.  The payloads have delayed this mission for years, so I'm looking forward to it, but not losing sleep.