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Monday, February 13, 2023

Strange New Starship Appears on Test Stands

On Sunday the 12th, Starship SN26, a totally different type Starship than any we've seen before was rolled to the test area from the shipyard.   Rather than describe it, let me show you: 

Photo by (Starship Gazer), used on Teslarati. 

The big, obvious differences are that there are no heat shielding tiles and there are no flaps - the four aerodynamic surfaces on every other Starship we've seen.  An obvious conclusion is that this is a non-reusable version like we talked about back on February 1st.  No Starship has ever been built to this configuration and tested before, so doing any sort of testing before installing the tiles and aerodynamic surfaces later seems out of the question.  

Three expendable variants of Starship anticipated for NASA's Human Landing System (HLS). SpaceX image.  Reused from February 1 post for convenience.

Those of you who are familiar with the "pez dispenser" for deploying Starlink satellites will note that's not visible either, although without the flaps to orient it in my mind, I'm not sure we're looking at the side it would be visible from.  

In fact, SN26 has no discernible payload bay.  The easiest explanation in my mind is the middle option: using it as a propellant storage tank in orbit to demonstrate refueling on orbit; that's something NASA has contracted with SpaceX to develop since 2019, and is going to be an integral part of many future missions - starting with Artemis.  To further bolster that view, in October 2022, a NASA official indicated that SpaceX’s second Starship test flight would be a “Starship-to-Starship propellant transfer.”  Since the first Starship test flight is very likely to be within the next 6 weeks, preparation for the second test flight seems to be the proper thing to be doing.  

It's not possible to know with the scant information we have, but the right hand illustration in that graphic of expendable Starship variants is the Human Landing System manned version that will land on the moon for Artemis, ferrying crews from the Gateway space station orbiting the moon down to the surface and back.  SN26 could the first HLS lander.  An experiment to land it on the moon would be beyond cool, and it has been rumored in the past that SpaceX plans to test the lunar lander on their own.

Eric Ralph at Teslarati points out that there's another flap-less, heat resistant tile-less prototype Starship in process in the Boca Chica Shipyard:  SN27.  Photos of SN27 have revealed the Starlink pez dispenser, so it apparently has a different purpose than SN26. 



8 comments:

  1. Data on the stresses of launch for the Booster and parts of the Starship will validate or unvalidate current construction. Will be interesting to see.

    Going to wingless Starship makes me think that SpaceX is still working on the problematic tiles.

    And I also wonder if there are some significant internal changes from Starship 24 and 25 and the new one. Enough that they don't want to deal with the 24 class as it won't tell them what they need to know about the post 24 class.

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  2. I am interested in the orbital science behind transfer of mass in a low G environment with respect to Newton's Laws of Motion.

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    1. A slow spin will help with the transfer, because ullage is always a factor in liquid transfers in microgravity.

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    2. Screened tanks solve many of the problems of propellant transfer in microgravity.

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  3. I was kind of hoping Musk would go for Grand Jedi Master trollbait, and roll out a launch vehicle that looked like a big white balloon.

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    1. I was going to say, "the day is still young; just keep watching" but that probably understates the difficulty. How about the year is still young?

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  4. I just found this page and thought I would pass it on to the community
    https://satellitemap.space/?constellation=starlink
    might be a little OT for this thread but I was impressed and thought others of us might like to play with it.
    73
    KF4VAR

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