Starship Ready to Fly - Waiting on FAA

This weekend, SpaceX conducted a final flight readiness review for the first orbital flight of Starship and Super Heavy booster.  Early on Sunday morning, Elon Musk Tweeted that everything was ready for launch.

The company has announced a targeted date for this attempt: Monday, April 17 at 7:00 AM Central.  The only testing they've announced for this week has been that there will be a full Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR) on Tuesday, April 11 - when most of you will be reading this.  They have not announced a time for that test at the time of this writing.

In general, a WDR is a simulation of the majority of the countdown's critical activities. Booster 7's first and second stages will be fueled as if they were going to launch, and all steps along the way will be followed up to the moment of ignition, but they will halt the count without starting the engines. This test will increase the company's confidence in its ability to fuel the Starship launch system and ready it for liftoff on the day of the actual launch. 

According to the Weather Underground (because they post 10-day forecasts - out as far as Wednesday, 4/19), that Monday looks to be a good day, morning low of 67, afternoon high of 74, low chances of rain and low amounts of cloud cover. Winds mostly NE at 10-15 mph.  It looks better than Tuesday or Wednesday.  The forecast for the rumored day of 4/20 (Thursday) isn't there at the moment. Personally, I don't put much faith in forecasts that far out based on our 10 day forecasts.

The important part is the mission.  If you follow the space industry, you know deep inside that they eventually reach a point where they've modeled everything that can be modeled and have to actually do the experiment to gather as much data as possible.  That's where SpaceX is. 

During this flight test, if it proceeds nominally, the Super Heavy rocket will fire for a couple of minutes before separating from the upper stage and making a controlled descent into the Gulf of Mexico. Like SpaceX did with some of its early Falcon 9 rocket first stages, the company will monitor the vehicle's performance to see if SpaceX is ready to attempt a land-based landing on future missions.

After separating from the Super Heavy rocket, the Starship upper stage will seek to reach orbital velocity before reentering the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean. SpaceX plans to land Starship vertically into the ocean, north of the Hawaiian islands.

This test flight will carry no payloads—indeed, the sole purpose is to test the rockets, their engines, and the capability of the vehicles to reenter Earth's atmosphere and make a controlled landing. SpaceX engineers have a million questions for which they seek data. Can the tall rocket clear the launch tower? Will enough of the vehicle's 33 main engines fire long enough to put Starship into its planned trajectory? Will Starship's engines ignite? Can the vehicle survive the harsh conditions of reentry? How intact will everything be once it reaches the ocean?

Since, unlike Falcon 9, Starships can hover vertically, I'd really love to see them hover Ship 24 over the Pacific, motionless, for at least a few seconds before dropping her into the ocean.  We can pay our respects that way.

Booster 7 and Ship 24, last Thursday, 4/6.  SpaceX picture.