In the wake of the tremendously exciting SN8 test last month, Starship SN9 is on the pad and it’s looking like we may see a static fire test as early as today (LabPadre’s Launch Pad Cam has live coverage) and a 12.5km altitude test and landing attempt, with that launch possibly as early as Friday.
SN10 meanwhile received its nosecone and is waiting in the wings to be next up, with SN11 also under construction and not that far behind.
SpaceX’s rapid-iteration process has been truly impressive and inspiring to behold, particularly with regard to Starship prototyping and testing. Such a stark contrast to the customarily slow pace of NASA-contractor partnerships. It gives me greatly enjoyed reason to hope that we’ll see successful colonization of other worlds in the near future.
Update: Looks like we got an SN9 test-fire! I wonder if the brief duration was as planned. (This side-by-side comparison seems to indicate comparable duration to SN8 Static Fire #3, so my guess is that all went as intended.) Looking forward to further developments.
Contemplating the promised benefits of “seasteading” usually leaves me hung up on seemingly hard unsolved problems such as defense, but I have to admit the arguably outlandish idea offers more immediate practical potential for competitive governance and decentralization in support of individual sovereignty than colonizing much more hostile, distant, and hard- and expensive-to-reach worlds beyond Earth. This video makes an interesting pitch worth considering, that proposes development of seasteads as both a worthwhile end in itself and a potentially helpful equatorial stepping stone on our way to the heavens and colonizing [and perhaps eventually seasteading on] other worlds.
Seasteading does appear to offer a key advantage over territory-based governance: the potential for rapid reconfigurability. If you don’t like your land-based government, you can usually move elsewhere, but doing so is a high-inertia process that may involve selling your home, buying or renting another, possibly needing to apply to change citizenship, and moving your possessions a long distance. This inertia and the time and costs involved sets a high threshold for what people are willing to put up with, inhibiting salutary feedback loops and giving power to incrementalism. In theory at least, seasteaders can move and establish new voluntary associations at will and with much greater ease than people with land-based ties. There’s enough in that to make the idea worth giving further thought, and it will probably make a good topic to delve into in a future episode of The No Fear Pioneer. In seeking new frontiers to advance to, it certainly makes sense to consider as wide a variety of viable possibilities as we reasonably can.
A happy discovery on the “Terran Space Academy” YouTube channel I just stumbled upon and subscribed to: “Starship the Next Generation” offers some concrete predictions and calculations regarding a possible lunar-launched, next-generation SpaceX Starship. Titanium construction (locally sourced) + larger volume + weak lunar gravity would mean much better payload to propellant ratio to Mars, and elimination of the need to add fuel in-orbit before departure as will be necessary when launching from Earth. This isn’t official info from SpaceX, and there’s some estimating by proportions and specs of existing hydrolox engines, but the calculations and possible uses of materials suggested offer some interesting food for thought.
Of particular interest: the prospect of moving payload from 10.5% of weight (in the currently prototyped “Generation One” Starships designed to launch from Earth) to closer to 23% (in the imagined, much larger but titanium-based “Generation Two” Starships designed to launch from the Moon), with payload capacity growing substantially from 150t to approximately 1,385t (a 9x increase!). Propellant would meanwhile drop from 84% of launch mass to around 75%.
Among the tech info, I enjoyed this cultural insight: “Here in space, you will be judged not by what you have but by what you can do — the knowledge you have, the skills you contribute, will determine your status here.”
I hope and expect that will prove largely true. Among the many potential benefits of pursuing life on new frontiers, the opportunity to build a culture of practical competence is one of the more exciting to me.
My short-form podcast, The No Fear Pioneer, is back with a new episode, pursuing some key questions that have been on my mind: Can a frontier culture only thrive for a sustained interval where life is relatively hard? And are there ways we might be able to extend the flourishing of a newly opened frontier?
Join me for a 12-minute whirlwind exploration of related ideas in Episode 7: “Extending the Frontier Cycle”.
I’ve released this episode with new artwork that celebrates SpaceX’s Starship — the vehicle most likely to be our ride to Mars — and the tremendously exciting test launch, descent, and landing attempt of the SN8 prototype this past week. I’m looking forward with much excitement to seeing further developments in this visionary program.
After days of delays and postponements that tested the patience of those of us waiting breathlessly on the edge of our seats, SpaceX conducted the first (and last) high-altitude test of its SN8 Starship prototype yesterday. Despite going out in a fiery blaze of glory due to insufficient fuel tank pressure at landing, in what many in the rocket business like to call “Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly”, SN8 appears to have done a spectacular job of each of its test-flight tasks up to that point, in what I would consider a thrilling and encouraging series of successes.
Robert Zimmerman has a great post with lots of snapshots at Behind the Black, and points out, importantly, that “the systems for controlling the ship on its return through the atmosphere appeared to work as intended. Though SpaceX obviously has a lot more work to do to achieve an orbital return, they have made a magnificent start.” He continues: “And they have gotten this far in only two years, for less than $2 billion. Compare that to NASA and Boeing and their SLS, which is half a decade behind schedule and will likely cost $30 billion once launched.” SpaceX appears to be well on the way to its goal of revolutionizing the economics interplanetary transport, paving the way for rapid acceleration toward the opening of a new frontier on Mars, the Moon, and elsewhere.
Doug Messier at Parabolic Arc has a play-by-play with screen grabs too.
Here’s SpaceX’s official livestream of the test, fast-forwarded to just before engine ignition & launch. Note the beautifully steady ascent, paring back from three Raptor engines firing in unison to two and then one, the controlled free-fall in horizontal orientation, the engine relight and reorient to vertical, and what would likely have been a perfect landing if not for just a wee bit of excess velocity… Note also the green flashes from one of the engine nozzles during the landing attempt, which I’d have guessed might be a burst of TEB attempting to ignite the engine in vain, but John Carmack (who has earned his rocket-scientist chops running Armadillo Aerospace) remarked “is the color of a copper rocket combustion chamber eating itself”.
Don’t miss this spectacular perspective on the free-fall, flip back to vertical, and landing attempt that SpaceX posted shortly afterward.
Freedom is a tremendous and precious inheritance. To develop our potential, thrive in it, and pass it along to each successive generation is our highest calling. I write here to give my thanks, and to seek ways we can cultivate the resilience, independence, courage, and indomitable spirit necessary to sustain a culture that cherishes liberty.
