The SpaceX CEO says that he believes the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) could complete an environmental assessment of Starbase as early as March. Nonetheless, largely thanks to questions asked by members of the media, Musk did offer some valuable insight into Starship’s first orbital-class test flight. Booster 4 and Ship 20 were first stacked in August 2021.
#Will hopefully launch first orbital flight full#
If they’re to be replaced, it’s also unclear why that is or how long it might take to qualify a new ship and booster given that Super Heavy B4, for example, has yet to attempt a single static fire test a full six months after it first reached its full height. Musk also failed to confirm or offer an educated guess as to which Starship and Super Heavy booster will support the first orbital test flight (OTF), whether the first OTF will truly reach orbit (rather than ‘just’ orbital velocity), and what will happen to Ship 20 and Booster 4 if – as a great deal of speculation suggests – they’ve fallen out of favor. Without so much as a partially operational tank farm, SpaceX will be unable to attempt an orbital Starship launch, let alone start the process of qualifying a Super Heavy booster for flight with wet dress rehearsals (WDRs) and static fire tests. Why is still entirely unclear, save for speculation that SpaceX ran afoul of rudimentary methane storage regulations and is ever so slowly rectifying those errors with modifications. Over the same period, the farm’s five liquid oxygen and nitrogen (LOx/LN2) tanks have been filled with thousands of tons of propellant and coolant. Months after Starbase’s first orbital tank farm reached some degree of completion, SpaceX has yet to fill four main liquid methane (LCH4) tanks with even an ounce of fuel. To be clear, a great many questions remain unanswered.
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