Elon Musk
A few hours ago, Starship Serial No. 20 (SN20) was briefly mated to Super Heavy Booster 4 (B4) at Starbase, Texas...giving the world a quick glimpse of the giant Mars rocket that SpaceX founder Elon Musk first unveiled in late 2016.
For about an hour, SpaceX employees and public spectators who dropped by Starbase had the opportunity to photograph Starship Super Heavy as it stood tall on its Orbital Launch Table. SN20 was then destacked from B4 after that.
According to Musk, SN20 will be rolled back to the Starbase production site to have the final heat shield tiles installed (98% of the tiles have now been attached to the vehicle), while B4 itself will have thermal protection placed around its 29 methane-fueled Raptor engines. Work will also be done on completing the installation of cryoshells over ground support equipment at the Orbital Launch Site.
An umbilical arm will also be attached to the Orbital Launch Tower that will provide methane and liquid oxygen fuel to Starship at the pad.
All of the remaining work mentioned above will take about two weeks to accomplish before SN20 and B4 become one once more. At the speed that this rocket is moving towards launch, there's no reason why we can't see its first orbital test flight sometime next season.
Crossing fingers that the Federal Aviation Administration is aware of the history that's being made in South Texas this week, and will give SpaceX the greenlight to launch as soon as it's safe and prudent to do so. Mars est.
Elon Musk
SpaceX
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