Saturday, November 13, 2021

Photo of the Day: Starship SN20 Lights Up All Six of Her Engines!

Atop the Pad B pedestal at Starbase in Texas, Starship SN20 ignites all six of her Raptor engines during a static fire on November 12, 2021.
SpaceX

Yesterday, all sea-level Raptor and Raptor Vacuum (RVac) engines aboard Starship Serial No. 20 (SN20) came to life for the first time at Starbase in Texas. Before this important milestone took place, a pre-burner test was conducted to ensure that the six engines would operate as intended once the actual static fire was held atop the pedestal at Starbase's Pad B.

As the last video at the bottom of this entry (courtesy of NASASpaceflight.com) shows, only a handful of heat shield tiles were knocked loose during Friday's test. However, SpaceX will obviously need to find a way to ensure that almost all tiles on the bottom of SN20's fuselage stay put during next year's highly-anticipated orbital test flight...as an exposed gap on a vulnerable area of the rocket's stainless-steel skin could prove to be fatal during its re-entry through Earth's atmosphere after the in-space demonstration.

If past challenges during the early years of Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon are any indication, SpaceX will successfully rectify Starship's tile issue in time to conduct an orbital test that will revolutionize human spaceflight and bring us closer to Mars.



Posted by Richard Par at 6:51 PM
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