So, the giant steel spaceships have been pretty quiet, here's why

[glhs837]

So, not a lot of flying and falling grain silos/water tanks lately. Evidently the push is on the go whole hog and launch the full stack, 230 foot Super Heavy first stage with 29 Raptor engines, topped by the 165 foot orbital stage, Starship. So the efforts at the launch shite have been focused on preparing the launch platform (maybe 40-50 feet tall) and the "integration tower" that will stand next to the launch platform and lift SH onto the platform and then Starship onto SH. Check this twitter piee about the work, they just finished reconfiguring the crane they call Kong. The IT has a solid concrete base and is being stacked with prefabbed tower sections by Kong. Click through all three pics as they bring the mid boggling scale into play.

 

[KingFish]

Preparing the way for Zefram Cochrane to take the stage.

 

[glhs837]

Thats the thing about revolutionary shifts, they sometimes just happen. One can hope, but until then, keep stroking with what you got. First mission is "sorta" orbital. As we understand it now, both stages, if possible, will perform "soft" water landings. This first stage about 20 miles offshore from Boca Chica, the second stage, Starship itself, will gain orbital altitudes but not complete a full orbit, but rather immediately begin reentry and like the firs stage perform a soft water landing.

Now, like those first hops, the expectation that all, or even most of this goes as planned is not super high. Explosions/loss on reentry are to be expected, and as long as no two articles destroy themselves the same way, learning is happening that will lead to sucess. Below is a video to show exactly how gentle a soft water landing can be. And these stte rockets are far more robust than the Falcon you see here. BTW, this one had issues and decided it could not safely land back at Kennedy, so it's programmed fallback is this move here. Amazing how even damaged, it was able to pull this off.

 

[kom526]

Preparing the way for Zefram Cochrane to take the stage.

Well done sir.

 

[glhs837]

Exactly how many engines with the Super Heavy first stage have? Each one has about 500,000lbs of thrust. And no, thats not all of them together, thats each individual engine you see that.