SpaceX News

Written by: Keith Jones
Published : 12 February 2023

SpaceX have had a very busy couple of weeks with 5 successful launches but the big news is the Booster 7 static fire test. Booster 7 forms part of the new Starship rocket. When fully stacked it stands at 120m tall. Booster 7 has 33 Raptor engines and is 70 m long and the first stage called Starship has 3 sea level and vacuum Raptor engines and stands at 50m. To cause confusion SpaceX call the whole stacked rocket Starship as well!

The recent test was the first time SpaceX attempted to fire all 33 of the booster engines. They have previously fired up 13 Raptor engines and they are so powerful they ripped up the concrete under the launch stand. Since then SpaceX have relayed the base with a much stronger concrete. There was a slight hitch with 2 of the engines, one engine did not start and the other was shut down prematurely. However the total thrust reported from The 31 good engines was 3600 tons indicating that the Raptors were running at just over 50% power. This was still more power than Saturn 5, the Moon rocket.
It is speculated that there will be another static fire test of Booster 7 when the 2 faulty engines are swapped out. SpaceX have indicated that the first launch of the fully stacked Starship will be in March following FAA approval.

As always, watch this space.

Keith Jones TBFS (The Bloke From Stoke)

SpaceX Launch

Written by: Keith Jones
Published: 13 January 2023