The SN9 vehicle’s three engines lit up for about one second today (Jan. 6) at 5:07 p.m. EST (2200 GMT) during a static-fire test at SpaceX’s South Texas facilities, near the Gulf Coast village of Boca Chica.

Static fires, in which rocket engines blaze while a vehicle remains anchored to the ground, are a routine preflight checkout. And SN9 (“Serial No. 9”) will indeed get off the ground soon, if all goes according to plan: SpaceX is prepping the vehicle for a test flight that’s expected to be similar to the epic one made last month by its predecessor.

The end of the space shuttle program concluded an era that began almost a half century earlier with the first free flight of a wingless lifting body.

In the coming years, NASA’s Project Artemis will send astronauts to the Moon for the first time in fifty years. In the years that follow, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) also hope to build a spiritual successor to the ISS – the international lunar village around the Moon’s southern pole.

With multiple space agencies looking to build bases and private aerospace companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin hoping to make lunar tourism a reality, the message is clear: We’re going back to the Moon. And this time, we plan on staying!

But what about the long-term? What about a lunar colony where us regular folk can live, work, and become the first “Selenians” (or “Lunites”, “Lunarians”, “Loonies”, etc.). It’s been explored extensively in science fiction, but how about for real? Could it be done?

With Starship SN8’s test flight still fresh in the memory, SN9 is set to complete an accelerated pad flow with a Static Fire test and launch this coming week. A triple Raptor Static Fire test is tracking early this week. Pending acceptable test results, the launch of SN9 could take place just a few days later.

Meanwhile, Starship SN10 is now an integrated stack inside the High Bay, ready to roll to the launch site as soon as SN9 departs. SN11 and SN12 are undergoing their own buildup operations inside the Mid Bay, with the former only lacking a nosecone.

Space travel will be here soon, and when we’ll need transportation hubs, and Noiz has envisioned a Spaceport City that will serve multiple functions.

Space travel is just around the corner with private sector companies vying for the right to be the first to offer interstellar trips to the masses. When space travel does become a reality, we’ll need a transportation hub that meets the needs, much like an airport is the centre of air travel. Noiz has designed the Spaceport City to act as the centre of space travel. The project was initiated and released by Space Port Japan Association, Dentsu, and Canaria.

Clean, highly energetic reaction delivers a lot of drive from a drop of fuel.

SPACEX

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