The image here come from Elon Musk and is concept art of the Starship test vehicle SpaceX is currently assembling at its Boca Chica, Texas launch facility. The real thing will be even better. This test vehicle is shorter and lacks the windows of the production ship that will eventually go into production.
Starship test vehicle under assembly will look similar to this illustration when finished. Operational Starships would obv have windows, etc. pic.twitter.com/D8AJ01mjyR
The SpaceX Starhopper seems like the fastest development of a prototype rocket outside of a wartime rocket program. The purpose of the inexpensive testing is to have the first flight tests of the new Raptor engine. Three of the engines have been placed in a row and the tests will allow control software to be tested and the throttling of the engines to be tested.
The Starhopper rocket should be stacked and welded into one piece within a few days or weeks. The Texas launch pad is still being built and is still piled dirt.
The work on the rocket and the launch pad will come together over the next 60 days and then the rocket will be moved to the launch pad for a first flight in March or April 2019.
It is a pristine specimen, preserved as it was formed. Other similarly shaped objects have been modified over time due to their closer proximity to the Sun. Learn more about this distant object explored by our New Horizons spacecraft: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20190102
William Falconer-Beach has rendered some images of the SpaceX Starship with a mirror polished stainless steel body.
Elon Musk has reported that SpaceX is building the body of the Starship out of stainless steel and that it will be polished to a mirror finish.
A hopper version of the Starship should have its first test flights by April 2019. The Super Heavy should reach orbit in 2020.
The Latest on NASA’s New Horizons’ New Year rendezvous (all times local):
12:33 a.m.
A NASA spacecraft opens the new year at the most distant world ever explored, a billion miles beyond Pluto.
This is the highest-resolution color departure shot of Pluto’s receding crescent from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, taken when the spacecraft was 120,000 miles (200,000 kilometers) away from Pluto. Shown in approximate true color, the picture was constructed from a mosaic of six black-and-white images from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), with color added from a lower resolution Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) color image, all acquired between 15:20 and 15:45 UT — about 3.5 hours after closest approach to Pluto — on July 14, 2015. The resolution of the LORRI images is about 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) per pixel; the sun illuminates the scene from the other side of Pluto and somewhat toward the top of this image.
The image is dominated by spectacular layers of blue haze in Pluto’s atmosphere. Scientists believe the haze is a photochemical smog resulting from the action of sunlight on methane and other molecules in Pluto’s atmosphere, producing a complex mixture of hydrocarbons such as acetylene and ethylene. These hydrocarbons accumulate into small haze particles, a fraction of a micrometer in size, which preferentially scatter blue sunlight — the same process that can make haze appear bluish on Earth.
As they settle down through the atmosphere, the haze particles form numerous intricate, horizontal layers, some extending for hundreds of miles around large portions of the limb of Pluto. The haze layers extend to altitudes of over 120 miles (200 kilometers). Pluto’s circumference is 4,667 miles (7,466 kilometers).
Despite government shutdown?
A NASA spaceship is zooming toward the farthest, and quite possibly the oldest, cosmic body ever photographed by humankind, a tiny, distant world called Ultima Thule some 6.4 billion kilometers away. Current latest trending Philippine headlines on science, technology breakthroughs, hardware devices, geeks, gaming, web/desktop applications, mobile apps, social media buzz and gadget reviews.
Tidying up our extraplanetary mess is as important a task as cleaning up the Earth. If we don’t, it will become increasingly hard to launch rockets into space.
