As we near the end of 2021, SpaceX’s Starbase complex is simply bustling with activity. Just this week, workers fitted the catch arms of the launch-support tower that will catch the booster and the Starship on their return to Earth.
The idea that the largest booster ever built can be grabbed in the air by mechanical arms is just another in a seemingly endless wave of ideas that leave everybody else dumbfounded. When the company started attempting to land the Falcon 9 boosters on drone barges a few years ago, an old friend told me that they were wasting their time. This fellow is an engineer who specialized in doing structural calculus for buildings with large open spaces, and he believed it was an impossible task.
For me, it was a simple matter of being able to do all the necessary computations in real-time, and it seemed obvious that if I knew that, Elon Musk certainly knew it too. It all boiled down to having the necessary computing power and the correct software to compensate for all the variables as they were changing. All that we are seeing done is more of the same. While on the surface, it may seem almost ludicrous, the same iterative approach that led to the Falcon 9 landings (now almost up to 100) should lead SpaceX to successfully launch and recover their new booster and the Starship spacecraft.
SpaceX also conducted static fire tests of the Starship #20 prototype on a different front, while sections of Starship #21 can already be spotted at the assembly area. The pace that the company has set for building the enormous ships is something never witnessed before in the space industry, and I would hazard a guess that in no other industry.
All expectations are now for when SpaceX will attempt the first orbital flight. Will it be tried with the combination of Booster #4 and Starship #20, already positioned on the orbital launch mount and one of the test mounts, respectively? Will one or both of them be replaced with Booster #5 or Starship #21, as both are in mid-assembly now?
What do you think? Will SpaceX succeed in their first orbital flight attempt?
Image by Christian Bodhi from Pixabay