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Tomorrow will be a very interesting day for those who are passionate about space launches. As reported in these hours, there will be static fire with all and 33 the Raptor 2 engines Of super heavy. It is a historic moment because it will be the first time that the first stage of Starship Of SpaceX will come to this point in development.
While not knowing how it will go (there is always the risk that something will go wrong), this step is one of those that will subsequently lead to the launch of the whole space rocket composed of Ship And super heavy becoming the most powerful rocket ever launched by humans into space. This will only be the beginning because in addition to being used as a lunar lander in the Artemis III mission, Starship will be the basis of the future economic livelihood of SpaceX. The new carrier will be able to be used for various types of commercial or government missions.
SpaceX: tomorrow there will be a static fire attempt with 33 Super Heavy engines
To bring back this information was Gwynne Shotwell (President and COO of the company). It is therefore an announcement that can be said to all intents and purposes “official”. In the meantime they have been released communications for road closures in the Boca Chica area of Texas, where Starbase is located, for safety reasons.
There is still no precise time for the test but the “spotter” (like NASA Space Flight) are ready to film the event live. Road closures are currently from 14:00 to 20:00 (Italian time). To avoid damage, Ship (the upper stage of Starship) was removed in recent days after a test assembly for the Wet Dress Reharsal.
Once it is completed it static fire with i 33 Raptor 2 engines of Super Heavy (the protagonist will always be Booster 7), SpaceX will be able to collect a whole series of data that will be useful for judging whether the test has been fully successful (even if there are problems, the data will still be useful). The strength of nearby structures is also unclear. The test should only last a few seconds, but already in previous attempts with a reduced number of engines, the noise and the movement of air generated was more than visible. At the end of November 2022 they had been “only” 11 engines used.
At the time of writing Elon Musk has not made any statements on the matter. Even the official account of SpaceX did not report any information on the matter and probably, as happened in the past, images and videos will only be shown after the operations have been completed, with a possible comment from Musk. On January 27th Bill Gerstenmaier (VP of build and flight reliability) had declared that the static fire would be the next step starting from the following week, even if there was a lot of work to be done. All that remains is to wait a few more hours to see what will happen in Texas.
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