Starship

X Freeze@XFreezeAug 29

Matching the payload capacity of ONE Starship V3 flight would take 200+ Falcon 1 launches That’s hundreds of rockets, hundreds of separate launches and an enormous amount of time just to move what one Starship is designed to carry Orbital AI at serious scale needs a vehicle like Starship And SpaceX now has exactly that Starship V3 is designed to carry 100+ tons to orbit per flight with full reusability That means: • Huge batches of compute satellites launched at once • Massive power and networking hardware deployed in a single mission • Starlink connectivity + laser links for moving massive amounts of high-bandwidth data across the orbital network and back to Earth • Rapid reuse for continuous scaling • Direct access to enormous amounts of solar energy in orbit • Orbital infrastructure expanding launch after launch This is where Starship changes everything Orbital AI stops being limited by how little mass we can get to space and starts becoming infrastructure humanity can build at enormous scale And it’s happening much sooner than most people realize

SpaceX@SpaceXAug 28

Full duration 33-engine static fire with the Super Heavy booster preparing for Flight 14

SpaceX@SpaceXAug 28

Full duration 33-engine static fire with the Super Heavy booster preparing for Flight 14

Sawyer Merritt@SawyerMerrittAug 25

SpaceX has just officially announced Starbase, Louisiana, a new $100+ billion spaceport in South Louisiana near Pecan Island. Construction starts in 2027, with the first Starship launch from the new site planned for 2029. Starbase, Louisiana will be built to support thousands of Starship flights a year. This self-sustaining spaceport will have propellant production, power generation, deep-water shipping capabilities, vehicle processing facilities, and an airport. SpaceX is committed to investing at least $100 billion and creating more than 3,000 new jobs at Starbase, Louisana hiring heavily from nearby communities and utilizing Louisiana workers’ extensive experience of building complex infrastructure in their unique environment. In Vermilion Parish, the shoreline is eroding between 3.3 and 23 feet per year. SpaceX is partnering with state and federal agencies to expand Louisiana’s Coastal Master Plan and Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act projects, including Gulf shoreline protection breakwaters designed to reduce wave energy and slow loss along the Gulf edge.

SpaceX@SpaceXAug 25

Introducing Starbase, Louisiana – a high-cadence launch site that will enable Starship to open a pathway to the stars for humanity. Thank you to @LAGovJeffLandry and the great people of Louisiana for all of their support as we work together on this audacious project → spacex.com/sites/starbase…

ZaxtR@AmX_ZaxTrAug 22

Why did SpaceX choose 301 stainless steel for Starship 👇👇

SpaceX@SpaceXAug 20

Starship completed a single engine static fire demonstrating a deorbit burn for upcoming orbital missions

Dustin@r0ck3t23Aug 20

Elon Musk admitted he is not sure this one is possible. Musk: “This absorbs more of my mental energy than probably any other single thing. But it is so preposterously difficult that there are times where I wonder whether we can actually do this.” He does not talk like this. Mars gets a date. Robotaxis get a date. This gets a maybe. Stern: “What is so hard about it for just a normal person to understand?” His answer comes down to a single number. Musk: “In order to make a rocket fully reusable, you’ve got to basically create a rocket that can do about 4%, if not more than 4%, of its lift-off mass to orbit, which hasn’t happened before.” Four percent. Everything else standing on that pad is fuel, tank, and engine. The landing gear, the heat shield, the extra structure that survives reentry, all of it comes out of that same four. None of it can be left behind. The vehicle has to come home. Musk: “So that means you have to have basically A-pluses across the board: incredibly efficient engines, incredibly efficient structure.” Across the board is what makes this brutal. Most engineering lets you buy a weakness in one place with strength somewhere else. The margin here is thin enough that one component landing at merely excellent drops the whole vehicle below the line. Nothing carries anything. Musk: “But if full and rapid reusability can be achieved, it reduces the cost of access to orbit by a factor of 100 or more.” A hundred times cheaper turns nearly every question about space from whether into when. Telescopes, stations, factories, missions that never made it past a spreadsheet. Musk: “So we’ve got to get rockets to the point where we simply refuel the rocket and we don’t throw it away.” Every other vehicle humans build already works that way. Space is the one place we still build the machine, use it once, and let it fall into the ocean. Musk: “It’s the difference between humanity being a single-planet species and a multi-planet species. It’s really that big of a deal.” Now put his doubt in context. Landing an orbital booster upright was considered impossible by most of the industry. He spent years being told so while boosters exploded on barges. Those landings became routine, then boring, then unwatched. Then they stopped using legs. A twenty story booster came back from the edge of space, slowed itself, and hovered next to the tower it launched from. Two arms closed around it and took its weight in midair. Nothing touched the ground. That was a headline for about a day. He has been on this side of impossible before, more than once. Doubt from him measures how hard the thing is at the start rather than how it ends. Most people never attempt anything where failure is genuinely on the table. He found the hardest problem available and made it the center of his life. That is what real ambition looks like from the inside. Not certainty. A number nobody has ever hit, and showing up to it every morning until it falls.

SpaceX@SpaceXAug 18

After approx. 24 days at sea, the SpaceX Recovery team successfully guided Starship to a location just off the coast of Christmas Island. A team of SpaceX engineers is on their way to conduct additional analysis on the vehicle in calmer waters before attempting to return it to Starbase

X Freeze@XFreezeAug 11

SpaceX is getting very close to building the first serious base on the Moon Starship changes the entire equation It is designed to deliver up to 100 tonnes directly to the lunar surface - enough to transport habitats, rovers, power systems, construction equipment and everything needed to begin building a permanent outpost Then the other pieces come together Tesla Optimus robots could eventually unload cargo, assemble structures, move equipment and perform dangerous construction work before large human crews arrive Building a base mostly with humans is a serious limitation Humans need life support, pressurized habitats, spacesuits, oxygen, food and protection just to survive and work on the lunar surface But with Tesla Optimus, that equation changes entirely Tesla’s experience with solar energy, batteries, autonomous vehicles and large-scale manufacturing can support the power and transportation systems required on the Moon SpaceX provides transportation Tesla provides energy, autonomy and robotics Starship provides the scale Suddenly building a serious base on the Moon becomes dramatically easier And once that infrastructure is ready, humans can stay for much longer periods and eventually even routine private lunar missions and tourism become possible Once the first permanent lunar outpost is established, its usefulness will compound rapidly.....supporting science, resource development, communications and deeper missions into space The Moon could become humanity’s first true outpost beyond Earth

SpaceX@SpaceXJul 31

View of Starship in space from a Starlink V3 satellite on Flight 13. This composite is made of imagery from four separate cameras on a single satellite. Six of the satellites were equipped with cameras to scan Starship’s heat shield and transmit imagery down to operators to continue testing methods of analyzing Starship’s heat shield readiness for return to launch site on future missions

Elon Musk@elonmuskJul 29

Starship still floating in the ocean

SpaceX@SpaceXJul 28

The Starship Recovery team has continued gathering imagery of the vehicle, which is still afloat in the Indian Ocean

SpaceX@SpaceXJul 28

Landing burn and splashdown of Starship on Flight 13

Everyday Astronaut@ErdayastronautJul 28

Watch this incredible footage of @SpaceX’s #Starship S40 softly splashing-down in the Indian Ocean on Flight 13!!!