Timeline for Why have SpaceX skipped the SpaceX Starship SN12, SN13, and SN14?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
11 events
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| Apr 10, 2021 at 6:46 | comment | added | Jörg W Mittag | @SnakeDoc: It looks like SpaceX is developing and testing Starships at Boca Chica. What they are actually doing is developing and testing Starship factories at Boca Chica. The prototypes are almost a by-product of this process, the real prototype is the factory. In the very early beginning, there were actually two teams, the other one in Florida, that were competing: they were required to share all information with each other, but they were not required to use it. They shut down the one in Florida quickly, though, because the Boca Chica team clearly had the superior approach. | |
| Apr 2, 2021 at 12:03 | comment | added | Saiboogu | @SnakeDoc What makes it so bad? They are training to build Starships in a factory, so those partial builds are valuable practice. They also may have had different results in this test campaign, that required flying those. | |
| Apr 2, 2021 at 1:07 | comment | added | csiz | @SnakeDoc I don't think any of the prototypes so far are identical. Also they weren't pending the test, they are being built to also test out the build process (the situation with the first booster is similar in that it will not even have engines mounted for a test fire). And since they were very partially built (just a thrust puck or a header tank for those 3 models), they're clearly not dummies and simply stopped building them when they realized they're obsolete. | |
| Apr 1, 2021 at 19:15 | comment | added | SnakeDoc | @csiz If what you say is true, then that seems to be a glaring lack of foresight on the SpaceX team. Building prototypes always leads to design specification changes... what dumby would proceed with 3 identical prototypes with the possibility of having to scrap all progress pending one test? That's absurd, and I hope not true. | |
| Apr 1, 2021 at 16:24 | comment | added | Mast | Certainly. They've used the same process with making parts of the Falcon reusable. | |
| Mar 31, 2021 at 15:48 | history | edited | Saiboogu | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
rephrased first sentence
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| Mar 31, 2021 at 3:17 | comment | added | csiz | Looks like they're actually scrapping them. SN 12, 13, and 14 seem to be less then 10% complete, only some arbitrary hardware bits are visible. If SN 15 has any changes to those completed parts then probably they'll be scrapped instead of updating them. | |
| Mar 30, 2021 at 23:07 | comment | added | SnakeDoc | Certainly they're not scraping the partially assembled units. I'd wager they are just modifying/updating the work (since this is an obvious risk of producing multiple prototypes at once), and #15 just happened to be ready first. | |
| Mar 30, 2021 at 18:11 | comment | added | Tim Bird | Nice answer. But the first sentence is a fragment. Maybe consider rewording it, by starting with "Some of this is unsourced ..." | |
| Mar 30, 2021 at 16:46 | history | edited | Saiboogu | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
formatting
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| Mar 30, 2021 at 14:44 | history | answered | Saiboogu | CC BY-SA 4.0 |