The time has finally come, Elon Musk is about to take to the stage to update the world on SpaceX’s Starship progress. While many of the big events were widely reported when they happened, we expect to get more information about how development has gone, internal progress, and the future of the development.
Table of contents
What we expect at the Starship update
We have a full post on what we expect Elon Musk to talk about at the Starship update, and it is hard to speculate what all Elon may address, but here are a few things we expect.
- Info / updates on Environmental review process
- Raptor 2 development updates, fixed issues
- The future of B4 S20, Orbital? Hypersonic? Grounded?
- New (still optimistic) orbital flight timeline
Starship update livestream: Starting 8 p.m. CT / 9 p.m. ET
Starship update live blog
Feb. 10, 7:00 p.m. ET: We have three Space Explored team members on the ground in Starbase, so stay tuned starting at 9 p.m. ET as we update the post with new information and photos as they are revealed.
8:18 p.m. ET: The Space Explored team has arrived for the update event.
8:35 p.m. ET: Checkout these two Raptor engines on display! The farther engine, with the 5 on it, appears to be a much simpler Raptor 2.
8:55 p.m. ET: Five minutes to go until the planned start of the Starship update. Admittedly, it is possible it starts late, this wouldn’t be the first time.
8:56 p.m. ET: SpaceX’s Twitter stream is now live.
9:00 p.m. ET: It’s time, will Elon be on time?
9:02 p.m. ET: The intro has started!
9:04 p.m. ET: Elon Musk is now on stage!
9:08 p.m. ET: “Going out there and being multi-planetary series… fires me up the most.”- Elon Musk
9:09 p.m. ET: “Just like with apollo, where only a handful of people went to the moon, in a sense, we all went there.”
9:10 p.m. ET: Musk has stressed the value of spending money on space, noting how little Government money actually goes to NASA. “It’s worth it”
9:13 p.m. ET: Speaking of the importance of the ‘rapid’ part of ‘rapid reuseability, Musk said they are aiming to “aspirationally” land on the arms, which he admits, “sounds insane.” “If it does come in too fast and shear off the arms, I guess we’ll be, a Farewell to arms.”
9:14 p.m. ET: Musk has thanked the SpaceX team, confirming that this year SpaceX is “Aiming for 50 launches, about a launch per week on average”
9:16 p.m. ET: There will be more ships than there are boosters, due to rapid return of booster. “Aiming for one full-stack per month”
9:17 p.m. ET: Musk has extremely ambitious goals for the speed of reuse, stating that the “Booster is capable of being reused every hour.”
9:19 p.m. ET: “Starship is capable of getting a million tons to the surface of Mars and creating a self sustaining city.”
9:22 p.m. ET: Starship will be capable of “Roughly 100 tons” to a Starlink orbit, 200 tons potentially for refuelling.
9:23 p.m. ET: Musk said the worlds largest heat shield on Starship uses a lot of techniques used in roofing tiles.
9:24 p.m. ET: Musk’s jokes and sexual refrences are a-plenty tonight.
9:26 p.m. ET: Musk has continued to make references to the “totally accidental” 69.5 meter booster and “coincidental” pairing of booster 4 and ship 20.
9:28 p.m. ET: About 25 minutes into the presentation so far, there has been no bombshell of new information quite yet. Rightfully a lot of time has been spent addressing the accomplishments of SpaceX so far.
9:29 p.m. ET: V2 of Raptor is greatly simplified, costs about half as much, and has much more thrust. Musk thinks the engine can get to a 250ton operating point.
9:32 p.m. ET: “Here and Cape Canaveral” were the two options for developing Starship, “didn’t want to disrupt the Cape’s operational launches.” The closeness to the equator and clear area to the east were important.
9:35 p.m. ET: Musk lists of the upcoming missions, including orbital; “A number of Starlink missions,” to launch Starlink V2 satellites; HLS; and Dear Moon. “There are going to be some future announcements I think people will be pretty fired up about.”
9:38 p.m. ET:
9:44 p.m. ET: Elon has reconfirmed Starship production facility and launch site in Florida, only referencing LC-39A, ignoring possible LC-49 location under environmental review.
9:44 p.m. ET: In March, SpaceX may see Environmental approval from the FAA, but the company hasn’t been provided much info from the agency.
9:46 p.m. ET: “The cost efficiency of SpaceX is the best in history for any rocket development” – Elon Musk
9:48 p.m. ET: “I feel highly confident we will get to orbit this year.” – Elon Musk
9:50 p.m. ET: “We are approved from an environmental standpoint to launch from the Cape” in a worst case scenario – Elon Musk
9:52 p.m. ET: “Under $10 million” two or three years from now for each Starship flight.
9:54 p.m. ET: SpaceX optimistically hopes to test orbital refilling “toward the end of next year.”
9:57 p.m. ET: Kennedy is set to be a long term operation launch site, with Starbase more for R&D
10:05 p.m. ET:
10:08 p.m. ET:
10:08 p.m. ET: The “focus right now is getting to orbit and proving our return of the booster and return of the ship.”
10:16 p.m. ET:
10:19 p.m. ET: With that, the Starship update has concluded.
Featured image: Arin Waichulis
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