It looks like a group of NASA astronauts have undertaken a travel agency to SpaceX’s Boca Chica Starship facilities, including a visit with a prototype that would start and start as early as this week.
The frequency of NASA astronaut visits to SpaceX’s South Texas facilities appears to be in line with the accelerated pace of Starship production and testing, and has also seen an increase over the past six or so.
In 2019, SpaceX built Starhopper, performed numerous tests with early prototypes of the Raptor engine and performed two unbound hops. With the success in hand, SpaceX turned its attention to Starship Mk1 and suffered an almost immediate failure during pressure testing, encouraging a series of rapid upgrades in manufacturing that were largely completed within a few months.
In 2020, SpaceX moved the new facilities to the extreme while the major expansions continued. In twelve months, SpaceX built and tested five small ‘test tanks’ and six full Starship tank sections, performed nearly a dozen static Raptor fires with the hardware, two of those tanks (SN5 & SN6) jumped to 150m and the first full unit fully integrated. altitude Starship (SN8), and almost landed that vehicle after an otherwise flawless and downhill 12.5 km (7.8 miles).
Back in 2019, NASA colored its first monetary Starship contract with SpaceX, which awarded $ 3 million to prototype a coupling mechanism that Starships needs to dock and fill in space. In April 2020, NASA revealed that SpaceX – with its Starship launch vehicle – was one of three finalists selected to compete for a Human Landing System (HLS) Moon Lander contract, which awarded the company $ 135 million of the full award. of $ 970 million to start the preliminary design. and certification work.
About five months later, a group of NASA astronauts paid their first public visit to SpaceX’s Starship development hub in South Texas, and the factory and launch platform in training aircraft regularly flew over from Houston and Johnson Space Center. Days later, SpaceX won a $ 53 million NASA “Tipping Point” contract to demonstrate large-scale cryogenic propellant transfer with a Starship prototype.
Eventually, it seems that NASA’s relationship with SpaceX and the company’s Starship is getting stronger every day, excluding rock-solid commercial crew and cargo partnerships. While it’s hard to say how indicative the growth of the visible attention of NASA’s astronaut corps is, it’s worth noting what the same astronauts are. is not (public) flying, visiting and touring – namely factories, R&D facilities or prototype hardware from HLS competitors Dynetics and Blue Origin.
With about a week delay, SpaceX is currently preparing to launch its fourth full-size Starship prototype – SN11 – for the first time on Monday 22 March, 19 days after Starship SN10 briefly ended up in one piece. SpaceX has submitted temporary flight restrictions (TFRs) to the FAA for SN11’s 10km (6.2 miles) launch debut from Tuesday to Friday, which this week offers plenty of opportunities for a launch if the rocket can successfully launch its three Raptor engines by Wednesday test.