According to comments made a few weeks ago, CEO Elon Musk says that SpaceX may be ready to test two Starships at the same time within ‘the next few weeks’. ‘
On Nov. 30, in response to an unofficial aerial photo edited to show two Starships at SpaceX’s South Texas launch site, Musk noted that the depiction “will be real soon.” In the last four months of 2019, a SpaceX team quickly built an identical ‘launch mount’ – the structure that Starship contains, fuels and releases – to complement existing facilities. Work began a few days before the start of the back-to-back Starship SN5 and SN6 launch debuts, and a few months after Starship SN4 exploded and damaged the one-off launchers.
The “Suborbital Path B”, the new launch mountain and all associated cryogenic plumbing, will be debuted at the end of December with Starship SN9’s cryo proof test campaign and is scheduled to support its first Starship fire as early as 4 January. Meanwhile, Starship SN10 – with SN11 not far behind – was stacked at its full height on 2 January.
In other words, Musk’s claim that test operations with a few starships are only a few weeks away is easily credible. Due to Starship SN9’s fatal accident just before heading to the launch platform, SN10 would easily be ready for transport to ‘Suborbital Road A’ by mid-January. If SpaceX does as SpaceX normally does, the improved efficiency could lead to SN10 rolling to the launch platform to only begin pre-flight tests in a week or two.
Of course, Starship SN9 is a day or two away from its first static fire from Raptor – a triple engine test – and can reportedly only be turned on for a 12.5 km (~ 7.8 mi) launch attempt a few days later if the test reveals no problems. Given Starship SN8’s explosive but successful debut at great height, this is by no means a guarantee that SN9 will be in one piece to greet Starship SN10.
If the launch of SN9 experiences delays a few weeks, the chances are much better that SN10 will be able to join its senior Starship sibling in a first program. It is also possible that Starship SN9 will launch successfully a few days later, land and be greeted.
Likelier still, the Starship SN11 – tank division that was recently stacked at its full height – can be completed quickly and finally join Starship SN10 at the beginning of January or February. Ultimately, even if SpaceX resists its own norms and cannot build or test future Starships more efficiently, the company will have no prototypes to test and launch during 2021. Stay tuned!