SpaceX stacks giant Starship rocket ahead of 3rd test flight (video, photos) – Space.com

SpaceX's third Starship megarocket is standing tall ahead of its upcoming test flight.

SpaceX recently stacked the enormous vehicle on the orbital launch mount at its Starbase site in South Texas, placing the Ship 28 upper-stage prototype atop its Booster 10 first-stage partner.

"Starship team is preparing for a full launch rehearsal ahead of Flight 3," SpaceX wrote in a post on X today (Feb. 13) that shared photos of the milestone. In another post, the company published a short video of the stacking, which was performed by the "chopstick" arms of Starbase's launch tower.

Related:See stunning photos and video of Starship's 2nd launch

Flight 3 will likely occur about three weeks from now, according to SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, provided the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration awards a launch license in time.

The first two test flights of Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, occurred in April and November of last year.

Both missions ended in the explosive death of Starship, though the vehicle notched some important milestones on Flight 2.

For example, the 33 Raptor engines of Starship's first stage aced their initial burn on the November missions, and the booster separated seamlessly from the upper-stage spacecraft.

Both of Starship's stainless-steel stages are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable. SpaceX is developing the 400-foot-tall (122 meters) megarocket to take people and payloads to the moon and Mars, as well as conduct other operations closer to home including, potentially, carrying people on superfast trips here Earth.

SpaceX has already signed NASA up as a customer: The space agency picked Starship to be the first crewed lander for its Artemis program of moon exploration. If all goes according to plan, Starship will put NASA astronauts down near the lunar south pole for the first time in September 2026, on the Artemis 3 mission.

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SpaceX stacks giant Starship rocket ahead of 3rd test flight (video, photos) - Space.com

Faster Space Travel with Advanced Technologies – BNN Breaking

Revolutionising Space Travel: Faster Times and Advanced Technology

In a significant stride towards expedited interplanetary travel, a new online calculator for Lamberts Targeting Problem (LTP) is allowing for the generation of launch and arrival v-infinity pork-chop plots for space missions between solar system targets. This development was discussed by Scott Manley, who highlighted the potential for faster travel times from Earth to Mars.

The SpaceX Starship, with its facility for orbital refueling, has the potential to carry additional fuel, thereby augmenting its speed and minimizing travel time to Mars. A spreadsheet elucidating the Delta-V calculations for the SpaceX Starship demonstrates the potential for increased velocity, primarily due to the performance of SpaceXs Raptor engines and the anticipated improvements with the new LEET 1337 engines.

These engines are postulated to be simpler, lighter, and more cost-effective, with a higher production volume. SpaceX is also contemplating the possibility of larger fuel tanks for the Starship. The travel time and fuel estimates are premised on a low earth orbit refueling scenario, but could see significant enhancement with the introduction of a reusable tug, which would propel the Mars-bound Starship to near Earth escape velocity, conserving onboard fuel for deceleration and landing phases.

Affordability in space travel is a critical factor, and SpaceX aims to reduce costs by manufacturing cheaper, fully reusable ships and engines, and by producing methane fuel from natural gas or by utilizing solar power on Earth and Mars. The key innovations include reducing the cost of ships and engines by factors of 100 to 1000 and achieving full reusability. Aerobraking in the Martian atmosphere is also being explored as a fuel-free method for landing on Mars, although it has a maximum effective speed.

The discussion also references academic papers providing an approximate analytical solution to the LTP, noting that the solar system bodies are assumed to move in Keplerian orbits and that the calculations can have errors of up to 15-20% when considering very inefficient transfer arcs.

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Faster Space Travel with Advanced Technologies - BNN Breaking