In late December, Elon Musk showed the bow of the Starship missiles (“nee” Big Falcon Rocker) and talked about the fact that the test version of the system will be ready to launch by spring this year. Now head of a private American space company SpaceX has published on his page in the “Twitter” image of the concept test version of the missile Assembly. The concept admittedly looks pretty funny, as if taken from science fiction 50-60-ies.
Here’s a photo of the bow of the Starship rocket Elon Musk was showing December:
As well (or nearly so) will look like the rocket Assembly:
“Ready and assembled a test version of the Starship will look something like in this image. Existing [missile] Starship of course will have Windows and so on”, — has signed the image Mask.
The diameter of test missiles will be around 9 metres, as in the full version of Starship, but a pilot version will be shorter. It is expected that the first launches, as in the case of the Grasshopper rocket, which turned into a Falcon 9 will be suborbital. Presumably the first test run could take place in March-April of this year. In case of successful testing of all systems, the first orbital launches can missiles could be held in 2020 year.
Later in the “Twitter” appeared a photograph which captures the moment of Assembly of test rocket Starship. The author of the photos is a resident of one of the residents of Texas. The image was obtained on the morning of 5 January in the village of Boca Chica, where there is a private launch company Ilona Mask.
In addition, Elon Musk is using the same Twitter shared about when you plan to conduct the first launch of a new spacecraft Crew Dragon (Dragon 2). Apparently, it moved again. Musk said that the launch will take place in the first half of February 2019.
“About a month before the first orbital test flight Crew Dragon,” Musk wrote on his Twitter page.
The first flight of the ship already was postponed several times. It was originally planned that it will occur on 7 January, then postponed to January 17. The first launch will be unmanned. The first manned flight is planned for this summer (in June).
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