SpaceX Seeks FCC Approval to Fly Starship to 20 Km
SpaceX has submitted an application to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for communications frequencies to fly its Starship vehicle to an altitude of 20 km (12.4 miles) at its Boca Chica Beach facility in Texas.
The approval would allow for communications between the vehicle and the ground. The proposed six-month time frame for the flight is from March 16 to Sept. 16, 2020.
Starship is a prototype of an orbital vehicle that Elon Musk’s company is developing for missions in Earth orbit and to the moon and Mars. SpaceX also hopes to use it for rapid point-to-point transportation between distant cities on earth.
96 responses to “SpaceX Seeks FCC Approval to Fly Starship to 20 Km”
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Hi Doug.
Just a heads up. Headline’s incorrect. Starship not Starlink.
Cheers Neil
This program is showing some of it’s first signs of being serious. The test tanks, coming in off the beach, the X-Ray machines for checking welds….. Space X is seems to be upping the sophistication of their efforts to do this from the unrealistic fantasy that you could make a space craft with some sheet metal and a bunch of guys with Ford F-150’s and Miller welding machines. By the time they are making orbital capable craft in this class they’ll be inside a clean environment, with climate controls, large jigs and fixtures.
…. And look at that. First flight set for March. My dead reckoning from before the tank failure hit it again. Not bad self. Since they’re pushing for March, I’ll bet it flies in the Summer.
Summer, fall, whatever. A good solid test program starting this year is good enough to suit me. I’m skeptical about Starship being too big too fast. It would be good for my concerns to be unfounded. FWIW, I am extremely skeptical of some of the cost numbers thrown around. It would be fantastic to be wrong about that as well.
Who wouldn’t love to see spacecraft of this scale operate for real? This is going to be a pivotal program. Should it succeed it will throw a lot of light on assumptions about developing new technological threads from a cold start. Should it not work, it will throw a lot of light onto the flawed personality traits of people who reach positions of high power. The line between those two outcomes is probably quite narrow.
SpaceX does iterative development. They’re clearly not going to have an “operational” Starship this year. They’re obviously still building prototypes to test fly. Even after they perform their first fully successful orbital flight (one that successfully recovers both Starship and Super Booster), they’ll still have more development to do.
Just look at how many iterations that Falcon 9 went through. Starship will be no different. It will take many years before Starship is truly done with development.
Yes, it will move at the pace needed to make it work, which is why even Elon Musk reminds folks to take his schedule with a grain of salt.
But the key thing is that NASA is not involved, so he is free to develop it as he wants to, using his money which is his great advantage. And if it takes a while for him to go from the Model A to the Model T (like Henry Ford) so be it, what comes out at the end will be worth it.
And I think that is the problem with all the old spacers here, they are looking at it from the slick paper driven project schedules of NASA instead of from the iterative process used in software.
“And if it takes a while for him to go from the Model A to the Model T (like Henry Ford)”
If you’re going to try to make your arguments using analogies, at least get your analogies correct. Ford went from the Model T to the Model A, not the other way around… Sheesh.
Sorry, but you need to actually study the history of the Ford Corporation, which incidentally was the third automobile company he founded.
You are thinking of the very successful Model A from the reboot in the 1920’s. I was referring to the original Model A from 1903, the very first car Henry Ford produced when he founded Ford. It was followed by the rest of the alphabet until he got to the Model T in 1908.
It is certainly true that we should expect continuous improvement of SHS. But it is also true that, as with F9, even the earliest operational version will kick everyone else’s ass.
Yes, the first operational version of Falcon 9 was their minimum viable product. After you get your minimum viable product released, you rapidly iterate to make it better, or else the competition might catch up with you.
how many “iterations” do you think they go through before they get to something that makes money?
Already done. Mission costs >30M, charge 62M starting price. Also, turning booster around between missions takes 1 month (with deep inspection).
https://www.reddit.com/r/sp…
And my name is Einstein. If they can turn one around in a month, why is the shortest turn around time 73 days, and that was over a year ago? You’d think after all of Musk’s noise about 24 hour turn around, he would have at least turned one of these starlink boosters around in a month….
Ok, presumably your name is Lee. What your name is doesn’t matter but your title isn’t Director of Vehicle Integration, SpaceX. The fact is they run a FIFO so there is HoL blocking. Greater than half the turn around time is waiting around for the next flow it is enqueued for.
As the speaker said (since made private) they have an maintenance team that does deep inspection still. Need to build up that statistical history, makes no sense to rush for Lee’s edification at the risk of losing a payload. Internally they can turn a stage in 30 days with full inspection. Once they are confident, time to walk it down.
should have noted that I was referring to Starship or whatever they are calling it
Narrator: That was in the game plan all along, just takes time to order, stage, deliver and deploy. Musk is a pusher, why have crew hang around and not at least fabricobble some rough protos.
Wrong, the plan was to build cheap spaceships on the beach like a Dutch Floyt and do spacflight on the extreme cheap. Those worthless shells were built to fly. NOW after the failure they’re building and testing test jigs that are obviously re-tasking the program. Their initial expectations were wrong. Way wrong. And you fan boys accepted the story lock stock and barrel. I fully accept the prospect that later this year they’ll either kill the program or announce a change back to carbon composite structures and they’ll rebuild that winding tool they tore up. And if they do, you’ll think it’s double-plus good.
Wrong, at the time the Mk1 was blowing up the x-ray equipment was on pallets in the receiving area (I’ve seen the photos). You don’t have a clue what you are talking about and don’t have access to a trail of insider statements going back years.
Well the predictions of you INSIDERS have been WAY OFF for the entire trajectory of this program. You guys were saying these things were going to be flying in 2019, with flights to the Moon in 2021. And Mars in 2022. An ‘outsider’ such as my self a modicum of experience in spaceflight has been calling it way way better.
Ha, my info has been spot on for years. People argued with me about the scale down from 12m to 9m core ahead of 2017 announcement, people argued with me on here that dev Raptor was sub-scale. The photos don’t lie, this was in the works including the bending rig, already on site but not deployed for the monolithic rings (hell Musk mentioned it during the Starship press event). Even mentioned more “buildings” to come, it was all in planning. You, again, don’t have a clue.
Just remember flight flight 2019, Moon next year, Mars in ’22. That’s what your side has been preaching.
I don’t have a “side”. I never preached $h1t about those schedules.
Yeah…..
Beware the “S” curve that Arthur C. Clark warned “prophets” about…
I’ll be happy once my ‘dark’ assessments of this program stop coming true.
why did they even attempt to do flight quality welding without xray machines? dumb
Why not? What’s the down side? It blows up? Who cares? They certainly tested out the GSE quite a bit.
the money it takes to put the thing together that you blow up. the danger of someone ggetting hurt. endless
Investors care. A few hiccups are to be expected, but spectacular explosions make them nervous.
I suppose you have a public statement from SpaceX investor to prove this, or just what’s rattling around the old noodle?
They seem to make you nervous. The investors, not so much.
Why did they build ‘full up’ vehicles before doing test tanks? THAT was a totally dumb move.
It’s called “Top Down” design and it’s plagued the Shuttle engines from day one. Some people/companies automatically think that any method used by NASA or an aerospace firm is suspect. The truth is that it’s come from having problems in the past and implementing ways of doing things to catch the issues before getting to the test stand/flight.
Lots of people praise Tesla for getting the Model 3 and, soon, the Model Y to market while other manufacturers have little to show in the EV segment. Those other manufacturers are all working on EVs, it’s just that their development programs take longer. Not because they don’t know what they are doing, but that they are very methodical and when their cars hit the showroom, the chances are very high that there won’t be problems that should have been caught in testing. You know, stuff like bumpers falling off and excessive debris collecting in the undercarriage. They also look at repair issues so a rear end low speed impact doesn’t cost $10k and 2 months to repair. They will have also been designing the production line the whole time as well so there is no running around trying to figure out workarounds to keep cars coming off of the line.
Which also means that by the time their “perfect” EV reaches the market it’s way out of date. Mercedes new EV is a good example. They hoped to sell 25,000 last year, but customers only bought 7,000 because its range is much shorter than Tesla’s competitor and it doesn’t have many of the other features Tesla offers. As a result MB has put off even offering it in the U.S. for another year as they try to make it more competitive.
when you are a musketer every legend is important.. 🙂
Hey, how come budget Turkish airlines can’t keep their rear-end on the runway? I mean is the last third where you should be dropping rubber?
I have no idea what you are referring to unless it is some uninformed attempt to link the Pegasus event at Shabia with my company which is of course the type of uninformed babble you constantly revert to
Pegasus airlines is in no way affiliated with THY the only thing that they share in common is that they both operate in the country of turkey similar planes similar routes and similar destinations….other then that…gee are you dumb
and my company does not tolerate unstabilized approaches…this is their third event on the runway due to that
you are an uninformed nut whose comments should only bring rebuke
Narrator: I didn’t associate it to your company.
yes you did you said “
Hey, how come budget Turkish airlines can’t keep their rear-end on the runway
they are not our budget carrier and we are Turkish airlines. dont be goofy
Yes, TA is not a budget carrier (national flag carrier airline), I asked about budget carriers in Turkey. They aren’t the same, duh.
And I’ve used that route between Izmir and Istanbul so self preservation is part of it.
Izmir has a pretty good Burger King honestly…
they are the same as budget carriers in the US …they skip on training and put everything on a cost basis
“when you are a musketer every legend is important.. :)”
The smiley at the end doesn’t make the name calling o.k. Let’s keep it civil please.
labeling
well said…so much for the water tank welding…after all the shuffle they are now back at the place they were when they left composite parts…well done
maybe fly by sept…maybe
“maybe fly by sept…maybe” – Did you even read the article? SMH.
yeah
What you say is true, in hindsight. But keep in mind that SpaceX is looking to do rapid prototyping and testing in the cheapest way possible. The methods used for Hopper were crude, by aerospace standards, but it did fly successfully (surely there was a lot of luck involved in that initial success).
So, SpaceX will be adding only what they truly need to the manufacturing process in order to make the test program successful. This will keep costs down and schedules short.
By comparison, it looks like the first SLS core stage will spend about a year at the test stand culminating in a full duration test firing. A freaking year to test one stage using traditional aerospace engineering methods. And we’ve been told it will take three years to produce an SLS core and that’s after the long lead items are procured. And don’t forget SLS is 100% expendable, so $1+ billion per flight, even when completely ignoring development costs.
Is it any wonder SpaceX is trying to streamline those methods? If they’re even partly successful with Starship, they’ll still be at least an order of magnitude cheaper than SLS and will be able to fly an order of magnitude more often. If they’re completely successful, we’ll see the world’s first fully reusable TSTO with a reusable launch cadence that will be orders of magnitude cheaper and more frequent than SLS.
SpaceX is also hiring and will train you.
https://www.valleymorningst…
SpaceX slates ‘career day’; Company has 40 open positions
Steve Clark
– February 4, 2020
““A super hardcore work ethic, talent for building things, common sense & trustworthiness are required, the rest we can train,” he tweeted.”
and you will work like a dog for low wages…
No Thomas would never do that. He just want’s the average schmoe to do so. I want to see Matula’s paper on how workers could live a better life if they just worked for less money. I fully expect it to show that if workers actually paid management for the privilege to work, they would live a better more rewarding life.
yes or evett as we say here. It strikes me that Musk is running out of money and this is another attempt to cut cost…by hiring apprentices
When I saw that, I also considered it might be an indication of a terminal condition of the program. This will be a telling year. I expect the program to either fly or die this year.
You’re kidding me, right? Did you see the expansion they’re doing at Boca Chica site? All the new buildings, new equipment flowing in everyday. The problem with you SpaceX skeptics is that like Tesla shorts, you guys don’t follow what the company is actually doing, instead you just imagine what they’re doing. Take 10 minutes everyday to watch NSF’s Boca Chica video, you’ll learn something.
I do subscribe and watch that as well. That does not indicate the program is in good shape, only that it’s being executed. What we skeptics can say with authority now is that this program is haphazard and is being executed out of order. That does not mean it will fail, nor does it indicate it will succeed. These tank test series they’ve been doing are what should have been worked in the last two quarters of last year.
What it indicates is that the program is getting a lot more funding than last year, so Oler’s comment (which you agreed to) that this is a sign of running out of money is absurd.
As for out of order, you have no insight into what the constraints are, the tanking tests are done with flight designs, it’s quite possible that the design and tooling doesn’t exist last year.
not all that impressive to me…these are things which should have been anticipated and accomplished when they first started there
Narrator: They are first starting there.
that would be my guess. this has to be costing him enormous cash
It would the way the Boeing does things, especially when it has unlimited access to NASA money. But it’s not the SpaceX way to waste money like that. For example, instead of spending millions to design and build a crawler for the Starship they just bought four commercial units off the shelf and used a frame to weld them together to make one.
Not even sure they bought the crawlers. I think they’re rented on an as-needed basis. Once production ramps up to a certain point, buying some crawlers would be justified by more or less continuous need.
My guess is that your guess is probably two orders of magnitude too high.
Running out money? ROFL, in case you haven’t checked news lately, Elon Musk is currently 22nd-richest person on Bloomberg’s list.
“It strikes me that Musk is running out of money…”
LOL! Have you seen Tesla’s stock price? Musk isn’t “running out of money”. And even if he were, SpaceX currently has absolutely no trouble finding investors. The only reason they’re still private is that Musk doesn’t want SpaceX to be beholden to the whims of the market. It’s hard for a company to invest long term when the investors in the stock market only care about the next quarter’s profits.
The stock price of Tesla has nothing to do with SpaceX and very little to do with Elon. It’s paper wealth and external to the company. If Elon were to sell off Tesla stock, which he isn’t going to do, he’d have to file a notification with the SEC and just that could put trading into freefall. On one hand the stock price makes him worth $30b. On the other, he can’t liquidate without killing the stock price.
SpaceX hasn’t been able to raise all of the money they’ve been asking for in the last couple rounds of milking investors. I suspect that part of that might be due to keeping their books very private and big investors will want to see raw data before they drop $100m into something.
Taking SpaceX public would make them have to shut up about going to Mars, point to point rocket travel and vague moon ventures with no justifiable ROI. Shareholders may also want to see that rusty pipe in front of the factory taken away and no more money poured into distracting side ventures.
Which is why SpaceX is private. BTW his estimate worth is more like $39 billion at the moment depending on the price of Telsa stock.
True he may not be able to sell large amounts of Telsa stock but it is an asset he is able to borrow against if needed. But also note, that is the reason for Starlink, to create a revenue flow from consumers to support his plans for SpaceX, something he has talked about a number of time.
SpaceX is currently talking about spinning off Starlink as its own company, which could then be publicly traded.
Actually Tesla stock price has a lot to do with Elon, if he can keep the valuation over $100B for 6 months, he will trigger the executive compensation plan which will award him with more stocks. He doesn’t need to sell the stocks to get cash, he can borrow money against it.
If the price of Tesla stock has nothing to do with Elon, what does it have to do with pray tell?
If Elon sold any Tesla stock I suspect it would have about the same effect on Tesla’s stock price as has been the case with Amazon’s stock price when Bezos sells shares – none.
I don’t know where you get the idea SpaceX’s offerings have been undersubscribed. The opposite was the case for the most recent rounds.
I don’t know the SpaceX numbers, so this is just on industry in general.
Depending on the costs and profits, sometimes it is better to work for less when the alternative is competition shutting down your job. When barriers to entry are high, then it is sometimes possible to pay top wages with benefits.
When an industry is highly competitive, profits are normally in the 5% range. Higher profits attract more competition which drives prices and then profits down. Lower than 5% profits leave a company vulnerable to going broke with the slightest downturn in the economy.
Workers need to realize that their power is in their ability to go where they are appreciated financially and with respect. That is one reason why Walmart is having to pay more now. Employees with options have no need to stick around a bad company.
Once again you choose to demonize someone who doesn’t share 100% your views on socialism with false statements. Tell me, have you found the “Black Knight” in your sky surveys yet?
As I teach my students study after study have shown the better a firm manages its talent (The professional term HR uses for workers) the more productive and profitable it is.
you realize of course that non of those quotes you plastered up from JFK are anything more then the rhetoric he used…he had no real interest in space passed simply beating the Russians
Irrelevant. We still got to the Moon because of President Kennedy’s goal.
only to that “goal” nothing else
Actually data shows the average salary at SpaceX is higher than at Boeing. But let’s not let data get in the way of a biased opinion.
https://www.payscale.com/re…
“Spacex pays its employees an average of $90,029 a year. Salaries at Spacex range from an average of $64,270 to $121,767 a year. Spacex employees with the job title Senior Mechanical Engineer make the most with an average annual salary of $108,686, while employees with the title Buyer make the least with an average annual salary of $71,196.”
https://www.payscale.com/re…
The Boeing Company pays its employees an average of $86,144 a year.
Salaries at The Boeing Company range from an average of $57,608 to
$132,993 a year. The Boeing Company employees with the job title Chief
Engineer make the most with an average annual salary of $170,076, while
employees with the title Office Administrator make the least with an
average annual salary of $52,926.
I doubt that is correct. I doubt I made more then the Chief Engineer on any program that I worked on…and I made far more then 170K …over 200K
the title Chief at Boeing is a big deal…I was Chief Pilot major flight program starting with my assignment to Eric Air…and it was over 210K. there was no chief engineer because it was not a flight programl
when I was on the KC46 program I was Senior Pilot test and sure I made less then the chief engineer of the program…
Those are the reported numbers. Also remember they are averages.
In God we trust, all others must bring data. W. Edwards Deming.
I wasnt exactly walking around the company asking who made what…but I know what I made… 🙂
So no data, just a story…
it was data to me 🙂
One data point, not a data set. Much like the Starliner test flight, which seems like it survived and returned in one piece only by dumb luck.
Break it down to an hourly wage and consider that you may be losing a bunch of weekends a year and many holidays. Boeing will very rarely require (even unofficially) massive overtime and is closed on holidays. They also have plenty of people so you aren’t going to be shamed into only taking a few days of vacation at a time.
If you have kids, SpaceX is going to take away your “parenting” time which can also break up a marriage. They really are very poor at work/life balance.
Again, no one forces anyone to work at SpaceX. If life is as bad as you say than they would have few workers. But instead they have a flood of applicants. FYI
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/0…
The 10 most attractive employers for engineering students
Published Fri, Jun 7 20199:00 AM EDT
Abigail Hess
SpaceX is Number 1 and Telsa is Number 2. Boeing is Number 4 and NASA is Number 5.
So do you have any data to support your opinion?
I know a lot of people that have worked at SpaceX. Years ago I looked into applying there and it was down in black and white that 50hrs/week, salaried was the minimum expected and frequent mandatory overtime should also be expected during testing (Tx test facility).
If you are fresh out of school and want to work on rockets, the long hours and lack of many days off might not be too bad. It will start to pall when you find it hard to maintain a relationship with anybody outside the company (and asking anybody inside is often called sexual harassment) if they have a regular job with regular hours. If you have an engineering degree, you should be able to do math. When you divide your starting salary (no experience, first job in the industry levels) by the number of hours you are working, you may find that working at Home Depot could pay about the same. Not as glamorous, not as exciting of a product, but they certainly won’t be asking for any overtime. Another upside of Home Depot is that if you don’t screw up, chances are slim that you will be suddenly purged one day as has been known to happen at all of Elon’s little ventures.
Working at Tesla is even worse. The cost of living anywhere near the region of Silicon Valley is outrageous and traffic is a daily nightmare. There have been lots of stories of systemic problems at the Fremont and Reno plants. Even the corporate execs rotate out on a quick basis leaving behind big unvested stock options. I’m all done with excitement and would rather have money left at the end of the month when all of the bills are paid. $3.600/month for a one bedroom apartment on the fourth floor with one parking space eats into blue collar paycheck something fierce.
I’m not interested in what “engineering students” think. When they’ve been in their profession for a few years, that’s the point where the excitement has worn off and the realities of life take center stage.
True, but in the interim they are living their dream of changing the world and gaining experience.
If you want short hours, light workloads and a low cost of living, I recommend you move to Nebraska and find a government job.
As noted previously, stock grants are a major component of total compensation at SpaceX. The majority of the SpaceX work force are childless singles. That will likely continue to be true. People who marry and have kids can, if they want to, leave and find less demanding employment with fat nest eggs of stock and golden resumes.
SpaceX doesn’t exactly have to employ company press gangs to go around nabbing staff. If you find the work-life balance not to your liking, you’re under no obligation to seek employment there.
Personally, if I was four decades younger I’d be delighted to work at SpaceX. When I was starting out – during the stagflation of the mid 70’s when jobs were scarce – I wound up working a lot of uncompensated long hours. Born too soon, I guess.
…and grants of stock that will fix you for life if you stay on for a decade.
Are they still advertising that 50hr work weeks are common with overtime frequently required to achieve schedule goals?
As long as these are hourly jobs that pay time and a half for overtime, there are always plenty of workers who will take those jobs.
Even if they’re not hourly, as a salaried engineer/programmer, I’ve often had to work more than 40 hours a week. We once spent several months working “mandatory Saturdays”. That wasn’t fun. As a professional in a rapidly growing company, that often comes with the territory, unfortunately.
The jobs are typically salaried positions and exempt. 50 hours/week is a minimum. If you aren’t working more, supervisors will start giving you the eye as you clock out……”not a team player”.
SpaceX has been around for some time now; they are hardly a startup. The question is if you want a life or a job that pays $20/hour since that’s what can happen when you take home what would be a reasonable salary for 40/week but work 1.5x that. Elon is also a fiend for scheduling launches and big tests on bank holidays.
Unlike a socialist nation no one is forcing anyone to work at SpaceX. If they don’t want to apply for a job there they don’t have to. And if no one applies than they will have to increase the pay, it is how a free labor market works.
True, but again, I’ve worked in such an environment myself. I don’t currently work 60-80 hours a week, but that was the norm for me at one time. And I’ve never worked for SpaceX or in aerospace for that matter (despite my aerospace degree).
SpaceX employees get stock as part of their total compensation package so salary is hardly the whole story.
Just to clarify, that FCC approval is to give SpaceX “Special Temporary Authority” over certain radio frequencies when they conduct a test flight. It is not a flight permit.
The flight permit has to come from the FAA. And to get a flight permit, SpaceX needs to actually have Starship SN1 built and ground-tested, and convince the FAA’s Administrator for Space Transportation (retired USAF General Wayne Monteith, who was the former commander of the 45th Space Wing) that SN1 is airworthy and that safety measures will be in place to the FAA’s satisfaction. That is the hard part.
Back in August last year, it took almost a month for SpaceX to negotiate with FAA-AST to conduct Starhopper’s 2nd test flight. SpaceX had to agree to do a hazard analysis, take out a $100 million insurance policy, and lower the maximum height of the hop from 200m down to 150m.
The FCC comms permit is the easy part.
It will take at least a month to assemble SN1’s hull, another month to outfit it with things like the avionics, engines, fins, actuators, etc., then ground tests of not just the tanks but all the onboard systems. My guess is that SN1 won’t get its FAA launch permit at least until June.
Back then (when Starhopper was flying) the Boca Chica village still have residents, SpaceX has since bought out all the permanent residents, all the residents who sold their property will leave by March 31st. So it’s a complete different situation now, BTW this clearing of the village is by FAA’s request, they want an empty village for later launches.