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Comment by enragedcacti | Hacker News Reader

> The easiest part about Starship is the booster because its not doing anything F9 isn't already. Just at a much larger scale.

It's possible that its easier than the other challenges starship faces, but everything I've read seems to suggest the raptor engine underpinning the entire project is massively behind schedule and over budget to the point of putting SpaceX at risk of bankruptcy (according to Elon).[1]

It's also burning a completely different fuel and has numerous other massive changes so a booster leveraging it isn't really just F9 at a larger scale. [2]

[1] https://spacenews.com/spacex-grapples-with-raptor-production...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Raptor

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Can get the latest updates directly from horse's mouth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N7L8Xhkzqo

TLDR: Delay at this point is mostly regulatory (environmental study approvals) to launch out of Boca Chica. If they have to move to the Cape, then there will be delays.

Not true. Musk said they weren't ready to launch yet anyways, and that they expected to be ready around the same time they expected to get FAA clearance. So it's not holding things up yet. And it might never.

OK, let me be more clear: The gating factor is FAA clearance, but it's not a delay yet.

More specifically: Nominal date for FAA clearance is X. Actual clearance will be >X (these agencies are never complete early; it's already been delayed twice). SpaceX readiness date will be <= X. Therefore FAA clearance is the program bottleneck.

Claiming to be ready and just waiting on the FAA is good publicity, true or no. We can't tell from the outside.

Apparently we'll never know... My comment was entirely too prescient: just today the FAA pushed decision back by another month:

https://www.space.com/faa-spacex-starship-review-delayed-mar...

>SpaceX readiness date will be <= X

To be fair to the FAA, I wouldn't bet on that. It's not called Elon Time for nothing.

As of the Starship presentation last week, current production is 5 Raptor 2's per week and they are ramping up to 1/day. Starship is important for Starlink to finish its full-scale deployment cost-effectively, but if they deploy satellites at a lower rate on Falcon 9 this year it's not going to break the company. The delay right now is from FAA approval on Boca Chica launches, worst case SpaceX expects their new Florida Starship launch site to become operational before the end of the year.

> The delay right now is from FAA approval on Boca Chica launches

Launching in the middle of a nature preserve was always going to be a problem.

It would not be at all surprising if they did not get approval for anything like the launch cadence from Boca Chica that they had projected, and need to fall back on Florida and ocean platform launches.

The delay to get that stuff ready might give them time to actually work out bugs, without them being treated as failures. And, there is little doubt those will work just as well, although standing that stack up on a floating platform will be an impressive achievement. Boca Chica will still be able to do tests. One wonders if they will deliver completed vehicles to the real launch sites by ("test") launching from Boca Chica. I don't think you need a Starship on top to launch the booster, although a cone hat seems advisable.

> One wonders if they will deliver completed vehicles to the real launch sites by ("test") launching from Boca Chica. I don't think you need a Starship on top to launch the booster, although a cone hat seems advisable.

I was just trying to imagine a booster delivery flight path. I'm assuming orbital otherwise FAA has appropriate concerns.

So north of Cuba, achieve orbital speed for one orbit, de-orbit burn to re-enter aiming past Florida, and then landing burn to get you back over Cape Canaveral?

Is it that straight forward? Would that be allowed? Would they need to dog leg to avoid flying over mainland USA?

The booster is not orbital, and would not survive the trip home in any case. (Although one wonders if it could go single-stage-to-orbit without SS on top. That would be another first!) A 1100 mile sub-orbital hop past Key West aimed to splash down just short of the Bahamas in case of trouble, then boost north, then brake offshore and fly to 39A.

Maybe an unladen Starship could make such a hop by itself. If not, a booster could assist on the first leg and come back.

> (Although one wonders if it could go single-stage-to-orbit without SS on top. That would be another first!)

On that note, I recall reading somewhere that the top part is at least in theory SSTO-capable without payload.

If it could get to orbit, then it ought to be able to get to Florida.

The current iterations are a bit over-engineered. A fully optimised later version that's slimmed down the design might do it without any payload, fins or heat shield. Maybe.

I think it's likely that SpaceX recognized that FAA approval could take a while, so they started putting more polish into the launch infrastructure, booster, and ship, rather than just trying to iterate on launches as quickly as possible. But that's just a hypothesis from an armchair observer, I'm not sure if they could have rushed launch pad readiness any further. I've also heard rumblings that there may be regulatory issues with the ground storage tanks for fuel/oxidizer that may require changes.

Right, easy is a relative term. Its not trivial by any means but it is much more straight forward than the rest of the rocket.

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