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Elon Musk Shares New Starship Photos, Test Flight Imminent

SpaceX’s latest engineering folly, the Starship, is getting down to serious business. After a couple of weeks of intense testing, the ship seems to be closer than ever to an actual test flight.
Starship Texas assembly 5 photos
Photo: Elon Musk / Twitter
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Elon Musk’s space company is currently working on two Starship prototypes, one located in Texas and the other in Florida. Both are in advanced stages of assembly, and at least one could take to the skies as soon as the end of the month.

Elon Musk posted on Monday (August 5) four photos of the Texas-based Starship, showing the dome and the airframe of the machine, and saying he’s very proud of the progress being made. The executive is now of his way to the Florida site, so we expect photos from there as well in the coming hours.

“Just left Starship Texas build site. Very proud of progress SpaceX team has made! Pics are of 9m dome rotation & Starship airframe behind windbreak,” Musk says in his tweet.

The Starship underwent its first untethered flight test at the end of last month, following a couple of setbacks that involved heavy winds and what appeared to be an explosion.

The test Starship is scheduled for its first orbital flight later this year, but the actual, crew-capable ship will launch on top the Big Falcon Rocket no sooner than 2022.

The completed Starship is to be the reusable second stage and space vehicle of what is still known as the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR).

As per plans laid a few years ago, BFR will at first be used for the transportation of both cargo and personnel to the International Space Station. After that, it should take an active role in the crewed exploration and eventual colonization of Mars.

That should make the BFR humanity’s first interplanetary spacecraft, used to take people to new planet-size worlds.
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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