The tweet archive.

“@Teslarati @13ericralph31 @SpacePadreIsle Booster static fire on orbital launch mount hopefully next week”

“Other orgs shd also develop reusable orbital rockets. If an airplane co had reusable airplanes, buying single use airplanes wd seem crazy. https://t.co/OJotlGmPHt”

“@thesheetztweetz @QuiltyAnalytics First Starship orbital flight will be with Raptor 2 engines, as they are much more capable & reliable. 230 ton or ~500k lb thrust at sea level. We’ll have 39 flightworthy engines built by next month, then another month to integrate, so hopefully May for orbital flight test.”

“@AustinTeslaClub To be precise, completely & immediately reusable orbital rockets are the fundamental breakthrough needed to make life multiplanetary”

“@MuskUniversity Fully reusable orbital rockets are the fundamental breakthrough needed for humanity to become a multiplanet species”

“@BillyM2k The super weird thing is that Falcon 9 is still the only orbital booster to land or refly after all these years!”

“@Erdayastronaut @michaelhodapp_ 1. Orbital launch tower that can stack 2. Enough Raptors for orbit booster 3. Improve ship & booster mass”

“@nextspaceflight There is the internal goal if things go right, which needs to be aggressive. Obviously, some things will not go right internally & there will be external issues too. That said, I think we can stack an orbital ship on an orbital booster in July.”

“@NASASpaceflight Still aiming for booster 4 & Ship 20 for first orbital test flight (this is pure coincidence!)”

“@Teslarati @13ericralph31 It’s a big deal that Dragon is reusable, with improved refurbishment efficiency with each passing flight! This is not the case for other orbital spacecraft. It means the spacefleet grows every time a new Dragon is made.”

“@wapodavenport However, even if it were 16 flights with docking, this is not a problem. SpaceX did more than 16 orbital flights in first half of 2021 & has docked with Station (much harder than docking with our own ship) over 20 times.”

“@BillyM2k The only thing keeping the other orbital rocket programs alive is government protection or they’d be deader than a doornail and everyone knows it. But oh well … comme ci, comme ça.”

“@Astro_Elliott @Teslarati @ResidentSponge Aiming to have hot gas thrusters on booster for first orbital flight”

“@DJSnM Orbital precession takes a long time. With Starship & Starlink V2.0, hopefully we can direct inject to target orbit.”

“@NASASpaceflight @BBCAmos Over time, we might get orbital payload up to ~150 tons with full reusabity. If Starship then launched as an expendable, payload would be ~250 tons. What isn’t obvious from this chart is that Starship/Super Heavy is much denser than Saturn V.”

“@MarcusHouseGame Rapid & complete rocket reuse, low cost propellant, orbital refilling & propellant production at destination are the four essential elements of making life multiplanetary”

“@Adamklotz_ @SpaceX BN1 is a manufacturing pathfinder, so will be scrapped. We learned a lot, but have already changed design to BN2. Goal is to get BN2 with engines on orbital pad before end of April. It might even be orbit-capable if we are lucky.”

“Currently looking good for a Sunday night (~8pm local) attempted orbital launch and rocket landing at Cape Canaveral”

“@DannyLaShep With steel membrane wings like a Dragon, we may be able to lower Starship’s orbital reentry temp to ~1000 degrees C, which would allow the whole surface to be uncooled bare metal”

“@Cmdr_Hadfield @SpaceX Thanks Chris! A fully and immediately reusable orbital heat shield, which (as you know) has never been made before, is the single toughest problem remaining. Being able to iterate with many ideas on many ships is key to solving this.”

“@DJSnM We could stretch the Falcon Heavy upper stage & increase this a lot, but FH already covers all known payloads. Starship, especially with orbital refilling & dedicated deep space variants (no heatshield, flaps or header tanks) will take this up orders of magnitude.”

“@SciGuySpace SpaceX will do orbital refilling several times next year with Starship V3. Because we are simply docking with ourself, this is a much easier problem than docking with the Space Station, which SpaceX already does several times a year.”

“@WholeMarsBlog @NASASpaceflight @BBCAmos There is a reason no fully reusable orbital rocket has been built – it’s an insanely hard problem. Moreover, it must be rapidly & completely reusable (like an airplane). This is the only way to make life multiplanetary. Efficiencies of scale is why Starship is so large.”

“@thesheetztweetz Full & rapid reusability is the holy grail of orbital rocketry”

“@PPathole @Rainmaker1973 The amazing part will be having an orbital rocket that is fully & rapidly reusable with any payload at all! Everyone else gave up when they realized that their fully reusable payload<0. We still have a long way to go.”

“@SciGuySpace SpaceX provided its knowledge of crewed parachute systems to Boeing and we are happy to be helpful in any other ways. Designing parachutes for orbital, crewed spacecraft is much harder than it may seem. Was a major challenge for SpaceX.”

“@Erdayastronaut Building 100 Starships/year gets to 1000 in 10 years or 100 megatons/year or maybe around 100k people per Earth-Mars orbital sync”

“@yasin_shafiei @thejackbeyer @NASASpaceflight @BocaChicaGal @NicAnsuini Late next month maybe, but November seems highly likely. We will have two boosters & ships ready for orbital flight by then, with full stack production at roughly one every two months.”

“@ajtourville @SpaceX A truly reusable orbital-entry-class heat shield is the single biggest technology problem remaining”

“@ID_AA_Carmack But we need a heat shield that can handle Mars atmospheric entry conditions with a heavy payload, so the ballistic coefficient will necessarily be high. Steel is unfortunately hopeless. No one has ever made a truly reusable orbital heat shield, so this is an extremely tough”

“@SciGuySpace Yes, detailed review of the first orbital Starship, explaining the pros & cons of each design decision”

“@SpacexVision An orbital propellant depot optimized for cryogenic storage probably makes sense long-term”

“@spacecoast_stve @NASASpaceflight Falcon was 25% of successful orbital launches in 2020, but maybe a majority of payload to orbit. Anyone done the math?”

“@Erdayastronaut Making a fully reusable orbital rocket of any design is one of the hardest engineering problems of all time. Much, much harder than going to the Moon, which is why it still hasn’t been solved. I am cautiously optimistic that Starship will achieve full reusability next year.”

“@Teslarati .@NASA support for reusability with high reliability, the critical breakthrough for orbital rockets, has made a big difference”

“@BryceSpaceTech Still basically nothing compared to the orbital mass flux needed for a base on moon or Mars”

“@flcnhvy @SciGuySpace F9 iteration slowed down as payloads became too important to risk. Little change is expected going forward with F9/FH or Dragon. Starship production & thus iterative improvement will be much faster than Falcon. Driving hard for fully reusable orbital flight this year!”

“RT @SpaceX: Falcon 9 completes the first 30th launch and landing of an orbital class rocket https://t.co/L7pLOhID1D”

“@Teslarati This isn’t quite correct. An orbital rocket needs precision that’s 3X to 4X better than a water tower, so super precise parts, fixtures & welding are needed. Suborbital is much more forgiving.”

“@JeffBezos Not quite "rarest". SpaceX Grasshopper rocket did 6 suborbital flights 3 years ago & is still around. https://t.co/6j9ERKCNZl”

“RT @SpaceX: Falcon 9 lifts off from pad 4E in California ahead of completing the 400th landing of an orbital class rocket and delivering 27…”

“RT @SpaceX: This was the first Starship to be static fired on the orbital launch mount, which was modified by engineers and technicians at…”

“@Teslaconomics Starship already reached orbital velocity, which is success for all other rockets. Achieving full reusability will be profound not for reasons of valuation, but because it will enable consciousness to extend permanently beyond Earth.”

“RT @SpaceX: Falcon 9 launches 28 @Starlink satellites from Florida and completes the 500th launch and landing of an orbital class booster h…”

“@engineers_feed A 10% reduction in g would make orbital rockets so much easier, but a 10% increase would make them almost impossible”

“RT @BrendanCarrFCC: The FCC welcomes and now seeks comment on the SpaceX application for Orbital Data Centers. The proposed system would s…”

“RT @SpaceX: Falcon is the first orbital-class rocket capable of recovery and reuse. The first stage booster supporting this mission will co…”

“@levie Tickets to orbital hotels, the moon and Mars will be a lot less than people think.”

“Jeff maybe unaware SpaceX suborbital VTOL flight began 2013. Orbital water landing 2014. Orbital land landing next. https://t.co/S6WMRnEFY5 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2t15vP1PyoA”

“RT @XFreeze: Elon Musk perfectly explains why fully reusable orbital rockets are insanely hard to build Our Earth has quite strong gravity…”