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SpaceX is preparing to launch the 14th flight of Starship, it's new, fully reusuable spacecraft. The first ever reusable super-heavy lift vehicle, and the world's most powerful rocket, Starship is an exciting and new spacecraft. Starship is going to take it's first orbital flight next week on the 28th, and is going to lift off from Starbase, in Texas, and will land in the East Pacific Ocean.
Starship will be one of the two upcoming spacecraft to be returning humans to the lunar surface, with the HLS Starship (Human Landing System Starship) parts arriving in Texas this week.
Starship Flight 14 will complete a 10 hour mission when launched, deploying new, Starlink V3 satellites into orbit, expanding Starlink's internet capability.
In addition, heat tiles from Flight 13 are being tiled onto the Flight 14 Starship, being the first re-usable elements of these missions before the full, rapid, reusability that is planned.
Currently, the Starship's booster (bottom part, silver, in the image to the right) has been rolled out to the launchpad for stacking, with the actual Starship itself (top part, black) being attached to it soon for pre-flight checks.
SpaceX intends to launch thousands of Starship flights per year by the end of the decade, which has been seen by some as an unrealistic goal and impossible, but, only time will tell of the launch cadence possible with this new spacecraft.
If this launch cadence is possible, Starship can lift 100-150 tons per launch to low Earth orbit, and with an estimate of 2,000 flights per year, by SpaceX's goals, that would mean lifitng 200,000-250,000 tons per year into low Earth orbit and beyond, a truly unprecedented payload capacity. (That is more than 450 International Space Stations of mass)
Starship Flight 14, is set to launch no earlier than Monday, September 28th, 2026.
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