SpaceX founder Elon Musk posted on Twitter a photo of the Starship ship with the finished tail unit.
“Starship SN8 with tail,” the entrepreneur signed. He also added that the front end and front valves will be ready next week and the SN9 next month. According to him, the first flight will take place 15 kilometers.
Musk also said that the flaps are now directly driven by electric motors with a gearbox. “No more hydraulics,” he concluded. The billionaire's post has received almost 39 thousand likes and more than a thousand comments at the time of writing.
In early August, SpaceX tested the lunar ship. The fifth test prototype of the Starship SN5 lunar-Martian spacecraft of the American company SpaceX took off.
Starship is the second stage of SpaceX's Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) reusable space transport system. The second stage will receive six Raptor engines, the first one – 31. The Raptor, which runs on methane and oxygen, has the highest thrust-to-weight ratio (the ratio of the thrust developed by the power unit to its weight) of any rocket engine ever created. In a reusable version, the BFR system is designed to launch up to 150 tons of payload into low-Earth orbit and return to Earth up to 50 tons, as well as comfortable transportation of up to 100 people (2-3 per cabin) to the Moon and Mars. The system should fly in the first half of the next decade.
