Starship has been fully stacked

Its so interesting to watch this technology evolve, life and uncut. Its almost as if every other day another milestone is revealed. Especially as its a tech that one doesn&#x27;t work with (mechanical engineering &#x2F; rocket motor engineering etc).<p>Looking forward for all the great space missions that will be made possible by this (europa, enceladus, more comet missions &amp; many more space-telescopes), not so much for humanity becoming multi-planetary, as the scientific value is lower imo. E.g. a great project: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=NQFqDKRAROI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=NQFqDKRAROI</a>

And unstacked !<p>It was surprising to see that it only took them about an hour to unstack (I didn&#x27;t catch the stacking but I think I heard it was around the same amount of time ?).<p>I&#x27;m still very perplex about the &quot;catching&quot; mechanism they are designing, Musk mentioned in the Everyday Astronaut interview [1] that it was a very hard problem and I&#x27;m very curious to see if&#x2F;how they can solve it.<p>[1] : <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=t705r8ICkRw" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=t705r8ICkRw</a>

Only in America things like this can happen.<p>A whole industry bootstrapping itself into transforming exotic, mission critical hardware into a commodity; SpaceX is making flight hardware a commodity, just like Silicon Valley did with semiconductors!<p>Meanwhile Europeans are playing catch-up with the Falcon 9 (already 11 years old) and it looks like Ariane 6 won&#x27;t be competitive with SpaceX anyways [0]. And China is still raining toxic fuel and spent rocket stages on villages. [1]<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;2020&#x2F;11&#x2F;europes-challenger-to-the-falcon-9-rocket-runs-into-more-delays&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;2020&#x2F;11&#x2F;europes-challenger-t...</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;2019&#x2F;11&#x2F;china-keeps-dropping-toxic-rocket-parts-on-its-villages&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;2019&#x2F;11&#x2F;china-keeps-dropping...</a>

It&#x27;s pretty amusing that they assembled it with a boring old construction crane. No fancy VAB or custom scaffolding. No different than the latest cookie cutter &quot;luxury apartment building&quot;.

A tangential, silly observation. I hear Musk being called &quot;a Steve Jobs&quot; a lot... wouldn&#x27;t &quot;a Howard Hughes&quot; be closer to the mark? Maybe a generational thing....

Anyone know an estimated static fire&#x2F;launch date? I&#x27;m open to a meetup (and cold beverages under a canopy) within visual distance of the pad.

Looks small.