Spent most of the last week watching the Lapadre Live YouTube feed of the assembly of the SpaceX Mk1 Starship. All week it seemed like they were about to mate the two halves, and you've never seen so many cranes and in the end I managed to be out at the shop for the 5 minutes it took to lift the nose section up!
This is just before assembly as they put the 2nd canard on the nose cone. That big yellow crane in the middle was used to do the main lift. Great (clean) chatter on the YouTube channel with all the cranes named and the different types of worker.
The finished result the next day after Elon Musk's presentation where the forward plan seems to be:
- Nov - first flight (10s of km) of Mk1
- This year - 200km flight of Mk1
- Mk2 then probably takes over testing, still suborbital, no heat shield
- Mk3 makes first orbital flight ~ 2Q20
- Mk4 joins testing programme
- Work starts on the first Super Heavy booster
- Work starts on a "production" generation of Starships
- Lunar orbital flight ~ 2021
- Lunar landing ~ 2023 (prob before NASA)
- Unmanned flights to and landing on Mars (and return?) before human landing
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