SpaceX uses a crane to mate the upper and lower sections of Starship Mk 1 for the first time on September 27, 2019.
- $4 is developing a stainless-steel $4 rocket system at its private launch site in $4.
- On Friday, SpaceX mated the lower and upper sections of $4 Mk 1 - a 164-foot-tall prototype - for the first time. The vehicle is a follow-up to a shorter and stubbier prototype called Starhopper.
- Photos and videos show the new rocket ship's final assembly. "Starship will allow us to inhabit other worlds," company founder $4 tweeted after the vehicle was mated.
- Musk is due to provide an update on the company's Starship program on Saturday around 8 p.m. ET from $4.
- $4
A day before Elon Musk is $4 - an enormous and fully reusable $4 - the tech mogul's rocket company, SpaceX, has polished off a gleaming prototype.
SpaceX built the new shiny, stainless-steel test vehicle, called Starship Mk 1, at its launch site in Boca Chica, Texas, amid $4 of about two dozen residents.
Workers for the company first attached two large wings to the lower half of Starship Mk 1 in the middle of the week. They then worked through the night on Friday to add canards (or wings) to the upper section.
Over the course of an hour on Friday afternoon, they lifted the upper section with a huge construction crane, moved it over the lower section, and carefully dropped it into place. YouTube user $4, who lives in South Texas, recorded the process and shared $4:
Rachel and Gene Gore, who run the website $4 (a reference to nearby South Padre Island), also live in the area and were on-scene to record the mating of Starship Mk 1 from a $4 $4.
One of their photos shows workers beginning to fix the two sections into place on the end of telescoping booms:
Musk $4 the Starship Mk 1 prototype is about 164 feet tall and weighs about $4 without any fuel, or about as heavy as a blue whale.
Once filled with liquid methane and oxygen at the launch pad, though, it may weigh seven times that amount. A full-scale and operational $4 once stacked atop a gigantic rocket booster dubbed Super Heavy.
"Starship will allow us to inhabit other worlds," Musk $4 on Friday after sharing the photo below, later $4: "To make life as we know it multiplanetary."
Construction cranes help mate the upper and lower sections of SpaceX's Starship Mk 1 prototype for the first time on September 27, 2019.
Musk will present new updates about SpaceX's Starship system on Saturday
Starship Mk 1 is not built to fly to Mars. Rather, it's an early test vehicle to try out new technologies that will lead to a full-scale Mars ship.
Its construction follows an earlier 60-foot-tall prototype, called $4, that flew to 500 feet and landed on a nearby concrete pad in August.
The latest prototype does have three car-size $4 attached its base, though, which Musk hopes will propel the craft to more than 12 miles high before the end of this year. A follow-on launch may send the crude steel-paneled rocket ship around Earth.
Musk is due to present the latest
SpaceX has yet to confirm there will be a livestream, but the company typically broadcasts from its $4 just prior to each of Musk's major announcements.
Read more: $4