After last week’s accident involving Starship SN9 in the High Bay combined with the rapid progress of the next batch of prototypes, it’s fair to wonder what SpaceX’s plan is to wrap up 2020.

Both Pad A and Pad B are operational at the launch site. SpaceX clarified as much in a release on its website just prior to the SN8 test flight and CEO Elon Musk has also said in response to a tweet from RGV Aerial Photography that such a situation will occur “real soon.”

It will be real soon

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 30, 2020

Also, at the time of this article, the next planned road closures for Highway 4 are Monday, Dec. 28 and Tuesday, Dec. 29.

Primary Date: Closure Scheduled for Monday, Dec 28, 2020 from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm https://t.co/m8sj2jnYuO

— Boca Chica Road Closures (@BocaRoad) December 16, 2020

We know SN9 has a significantly damaged canard and a slightly damaged aft flap after last week’s mishap. The large crane “Tankzilla” has already moved the prototype out of the High Bay to remove the broken test stand it was sitting on before putting it back in. As of the writing of this article, the crane was still securely holding the ship in place.

The question now becomes where and when SpaceX will make the repairs. Will it be on the launch pad itself? During assembly of Starship prototypes, canards are typically attached to the nosecone before the cone itself is even mated with the barrel section. It’s easiest and safest to attach these aerosurfaces when the cone is closest to the ground.

SN9 obviously presents a different problem as the ship is already fully stacked and the damaged canard is roughly 150 feet off the ground. Squeezing into the High Bay past Tankzilla to make such a repair/replacement would seem inefficient at best and quite dangerous at worst.

The aft flap presents less of an issue given its position on the prototype and replacing it in the High Bay would be considerably less dangerous.

On the day of SN9’s fall, we saw another flap being delivered to the production site, but there’s growing speculation that could’ve been meant for SN10 or possibly another in-progress prototype.

Currently, SN10’s tank section is fully outfitted in the Mid Bay and only lacks aerosurfaces for completion. On the evening of Dec. 15, Mary from NSF spotted a canard being installed on SN10’s nosecone. By all intents and purposes, it’s nearly ready for a rollout of its own.

That brings us back to the original question: is SpaceX planning to have both SN9 and SN10 on the pad at the same time? Will SN9’s pushed-back timeline and the rapid advent of SN10 make it more feasible that they share a pad? The layout of the launch pad area gives each pad considerable distance from the other in the event of a launch, so there’s minimal risk that one would be damaged by the other during a test flight.

It could still be that only SN9 makes it out to the pad first after these delays/repairs are over. Or, at this point, maybe SN10 cuts in line. One thing is for sure, it makes very little sense to have another near-fully assembled prototype loitering at the production site for another month and it should be an exciting end to an otherwise dreary year no matter what happens!

The fully-assembled prototype had been resting in the High Bay (the tallest of three massive storage/assembly buildings) at the production facility when cameras from YouTuber and local resident LabPadre caught the 160+ foot tall craft falling forward and colliding with the building’s walls.

Exclusive video of SN9 tipping in High Bay. Just a minor faux pas. #SpaceX #Starship #BocaChica #Texas https://t.co/JaFLQLZLfA

— LabPadre (@LabPadre) December 11, 2020

Per photos from the NASASpaceFlight forum, SN9 has since been righted by the massive crane nicknamed “Tankzilla” by the SpaceX fan community and the damaged stand which had apparently buckled under its weight removed. It’s worth noting that this is the first time SpaceX has fully stacked a Starship prototype at the production site on a normal stand and not at the launch pad.

One of the canards already in place on SN9’s nosecone suffered significant damage and will likely need to be replaced, and one of the aft flaps showed slight disfiguration as well. The nosecone itself had a noticeable dent from the impact but, by and large, the rest of the ship’s hull seemed to have escaped no worse for wear.

After the stand was removed, SN9 was placed back inside the High Bay.

Tankzilla has now given Starship SN9 a lift back into the high bay. ??@NASASpaceflight https://t.co/4uKa4oKDDw pic.twitter.com/JY7kTK94SB

— Mary (@BocaChicaGal) December 14, 2020

The outside of the High Bay shows no indentation where the ship hit, so the building’s stability seems to be intact. Scaffolding that lines the interior of the High Bay may not have been so lucky as SN9 apparently fell directly into it.

The incident comes just days after Cameron County authorities published a planned road closure for 12-9 p.m. CDT on Monday, Dec. 14 for the stated purpose of rolling SN9 to the launch pad, an astonishingly fast turnaround given SN8 flew its test flight just days earlier, and its wreckage is still being cleared from the landing pad. That closure was cancelled Monday morning and a new one has not been scheduled to replace at the time of publishing of this piece.

On the day of the incident, “Everyday Astronaut” YouTuber Tim Dodd reported on Twitter that the crews on the ground were “calm and collected” immediately after the incident.

It appears to be in good shape. The site down here is calm and collected. They’re already getting the lift mount ready to pick it up. Way too soon to know if it’s ok, even if not SN10 is literally on the way. Two more pics – pic.twitter.com/rU2iVVfGRM

— Everyday Astronaut (@Erdayastronaut) December 11, 2020

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has not commented on the issue via Twitter, and left Brownsville after the accident to return to Hawthorne, CA via the Twitter account @ElonJet.

Took off from Brownsville, Texas, US. pic.twitter.com/9UiUtA9486

— Elon Musk & SpaceX’s Jet (@ElonJet) December 11, 2020

While the SN9 situation is addressed, prototypes SN10 and 11 are still positioned in the Mid Bay, and booms/cranes have been seen working on them continuously. SN10 lacks only aft flaps and a nosecone to be fully assembled, and SN11 is also nearly complete with only stacking and aero surfaces needed.

Twitter user @brendan2908 has an updated docket of the progress of each Starship prototype in production whose components have been spotted and the latest update shows rapid progress.

Today, SN8 successfully lifted off, ascended to 12.5km, bellyfloped and performed its landing flip maneuver with precise flap control to reach its landing point. It doesn’t matter that it exploded. Making it as far as it did definitely exceeded my expectaions. SN9 you’re up next! pic.twitter.com/nxebV8MWJm

— Brendan (@brendan2908) December 10, 2020

We’ve literally put a probe into interstellar space (thank you, Voyager 2) where it is still​ ​ sending back reading of what it sees out there. Let that sink in.

We’ve put humans on the moon. We’ve put multiple pieces of equipment and rovers on Mars. News of something else getting to the red planet is almost overlooked, unthinkably, in light of other current events or happenings.

We’ve landed crafts on Venus and, just recently, have taken samples from asteroids and returned them to Earth. We’re not just bordering on the realm of science fiction, we’ve already entered it.

And yet, attention and hype seem to have plateaued. Maybe a large part of it is the glacially slow pace that NASA and its associated cohorts have made with regards to rockets, the price tags in the billions of dollars range and the overall not-so-good reputation of government red tape being slathered all over these projects which were supposed to fundamentally alter the shape of our future.

Enter SpaceX.

You’re well aware by now that SpaceX is revolutionary for several reasons. First, it’s a completely private company and the only four entities that have put astronauts into orbit aboard their rockets are the United States’, Chinese and Russian government-sponsored programs, and SpaceX. That alone is remarkable.

Prior to 2015, no one had ever landed their own rocket booster successfully for reuse. SpaceX has now done it 68 times.

The Starship program that is rapidly transforming a remote strip of land in South Texas has goals that will make the Falcon 9’s progress and all that came before it, as impressive and groundbreaking as it was, pale in comparison.

Starship isn’t just aiming to be the first ever reusable two-stage​ human/cargo transport system ever (revolutionary in and of itself), it’s doing it at warp-speed when compared to its competitors.

While Starship’s genesis stretches back to 2015 when it was still in the ideation phase of Elon Musk’s considerable brain, the last year-and-a-half have seen amazingly fast process. SpaceX has successfully built eight prototypes, flown two of them to 150 meters, and today had a successful launch with their fully built-out version of the second stage to 12.5 kilometers. Not to mention, it has established a production cadence that has seven other prototypes right behind this one (dubbed SN8 for Starship Number 8) should it not survive the testing. Also, it has begun production on the mammoth booster section that will assist in getting Starship to the moon, Mars and beyond.

Musk has described prototyping as the easy part of developing something, but building the “machine that builds the machine” as the trick, and arguably the hardest aspect. The real thing to be excited about with Starship and the future it will unlock are how quickly it is being developed and improved, not replicated.

Eagle-eyed observers near the Boca Chica facility have spotted components of parts ranging all the way up to SN16 with surely more to come in the near future.

It’s hard for the casual observer to really appreciate what is happening here in 2020 when feeds refresh every three seconds and news is curated/delivered in even less time. Starship’s fundamental design will change the cost of delivering people and cargo into space, which figures to change the economics of a dormant industry like we’ve never seen.

Innovation, speed, and improvement. SpaceX has established a pattern with nearly every craft it has developed and Starship appears to be the company’s and Musk’s 9th symphony.