That's an incredible photo. Something about it makes me think of an old-timey silent film about alien invasions.

It reminds me of the old photos of builders eating their lunch atop half-finished skyscrapers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunch_atop_a_Skyscraper

I think it was inspired by that. There's a high resolution version here:

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;...

They also did an homage to that in Westworld Season 3!

https://www.postapocalypticmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2022...

Via: https://www.postapocalypticmedia.com/westworld-season-4-film...

That is an incredible picture, thank you.

A striking picture! Thanks for sharing!

oh wow, i always imagined those breaking fins to be about tennis racket size !

They look to be about 4m^2 in the main part. You could make a nice deck with one.

Here is Musk describing them as a dinosaur bear trap: https://youtu.be/t705r8ICkRw?t=1714

My desktop. My login screen is two Falcon heavy side boosters landing.

That is still my favorite background.

It still almost doesn’t look real.

My opinion that is biggest fete of engineering in the last decade. Amazing

Do you have a link?

Not sure where I found it. I think it is this.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Falcon_H...

Here's the full-sized pic:

https://rare-gallery.com/mocahbig/1305111-SpaceX-Starship-Bl...

I was going to say... who took the picture

but nowadays it can be a drone.

I was pondering but given the guys in the picture are on cherry picker type cranes, I'm guessing the photographer was on another of those. The quality looks a bit high for a drone.

> The quality looks a bit high for a drone.

There are drones which carry full DSLR cameras or even cinematography film cameras. I don't think you will be able to tell if the camera was hoisted by a crane or a drone based on image quality.

> given the guys in the picture are on cherry picker type cranes, I'm guessing the photographer was on another of those

I don't think so! That picture appears to be the fitment check of SN20 with B4 on 06th of August 2021.

I believe this picture shows the same scene from a different viewpoint: https://starship-spacex.fandom.com/wiki/SN20/Ship_20?file=E8...

As you can see the stack is standing next to the integration tower. If I were to hazard a guess most likely the photographer was on the tower. One could attempt to verify this by matching the terrain in the background with the view one would expect from the integration tower.

It was the first time the booster (bottom) and starship (top) had been mated together.

Dunno.

I found a youtube of drone footage of flying around starship and I think the camera is pointing south west like this (time set to 6 seconds in)

https://youtu.be/0sA9rGc80Y4?t=6

whereas from the tower it would be looking north east.

Even if you can get the resolution from a drone camera, the shot looks like someone spent quite a while lining everything up to look nice and like the historic NY pic.

> Re image quality, beyond the resolution it looks like someone spent a while getting things lined up nicely?

I don't know. There are really good drone photographers. They have remote controls for all the settings, and remote viewing is also possible. They could have lined it up with the drone. Or made the photo with even higher resolution and cropped it to perfection. Or made hundreds of photos and selected the best.

Not saying it was a drone. But the "quality looks a bit high for a drone" is not convincing me.

> given you can see the beach with a car to the left of starship and land to the right it suggests the camera was looking south west whereas from the tower you'd be looking north west.

I think you are right. Now based on that I think it was probably not photographed from the integration tower.

There is a fourth place it could have been shot from: There is the crane holding up the starship. You can see it on this image of the same hoist operation: https://x.com/BocaChicaGal/status/1423629854877028355/photo/...

The reason I don't think it was shot from a fourth cherry-picker is because I can't see a fourth one in any of the photos. It seems they only had 3 up on that day and they were all in the frame.

Ok. I now think it was a drone.

There is footage here that looks like it might be from that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi5DXe_65J8&t=52s

I think you are right! That is an excelent find!

Got me wondering why the visitors are not wearing helmets?

I love how utilitarian that rocket looks - still has all the layout marker marks and welding/grinding marks all over it.

This looks like one of the earlier prototype ships, when they were still working out the tile geometry, but still also wanted to do a dry run of stacking it.

You could not pay me enough to stand there…

I would pay anything to stand there.

I had that printed out as a poster, keep it on a wall in my office. It’s a great inspiration and looks great at the same time.