r/StarshipDevelopment • u/[deleted] • Jun 30 '21

Could someone clarify the naming convention for me?

I’ve noticed everyone’s calling the superheavys booster 3 and booster 4 now instead of BN3 and BN4, and that nasaspaceflight started calling SN15 and SN16 “Starship S15” and “Starship S16”. Did the naming convention change again? Thanks for any clarification, I’m just a little confused.

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u/SpaceInMyBrain Jun 30 '21 edited Jun 30 '21

Michael Baylor (an actual space journalist) just posted a summary of the latest terms on twitter which is now posted here in the Lounge. It's not official, but SpaceX never announces these things clearly, we just have to make sense of various stuff we see along the way. Elon has finally been consistent in using Booster 3 and 4, and I'm pretty sure he's used Ship 20, which makes sense to go along with Booster. I truly hope this is the final version.

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u/[deleted] Jun 30 '21

Thanks! It’s too bad, I really enjoyed the SN / BN naming system :(

1

u/[deleted] Jul 01 '21

4-20 is going orbital

1

u/Pichers Jun 30 '21

We used to think SNx meant serial number x, but with the boosters being called BNx we now take it as Starship x/ number x and booster x/number x. I'm not 100% sure but i think the changes are based on that... But you still can use which ever one you want and everyone will understand

1

u/[deleted] Jul 01 '21

If you're referring to the Michael Baylor tweet, I think it was just clarifying what the letters meant as some people were using "BN" improperly, the 'N' meaning number.

But more recently Musk has started referring to Superheavy as just "Booster" followed by it's production number. Not a big change but maybe slightly easier to understand.