SpaceX Starship moved to launchpad for 6th flight test SpaceX has transported its Starship spacecraft to the launchpad in preparation for a scheduled flight test on November 18. Elon Musk's rocketeers posted images on the billionaire's social media mouthpiece, X, showing the "Ship" portion of the stack headed to the launch tower. Clearly visible beneath the S31 numbering of the …
Removing heat tiles will lower the mass which can be add to payload capability, yet, Starship/Booster V1 is still woefully below spec. Elon estimates that it can ferry 30-50t so cut that by at least half for true figures and likely still be short. Thus far, Starship hasn't been sent into orbit and has had zero payload but the tanks still show as being nearly dry.
"Oh woe is me - a test article which hasn't aimed for orbit hasn't ended up there accidentally - they've had the energy - but deliberately not gone there."
Do you skip lots of words when reading? I said they hadn't sent Starship to orbit yet.... not on the test card.... haven't yet given it a try. Until they do give it a try and it works, your assertion that they have the energy is a load of dingo's kidneys .... Unless you work there on the team that would know. Do you? Have you violated your NDA nine ways to Sunday?
At this stage of the Apollo program, a Saturn V had sent a capsule to circle the moon and return successfully. Starship/SuperHeavy can't even get to the moon without nearly two dozen supporting flights by its stated design specs. Elon is trying to shoehorn something they want to make so they can deliver Starlink satellites more efficiently into the mold of a HLS mission.
He is saying that the supposedly most powerful rocket ever built hasn't been able to give orbital velocity to ANYTHING in 6 launches (counting the next). So either it's not capable, or they didn't fire the rocket at full power and more surprises will come if/when they do that. In other words, SpaceX is playing with a huge rocket, but whether it's actually any good isn't quite certain
Mach has decided that Musk's stated intent to colonise Mars is just words to inspire overtime from his employees. Musk's personality and history lend enormous support to that hypothesis. On the other hand, the rate of engine production and the scale of the test facilities at McGregor and Boca Chica are wildly excessive for developing a rocket that is intended to mostly launch Starlinks. This is based on the enormous number of third party cameras covering the sites 24/7, satellite photography and roughly weekly aerial photography. I could understand the scepticism if all we had to go on was Musk Tweets. (According to Musk's lawyers no reasonable person would consider a Musk Tweet to be a source of factual information.)
Sending a Starship to Mars or the Moon requires propellant transfer. Even sending a large payload to GTO requires some propellant transfer. Starlinks do not require propellant transfer. Mach sees the number of propellant transfer launches required to send Starship to the Moon as a deal breaker. IIRC the number in SpaceX's HLS proposal was 12. Depending on what numbers you pick it could be anywhere between 3 and 19. This is an enormous problem for some people and completely irrelevant to others. From my point of view, the plan is to make Starship launches cheap so a large number does not matter that much to SpaceX. It does not matter at all to NASA: tax payers pay the same whether it takes 3 or 19 launches to refuel a Starship HLS.
If you try to follow Mach's point of view, Starlink does not require both rapid launch cadence _and_ high payload. The full constellation of nearly 40,000 satellites replaced every 5 years only needs a launch every 4.5 days (or more if you reduce the payload below the original target of 150t). Slowing the launch cadence allows more time for propellant boil off, increasing the number of launches required to refill Starshp HLS. Decreasing the payload increases the number of launches. Some combination of the two make Starship HLS and Starship to Mars impractical - if the target launch cost is exceeded by a large enough factor. Mach wants to see Starship as a Starlink launcher that is a bad fit for HLS. He selects evidence accordingly and pooh-poohs anything that counters his point of view. SpaceX's hardware rich incremental development feeds into his obsession. He can point at IFT5 and the likely results for IFT6 as overwhelming evidence that the current version of Starship is completely useless for going to the Moon (no argument there).
The current version of Starship is also useless for launching Starlinks. Lots of space enthusiasts (not necessarily Musk fanatics) expect incremental improvement from SpaceX. There is abundant (non-Tweet) evidence that SpaceX has significant improvements in the pipeline. I have confidence that those improvements will make version 3+ Starships viable for launching Starlinks (from Florida) and that propellant transfer will work at some point - very unlikely to be ready for a landing in 2026. I am sure HLS will reach the Moon. The first one may do so at quite high velocity. (SpaceX does not get a payday for a hard landing.) The next one may fail too - but for a different reason. I am sure Mach will get thoroughly wound up when people like me put "incremental development" in a comment for such an event.
"Until they do give it a try and it works, your assertion that they have the energy is a load of dingo's kidneys"
No it's an assertion based on physics - because the energy that was delivered is only a tiny fraction short of orbital - it's pretty easy to calculate given altitude and velocity information we have.
There is also a reasonably significant amount of propellant venting whilst suborbital, more energy they could have used.
There is also quite a bit of fuel left for landing... more energy.
"At this stage of the Apollo program, a Saturn V had sent a capsule to circle the moon and return successfully. Starship/SuperHeavy can't even get to the moon without nearly two dozen supporting flights by its stated design specs."
Well, maybe SpaceX could try butting a small detachable module on top and use the Ship part as"simply" as a 2nd stage so only that little bit at the top has to go all the way to the Moon instead that hulking great big wasteful Starship thing? They could probably save even more weight by not bothering to save fuel for a landing and just throw away the entire thing as part of the fastest and most efficient launch possible.
Oh look. My Apple is just like an Orange. Apart from the colour. And the taste. And the entire structure of the fruit. The skin seems to have a different texture too. But other than those few minor things, it's just like an orange.
"At this stage of the Apollo program,"
I hadn't realised that the Apollo program was the development of a fully reusable rocket.
It's also not getting cold war levels of funding (over 110 billion in 2023 dollars for just the Saturn V)
SLS has eaten 24B by 2023, and SS is estimated to have eaten about 5B at the same time (all from payloadspace.com), so maybe 6-7B now?
I think its pretty clear these flights are still a test programme, albeit with huge strides being made on each flight so far, ( it's really not that long ago that they destroyed the launch pad!). If you are not currently carrying payload why would you load unnecessary fuel? You would load as per the intended flight profile.
Regarding the payload estimates, I am sure these come from an extremely capable engineering team, its just that Musk chooses to personally articulate it to the public, I suppose he feels he can as majority Space X shareholder and top gobshite, not many in the organisation are likely to strenuously object.
The published spec for V1 Starship was zero tons to orbit. The spec for Falcon 9 increased with time so you have acknowledged the same is happening for Starship. The total heat shield mass for the last launch was 11.5t so even with your (dingo's kidneys) divide by two the increased performance cannot be attributed to only the slightly reduced heat shield.
A big step for Starship will be the switch from Raptor 2 (2.26MN) to Raptor 3 (2.75MN) engines. Good news! that will not happen for at least two more flights so you will be able to spout similar crap at least twice more. I know you are not stupid or ignorant. Why are you pretending?
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
