SpaceX limbers up for Starship flight 11 as launch pad faces retirement SpaceX is counting down to today's 11th flight test of its monster Starship rocket, with weather looking suitable for the opening of the launch window at 18:15 CT (or around 17:00 CT, if the company's billionaire boss is to be believed). If all goes according to plan, the launch will mark the final hurrah for version two of …
They did run some prop transfer tests on an earlier flight.
The block 3 ships, which are due to start flying early next year, include hardware to allow ships to dock back-to-back for more representative tests.
SpaceX announced plans for commercial Moon operations in 2028, and Mars operations in 2030. Will be interesting to see if they can keep to that!
Actually we are officially in daylight savings time until some time in November, at least this time we fall back. Death to springing forward with sharp nasty teeth! No idea what the long form designation is, here we call it CDT for Central Daylight Time. After we fall back it will be CST for Central Standard Time.
Many replies, but nobody bothered to answer the question quantitatively...
CT = Central (US) Time. We are currently on "Daylight Saving" or "Summer" time, so five hours behind Universal Time. So "five PM Central Time" would be 22:00 UTC. (Since El Reg has a passably international readership, providing times in UTC, perhaps in addition to local times, would seem like a good idea.)
Apogee was 192km, 7.114km/s. A circular orbit at 192km would be 7.791km/s. Going the extra 677m/s has real problems if the de-orbit burn fails. Instead of stopping just above the ocean in the keep clear zone Starship would come down months from now at some random place on Earth. People would be furious. (For a start Musk would be upset about not having re-entry data from flight eleven before the launch of flight twelve. :-)
They came back at the same velocity as return from the lowest end of LEO. That provided a useful test of the heat shield which is the biggest unknown at this point.
There is a long list of differences between block 2 and block 3 Starship. I could not find a reasonably modern list, so from memory the big ones are:
Raptor 3 has more thrust, less mass and eliminates the need for the protective skirt on the booster (and probably gets rid of some fire suppression equipment added to extinguish fires in that skirt). The booster an ship are both taller allowing more propellant. The interstage has changed completely and will not be discarded on the way down. It will have covers on one side so stage 2 exhaust starts the flip before the boost back burn. There are more changes to the plumbing that likely reduce the minimal required residual propellant.
There is a long list of differences between block 2 and block 3 Starship. I could not find a reasonably modern list, so from memory the big ones are:
Being a simple soul, I just picked up on 'bigger'. It was interesting watching the flight, especially the descent. I watched the NASASpaceflight stream and their commentators said this mission included some fairly aggressive (and impressive?) manouvering to demonstate it could land where it should. Then some footage from SpacX's chase drone showing that getting into position to film the landing. Which I guess meant it landed close to where it should have.
Starship also seemed a bit less crispy, but still crispy enough to mean rapid reuse is a way off. But with changes to both the booster and the ship, how much testing will have to be repeated. They reckoned Musk want to test that this year, but with the time left, that might seem a lil ambitious.
"Starship also seemed a bit less crispy, but still crispy enough to mean rapid reuse is a way off."
That's a very big problem for NASA. They've given SpaceX nearly $3bn with a follow-on contract for another $4bn-ish to provide a system for getting astronauts from lunar obit to the surface of the moon and back. SpaceX'x mission architecture relies on reusability to make it happen. This last flight didn't demonstrate getting to and from orbit and the booster, Super Heavy, had needed 9 new engines after it's previous flight and was ditched after this flight rather than being recovered. Granted, the hardware is obsolete and has been for a year now so they don't need it back to use again. It would give them more data about areas of the design and rocket engines are expensive. A v2 Raptor might be useful later for some sort of rapid pop-up mission. In a worst case, the metals could be recycled without having to dredge them up from the sea floor.
Testing the Pez dispenser again was pointless towards getting ready for the lunar work they've been paid to prepare.
True, but SpaceX plan to use Starship asap to launch their next generation Starlink (it's the only rocket big enough to do this).
Moon landing mission is completely different to what they are trying at the moment - needs a lot less power/fuel and there is no need for a heat shield (the ship will fly to the moon and then to/from the surface - it will not be returning to Earth.
Raptor 2 are obsolete and do not generate anywhere near the same thrust as the Raptor 3. They also require heat shields to protect them on re-entry, which is not the case with 3. 2 is known to be a bit temperamental, which explains why a number had to be replaced.
Raptor 2 is basically an advanced engineering prototype that has been used to allow development of Raptor, Starship and Super Heavy to be run in parallel.
"Moon landing mission is completely different to what they are trying at the moment - needs a lot less power/fuel and there is no need for a heat shield (the ship will fly to the moon and then to/from the surface - it will not be returning to Earth."
The lunar lander won't need a heat shield, but the 37 refueling tanker flights will. I think the orbital depot will stay in orbit so a means to keeping it on station will need to be in place and it also wouldn't need a heat shield. The booster needs to be ready to gas and go after a flight to keep a high enough cadence without needing a large barn full of them.
The specs on the v3 Raptor are aspirational, not proven. Until they've flown a few times, they are a big question mark. V2 was supposed to be a mission design until the goal posts were moved. If the current v3 doesn't work out, I expect it will be retroactively named v2.5.
3 isn't much bigger, 1m for booster and 2m for ship I think.
Aside from needing a whole new launch pad, you can also add 3 grid fins instead of 4. Catch on grid fins instead of the pins. Hot staging ring (interstage) is now part of booster and very similar to Soyuz in design. For ship, new nose cone design, new heatshield design, height increase is more for payload volume rather than propellent. Internally, lots of avionics changes, new fuelling including a new downcomer which is about the size of F9 stage 1.
I'm sure there are million other changes.
They didn't need block 3 to achieve orbit, they have enough performance still left to extend the burn if they had aimed for orbit.
Block 3, I would take any payload capacity figures with a pinch of salt and are dependant on orbit required anyway. Remember the F9 took many revisions before it reached the capability it has today.
Then Block 4 has 3 extra vac engines on the ship and will be 20m taller than block 3. It will need Gigabay to be built and I wouldn't hold my breath, maybe 2027 but more likely 2028 at the earliest.
You don't need to wonder, the flight plan was filed a while back. No orbit this time or next flight which will be the first block 3. If the first block 3 achieves relight and SpaceX and FAA are comfortable that SpaceX won't be leaving the 300 ton ship to do re-entry in a uncontrolled manner which probably won't be a good thing.
There were some marginal improvements in the condition of Starship after passing back through the atmosphere. The latest test is just a continuation of previous tests and used obsolete hardware. Was it really a good use of $100mn? That money could have been used to expedite facilities to build v3, recondition the first launch tower, etc.
I watched a short report about a private space station in planning that would have to be launched on Starship. It would also require a variant of Starship that isn't even in the CGI rendering stage of development which should be a concern for the company spending money on development.
Hmm. Successful launch, mission and splashdowns. No drama. The Musk-haters must be so disappointed.
I'd have thought it warranted its own article, rather than a grudging update admitting that success. Fret not, though, I'm sure the first attempts to use block 3 and pad 2 will provide enough cockups and explody interludes to keep the doom mongers happy.
On with the show...
"Hmm. Successful launch, mission and splashdowns. No drama. "
Hole in the Starship LOx tank and some sort of fire coming out of a hole in the nose. The live video of the landing was a bit off-frame, but later video is showing extensive damage once again from re-entry. Had they not been just putting it down in the ocean and instead trying to catch Starship, they'd have had a hot potato hanging on the tower. Starship would have also been coming down much more quickly as it would have needed the velocity to get to orbit. They'll need to test maneuvering the craft into a retro-thrust orientation and burning long enough to slow the speed way down to ease up on how much energy they have to bleed off against the heat shield. A one second burp of one engine in space is a beginning, but far short of what will be required. If they can't do a full duration burn needed for re-entry, they'll land somewhere in Mexico or the US mainland. Place your bets.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
