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Thursday, August 17, 2023

Is the Next Starship Orbital Test Flight Coming Soon?

I wouldn't think so, but some interesting developments have come up in the last few days that are pointing in that direction.  

The biggest argument against it is in the big news.  After the unsuccessful first Orbital Flight Test, the Federal Aviation Administration said SpaceX would have to submit a mishap investigation report to the agency for review before they would be cleared to launch again.  On Tuesday the 15th the agency said they had received the report and had begun their review.  

"When a final mishap report is approved, it will identify the corrective actions SpaceX must make," an FAA spokesperson told Ars. "Separately, SpaceX must modify its license to incorporate those actions before receiving authorization to launch again.

SpaceX's filing of the mishap investigation report was first reported by Payload, a space industry news publication. The report's content hasn't been released, and SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.

The report at Payload implies that SpaceX had delayed submitting the report until they had the result of the big static firing back on August 6 to ensure the changes they had made to the Orbital Launch Mount, and especially the most important change, the water deluge system, were proven to have worked. 

  • The water deluge system aims to prevent the scattering of rock and sand particles over miles of surrounding areas—a problem that plagued Starship’s April test flight.
  • On Aug. 6, the company successfully tested the system during a Starship Booster static fire. The demonstration turned the fire from the Raptor engines into steam, which appeared to create a cleaner, quieter, and shorter plume. 

All of that bodes well, but the FAA might consider the failure of the Flight Termination System to split the booster in half for up to 40 seconds a higher priority and the FTS upgrade would need to be certified before they could be cleared to fly.  Musk said in May that step would probably take longer than anything else in readying for the next Starship test flight.  

Another potential delay is that lawsuit that environmental groups filed against the FAA.  Need I point out how heavily the inputs from "green" organizations are weighted in the current administration?  

There's also a lawsuit filed against the FAA in May by environmental groups seeking a full environmental impact statement and study of SpaceX's launch operations in Texas before allowing Starship test flights to resume. A federal court permitted SpaceX to join the suit as a co-defendant with the FAA in July, then the company asked the court to dismiss the suit.

Depending on the definition of "full environmental impact statement," that could take a couple of years. 

In light of those obvious roadblocks and obstacles, I find it rather interesting that SpaceX requested a maritime exclusion zone from the U.S. Coast Guard for “rocket launching activities” on August 31.  I find it hard to imagine they could actually be ready to launch, although another static firing doesn't seem out of the question.   A quick check of the Cameron County road closures website doesn't have August 31 listed.  Instead it shows an 8AM to 8PM closure on Monday, August 21 with the 22nd and 23rd as alternative days. 

Booster 7 and Ship 25, just a visual reminder of what we could be seeing soon.  Photo from SpaceX on Twitter.  Just because it's a cool pic.

All in all, while I don't think there's much of a chance that anything will launch by August 31, SpaceX is closer to launching again than not.  We may see another static fire or even something we've not seen before.  The story was that Booster 9 was getting the hot staging adapter added so perhaps it's possible they'll fire the Starship while attached to Booster 9 to ensure the booster can take the few seconds of that it will get in operation. 



9 comments:

  1. Again, the FAA considering the failure of the FTS is not unique to the FAA. Range Safety at CCSFS would do the same thing for any launch from there. The US is responsible for any incidents occurring from rocket launches from OUR territory.

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  2. Or, thinking way out of the box on this one, they'll put some stripped-down (not finished) ship on top of the booster and launch it up and back down again, like they did with ship 15 (and before).

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    1. It could be very entertaining to watch them try to catch the booster in the chopsticks. Or very disastrous. That's probably a couple of years out.

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    2. I think they won't risk the launching structures before they get all the kinks worked out of getting to orbit. They do still have to provide the HLS for the Artemis missions (which might launch from the Cape, though).

      Next big demonstration is getting back down from orbital velocity, the corollary to that being landing it recoverably on land. Then (and perhaps in parallel) is to demonstrate on-orbit refueling, something NASA still believes cannot be done.

      They have a lot of chainsaws in the air.

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  4. The Starship will be "landing" off the coast of Hawai'i, but there will be nothing there to catch it, so it will be a water "landing". If *I* had anything to say about it, I'd have the flight profile set up to act as if it's going to be in position to be caught by the "chopsticks" (i.e., do the "flip" and go ass-end down and then hover over the surface of the water until the tanks are dry - at which point it plops down tail-first into the water. It'll float, of course, unless they choose to open the tank vents. However, they will be able to pull it to land and analyze just how well the heat tiles have performed, and any burn-throughs.

    We Nerdle are just about peeing our pants in excitement for Orbital Test Flight #2 - Elon gives it 50% success to orbit, because they are also going to try hot-staging for the very first time on a US rocket within the last 50 or so years!

    "Excitement is guaranteed!" = Elon Musk

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    1. Yeah, they need to make orbit with Starship, there are too many naysayers, including inside NASA, that are bad mouthing them for not making it to the moon yet. To add on to what Malatrope said, they not only need to demonstrate on-orbit refueling to NASA, they're under contract to develop it for NASA.

      Add-in the voices that say the reason the USSR's N1 failed way back then was it had too many engines - N1 had 30 while Starship has 33 - so if 30 couldn't be managed then we can't manage 33 now. If I can borrow a line from humor columnist Dave Barry, the USSR of the late 60s couldn't make a good clock radio so it's dumb to compare their computer control systems to ours in 2020+

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    2. SiG, the N1 used changing the rocket thrust to steer the first-stage booster - no thrust vectoring was available to them at that time. However, they've got hot-staging down to a T now, and WE have TV and *much* better computer control nowadays! So, methinks Musk will be more than successful this time. And I can guaran-darn-tee you that the FTS will work this next time. Bigger/longer shaped charges, from what I have read...

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  5. On another website concerned with Starship, in a comment or article, it was pointed out that there has been some activity on one of the suborbital launch mounts and wonder if SpaceX was maybe going to launch one of the remaining, bypassed Starships with an improved FTS to verify that system by destroying the Starship much as the Dragon 2 escape system expenditure of a booster.

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