SpaceX, Musk Outline Plans to Increase Starship Cadence

SpaceX is continually trying to increase their cadence at everything they do, it's not surprising they're focused this time on Starship. Cadence won't improve until Starship's performance allows it, making that the main target. 

Today, April 6, SpaceX posted a video to X that appears to be like other "all hands meetings" we've seen before. This one, dated April 4, focused on making life multiplanetary with Starship. Early in the video, Musk states that "Starship is the first design of a rocket that's actually capable of making life multiplanetary." It's right around the 1:00 minute mark in the roughly 44 minute video. To do that, Starship has to be improved to meet its design performance limits.

There's a short teaser on YouTube that doesn't include that important statement. 

SpaceX could attempt to land a Starship booster as soon as the vehicle’s fifth flight as Elon Musk outlined plans to increase both the flight rate and the performance of the launch vehicle.
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Musk said that the fourth Starship/Super Heavy launch is planned “in about a month or so.” That is consistent with comments by SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell at the Satellite 2024 conference March 19, where she said that flight was scheduled for early May, pending an updated Federal Aviation Administration launch license. If the company holds to that schedule, the launch would take place less than two months after the vehicle’s third flight.

The goal of the fourth flight is for the Starship upper stage to get through the “high heating regime” of reentry and make a “controlled splat” into the ocean, he said. On the third flight, Starship broke up during reentry.

Musk mentioned that they also want to bring the Super Heavy booster back intact on the next flight, having it land “on essentially a virtual tower” in the Gulf of Mexico - which I interpret to mean it will slow to essentially zero speed above the water and then be lowered into the Gulf.

“If the landing on the virtual tower works, then we will actually try on Flight 5 to come back and land on the tower,” he said. “That is very much a success-oriented schedule, but it is in the realm of possibility.”

The booster for that next flight, B11, was static fired Friday the 5th.

April 5th static firing.  Image credit: SpaceX 

To support a higher cadence naturally requires more hardware. Before the March IFT-3,the company said they had four pairs of ships and boosters at Starbase. Musk said in the presentation the company would build “roughly six” more vehicles this year.

While the emphasis on building hardware naturally has to focus on Starship, Super Heavy boosters, and Raptor engines, don't forget the ground infrastructure - the things Musk refers to as "Stage Zero." You've probably heard that they're building a second launch mount in Starbase Boca Chica; they're also modifying and updating the launch mount at the Kennedy Space Center, next to pad 39A. They expect the KSC launch mount to be operational by the middle of next year.

“What we should probably expect is that we do the development launches here, test anything new here, build the rockets,” he said at Starbase, “and then probably most of the operational launches would be from the Cape.”

You might remember seeing the Raptor 2 engine next to the Raptor 1. There's a Raptor 3 that has been prototyped that's even simpler (fewer parts) than the Raptor 2. 

With the increased production rate will come increased payload capacity. Musk outlined improvements to the Raptor engine that will increase its thrust from 230 to 280 metric tons-force, and “ultimately” to more than 330 metric tons-force of thrust.

Perhaps the most astounding thing I heard about their plans was how drastically the cost per unit of mass was going to be decreased. All of that mostly due to reusability and getting lots of life out of one build.

The engine improvements would support a “Starship 2” that also features a slightly longer booster and ship. That will be able to place more than 100 metric tons into orbit in a fully reusable configuration, Musk said. A future “Starship 3,” about 25 meters taller than Starship 2, would be able to place more than 200 metric tons into orbit in a fully reusable mode. He did not disclose when either Starship version would enter service.

Musk claimed that the future Starship 3 would cost less to launch than SpaceX’s original rocket, the Falcon 1 small launch vehicle, which had a price of about $10 million, because of full reusability. He estimated the Starship cost per launch could fall to as low as $2 million to $3 million.

“These are sort of unthinkable numbers,” he said. “Nobody ever thought this was possible. But we’re not breaking any physics to achieve this.”

200 metric tons - 440,000 pounds - to orbit for $3 million, which is a small fraction of what a Falcon 9 launch costs (I've heard their actual costs are around 20 to $30 million). Launching 440,000 pounds for $3 million works out to $6.80 per pound to orbit.