On the eve of the next big Starship test flight

While they seem a little against the limits here - it's less than 24 hours before the scheduled launch and Ship 37 hasn't been stacked on its booster - it's hard to think of a group that gets more done faster and better in the industry.   

The summary I posted eight days ago (Friday August 15) still seems good.  The big picture converges on a couple of other posts; the first one is here in a piece that focuses on SpaceX's approach to design; Elon Musk's Five Laws of Manufacturing.  I'll edit it aggressively and re-post it here:

1. Make the requirements less dumb. The requirements are definitely dumb; it doesn't matter who gave them to you. ... “No matter who you are, everyone is wrong some of the time.” ... “all designs are wrong, it’s just a matter of how wrong.”
2. Try very hard to delete the part or process. If parts are not being added back into the design at least 10% of the time, not enough parts are being deleted.
3. Simplify and optimize the design.  Don't optimize something that shouldn't even be there.
4. Accelerate cycle time. 
5. Automate.  If a product is reaching the end of a production line with a high acceptance rate, there is no need for in-process testing.

The other one takes a good look at how SpaceX has implemented these laws, in a provocatively entitled article, "SpaceX has built the machine to build the machine. But what about the machine?"  

It dances around the topic that building the production factory is both more important and more difficult than building the rockets.  Ponder this one for a moment:

The ultimate goal of this factory is to build one Starship rocket a day. This sounds utterly mad. For the entire Apollo program in the 1960s and 1970s, NASA built 15 Saturn V rockets. Over the course of more than three decades, NASA built and flew only five different iconic Space Shuttles. SpaceX aims to build 365 vehicles, which are larger, per year. 

You've seen Starships - the current revision is taller than the Saturn V, and has more than twice the thrust.  The next version will be bigger.  The goal with the SuperHeavy isn't just reuse, launching after a month of refurb; it's rapid reusability.   They've talked about using them for transoceanic travel, like an airliner; go anywhere on the globe in less than 90 minutes.  The model is something like a monstrously powerful version of a Boeing 747. 

Naturally with three flights that ended with three mission failures, along with the loss of another ship on the test stand, it's reasonable to ask if the "machine to build the machine" was built correctly.  Berger's response is that his sources in the company think it was.  He goes on to add:

They are frustrated by the run of problems this year, but they believe the fundamental design of Starship is sound and that they have a clear path to resolving the issues. The massive first stage has already been flown, landed, and re-flown. This is a huge step forward. But the sources also believe the upper stage issues can be resolved, especially with a new "Version 3" of Starship due to make its debut late this year or early in 2026.

The acid test will only come with upcoming flights. The vehicle's tenth test flight is scheduled to take place no earlier than Sunday, August 24. It's possible that SpaceX will fly one more "Version 2" Starship later this year before moving to the upgraded vehicle, with more powerful Raptor engines and lots of other changes to (hopefully) improve reliability.

It's an old saying in sports that "winning solves a lot of problems."  SpaceX really needs a win.  They've been unable to progress on any of the other big problems they've been working on, such as orbital refueling, which has to work to enable Starship - AKA the Human Landing System - to even get out of Earth orbit and to the moon.  They need to test the ideas for cryogenic fuel storage in space.  Landing an unmanned Starship on the moon belongs in the list as well.  Quite possibly, the inability to work on these things (and more) is the biggest problem resulting from the months of bad luck this year.  

Starbase at night, with a SuperHeavy booster in transport along the curved road. Image credit: SpaceX

I should mention that within a half hour of my writing that the ship for Sunday Evening's launch hadn't been stacked yet, I went back to the (Lab Padre) live feed and the Starship was in the last few feet of being lifted to stack on the booster.   That was over an hour ago.