While it's a weekend, some "reviews" of the Starship flight test yesterday are starting to show up in the professional circles. The broad sense of it that I get is that while it obviously wasn't perfect in everything to put a grade on it, the flight was broadly in the "A minus to B plus" band. That's where I put it and there's plenty of room for opinion.
Stephen Clark at Ars Technica mentions it being better than the first flights of version 1 or 2, which I regard as correct but too easy a landmark to clear. Version 1 was in 2023 and ver. 2 was in 2025. I should hope that their goals for the flight would be loftier than just being better than those.
You saw NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman's comment on X posted here yesterday, and Ars Technica adds Gwynne Shotwell's similar message to the company.
“Congrats and a huge thank you to the SpaceX team that always delivers,” Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s second in command, wrote in an X post. “This was an incredible first flight of a brand new vehicle. Our collective future flying amongst the stars has become so much closer.”
Elon Musk's message was a little more brief, but just as positive.
“Congratulations @SpaceX team on an epic first Starship V3 launch landing!” Musk posted on his social media platform X. “You scored a goal for humanity.”
It's hard to recap everything that worked because most of it did work. The ship’s heat shield appeared flawless during reentry over the Indian Ocean. Onboard cameras over their Starlink showed the aerodynamic flaps staying intact with no obvious melting throughout reentry. Without trying to look this up, I think this was the first mission where the heat shield and flaps didn’t suffer damages.
That all went well, with the descent culminating in a dramatic maneuver to flip from horizontal to vertical. A final landing burn with the ship’s Raptor engines downshifted from three to two, then to a single engine as the rocket settled to a gentle water landing. Drones and buoy cameras recorded live views of the on-target splashdown. As expected, the ship—wider than and nearly as long a Boeing 777 jetliner—tipped over and exploded in a fireball, putting an exclamation point on V3’s trip halfway around the world from the Texas Gulf Coast.
Earlier in the flight, they tested a new "Pez dispenser" for putting Starlink's coming generation of satellites into orbit. We've seen a Pez dispenser before, but this upgrade carried two satellites on each layer. On Friday, the dispenser deployed 20 mockups of SpaceX’s next-generation Starlink satellites, plus two spacecraft fitted with flashlights and cameras to inspect Starship’s exterior in space. This photo came from one of those two Next Gen Starlink satellites.
The elongated rectangle in the middle of the ship, with two large bright circular areas to the left of the rectangle, is the Pez dispenser's door that deployed this satellite. Image credit: SpaceX
The good has to be balanced with the bad - or not so good - and that was the failure of one Raptor 3 engine on SuperHeavy and one Vacuum Raptor 3 on the ship. Neither one affected the mission because the system was so lightly loaded that the control systems could run the other engines a little bit longer to achieve the desired orbit, but it's obviously not the way things are supposed to go. One impact of the Starship engine that stopped running is that restarting the engines in orbit was a mission goal and they didn't attempt that. That almost certainly means the next test flight will also be suborbital - unless they find a simple reason for the engines turning off that absolves the engines of being defective.
An unexplained issue is that the failed Raptor 3 on Super Heavy apparently led to the booster not coming to zero velocity just before landing in the Gulf, close to Starbase. The booster didn't fire the Raptor engines and slow down to stand on the water for a second or two. It was not immediately clear what caused the early end to the rocket’s boost-back burn: whether the malfunction stemmed from an external problem during stage separation or a separate issue within the booster’s propulsion system.
The pressing fact is that Starship is behind schedule. A bit over a year ago, March of 2025, Elon Musk posted on X that he expected to be launching V3 at a "rate of once a week in [about] 12 months." While it's still "about 12 months" from when he said that, I don't see a test flight 13 coming next week. Or even on the NextSpaceflight schedule at all.
“Space is hard” is a statement that stays with me, yet we’re all getting so used to SpaceX’s production line successes that it’s easy to focus on the missed objectives. I very much suspect that SpaceX will have the telemetry analysed to know exactly what the problem with the new Raptor 3’s is and are already working on the fix. I recall that Musk said that the start up sequence for the Raptor 3 was incredibly complicated and was associated with a high probability of a RUD if it deviated from the start up sequence. That there was no RUD indicates that they’re on top of this one. I’m pretty confident that the greatest collection of engineers we’ve ever seen will fix this one ahead of the next launch likely in the next 2 months. Maybe the next one won’t be an orbital, but expect to see further spectacular testing on flight 13.
ReplyDeleteMy expectation will be that flight 14 will be orbital and will deploy live Starlink 3s if the test orbit is compatible with deployment goals. This would also be a big cost benefit for them in their roll out plans.I also think they’ll go for a ship catch. Barring something mechanically unexpected, Flight 15 could be the double catch and potential qualification for first commercial use.what a company!
I forsee in-orbit refueling by IFT15. They are making GREAT progress!
ReplyDeleteWhat I'd most like to see is them speeding up. It seems like once a week is too far away and maybe not even possible until they get the system here on the Cape running, but a quarter of that - once a month - may be feasible.
DeletePart of what I'd most like to see is Starship launches from the Cape, though.
I have been uneasy with their idea of starting all 33 engines at the same time. This produces a HUGE mechanical (and sound) pulse. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if something got cracked or shaken loose because of it. I really don't understand why they won't reduce this stress by staggering the start over a couple of seconds. The advantage of coming to full power instantly can't be outweighed by the risks!
ReplyDeleteI half expected the bottom of the LOX tank to split open before they cleared the tower.
I've kinda been wondering about this pulse issue, too. It's like 18 million pounds of thrust, and they have that massive dump of water a couple of seconds before liftoff to protect the pad so they've clearly thought about it.
DeleteI wonder if they start them at low thrust and then ramp them up over a second or two? The view I saw was partially blocked by the clouds they were making, but it didn't seem to "leap" off the pad and something had given me the impression it would.