After the wild Flight Test 13, SpaceX has started making statements that are strongly implying FT-14 will focus on putting the ship into orbit, with strong implications it will be a single orbit so they can do a tower catch of the ship, and not need to wait overnight (or whatever it would take).
Starship has made precise splashdowns before. This time, however, the ship gently tipped over and came to rest floating in a remote stretch of ocean west of Australia. Previous splashdowns ended with conflagrations, an outcome SpaceX officials have come to expect with each water landing of Starship.
The buoyant Starship looked to be in fine shape after reaching the Indian Ocean. SpaceX engineers flew drones over the vehicle to inspect its heat shield, getting their best look yet at how more than 18,000 ceramic tiles insulating the ship’s stainless steel airframe weathered the trip to space and back. The tiles withstood temperatures up to 2,600° Fahrenheit (1,430° Celsius) as Starship streaked back into the atmosphere at the end of its hour-long flight from Starbase, Texas.
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“Unless we discover problems after mission data review, SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower on next flight,” Musk wrote on X Friday evening.
Of course, over the last several months, the topic of the heat shield as the key to achieving the critically important capability for "rapidly reusable" intended for Starship has been referred to several times.
“This is so critical for refining the heat shield and everything else. The really good news is … you’re looking at a pretty intact-looking heat shield,” Huot said. “We were flying at a significantly higher dynamic pressure, so putting way more stress on this vehicle on the way uphill, and it’s sitting there in the water.”
(Note: Huot is Dan Huot, a SpaceX communications manager who was providing commentary on the company’s live webcast.)
A drone view of SpaceX's Starship vehicle floating in the Indian Ocean after splashdown on Flight 13. The flame visible in this image dissipated after a few seconds. Credit: SpaceX
And a closeup of the "hot end" of the ship. Everything looks about as "like new" as can be. Barely flown.
A close up of the aft end, focusing on the six Raptor engines while the ship
was afloat in the Indian Ocean. Credit: SpaceX
The obvious quality of the ship opened discussion of towing it somewhere to be taken ashore and examined by teams of engineers. The source article makes no mention of the ship sinking, deliberately or on its own, nor do the comments to the article. Nor is there mention of it being towed to Australia.
The only aspect of the mission that didn't go as planned was the return of the booster to landing offshore Starbase Boca Chica. You'll recall that FT-12 in May also had problems with returning that booster and there were a few paragraphs dedicated to describing how this booster was modified. This flight showed some progress, but engineers have more work to do on recovering this version the Super Heavy booster. SpaceX has previously recovered and re-flown Super Heavy boosters twice with the Starship Version 2 design, but not with Version 3.
A topic we've talked about here a few times is the critical need for orbital refueling. To use Starship for the Human Landing System, it's going to need several ships worth of fuel, because after burning everything to get to orbit, no ship has much fuel left to leave for that purpose.
For NASA, an orbital flight puts SpaceX on a path toward orbital refueling. This demonstration is vital for any Starship flight beyond low-Earth orbit, including missions to the Moon in support of NASA’s Artemis program. NASA is working with SpaceX and Blue Origin to develop human-rated versions of Starship and the Blue Moon lander to ferry astronauts to and from the lunar surface.
“Excited for what will be learned from this mission,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman wrote on X after the launch of Flight 13. “When Starship comes online, its capabilities will be game-changing, not least of which will be ensuring we never give up the Moon again!”
A person and title I haven't seen from SpaceX before showed up at the end of this Ars article with some wisdom worth relaying.
“Really critical data collected this mission on a demonstration deorbit burn for Raptor, and a first flight for the next generation Starlink satellites,” Shana Diez, SpaceX’s director of Starship flight reliability, wrote on X.
“It feels like we are ready to kick into gear on delivering payload to orbit, which I am very excited for,” Diez added. “Development vehicles are fun but at the end of the day, we are here to put things into space and I am psyched about this rocket’s game changing capabilities.”
Ms. Diez also added this joke. (Kiko Dontchev's last mention was titled vice president of launch)
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