Starship: The Path to Flight 10
You’ve heard of Spacex’s Starship Program? Probably right? Elon Musk cooked up the original concept as far back as 2005, originally calling it the BFR, or Big Falcon Rocket, with the intention of creating a Heavy Lift Vehicle to transport humans to Mars and beyond. The main goal of this massive rocket was to be completely reusable, never before achieved with a spacecraft and really hard to do. The concept evolved over the next 15 years going through multiple design changes; switching from carbon composites to stainless steel, shrinking from 33ft to 30ft in diameter, growing to over 400ft tall, and being caught by a tower instead of landing on legs. It went through multiple name changes as well, eventually settling on Starship.
History
The first real prototype was first seen in December 2018, dubbed Starhopper. It was built for short “hops” to work out any issues with the newly designed Raptor engine, the most advanced rocket engine ever developed. Starhopper was constructed outside, literally welded together while exposed to the elements. No one had built a rocket outside before. And no other rocket program in history was going to be this transparent with its design and testing phase, much to everyone’s excitement. Starhopper flew two test flights in 2019, first to 66 feet then to 490 feet a month after. Anyone watching was captivated by this shining metal cylinder soaring through the air. What was to follow would be even more incredible.
Several more prototypes were developed over the next two years. These larger vehicles with the SN prefix would climb higher and higher, pushing the limits of their capabilities. SN5 and SN6 both performed successful low altitude tests. SN8-SN11 performed mid air maneuvers demonstrating the landing profile for what would be the second stage of Starship. This “bellyflop” flight profile has the vehicle falling horizontally, then under power flipping at the last second to land nose up. The first few attempts at these landings were met with explosive results as issues were discovered and corrected. Excitement was guaranteed. SN15 became the first successful bellyflop to vertical landing, it was wild. After 20 iterations the SN prefix was abandoned in favor of Ship (S) as the name for Starship’s second stage, with the first stage called Booster (B) or Super Heavy, yeah we know it’s confusing.
Design Philosophy
Now you may be thinking, “what’s up with all these explosions? Why does SpaceX waste all of this time and hardware just for things to fail?” As you’ve probably noticed NASA’s rockets never explode, even Falcon 9 didn’t blow up this much, at least during launch. But there were a lot of Falcon 9 landing failures, until they got it right and changed the world. SpaceX follows the iterative design philosophy; test, fail, solve, test, fail, solve… you get the idea. This allows rapid changes to the design as testing progresses, each subsequent vehicle has hundreds if not thousands of new design implementations. Each flight gives more insight that’s applied to newer versions. In fact you kind of want things to fail, so they can be fixed before the next flight. What’s different about Starship is the scale. It’s a gargantuan rocket; 30 ft wide, 403 ft tall, and more than twice the thrust of a Saturn V, so when it fails, it fails big. That brings us to a list of “failures” Starship has endured.
Failures
Not counting suborbital hops and flights, Starship has failed no less than 5 times on orbital flight attempts. This means a full stack of the Ship and Booster together going full send to try and make it to space. The goal of these test flights is for the Booster to return to the pad to be reused and for Ship to continue to near orbital speed, reentering the atmosphere to test it’s heatshield, a protective mosaic of tiles that absorb and dissipate the incredible heat from reentry. The first flight with S24 and B7 didn’t make it to space, but exploded (on purpose) in incredible fashion after just 3 minutes. After multiple engine failures on B7 it didn’t have the power to make it into space. Though, Starship had finally launched and it was awesome. Flight 2 at least made it to stage separation, S25’s engines finally got to light, and it was off, until it exploded after an unplanned engine shutdown and flight termination kicked in. Flight 3, well it’s considered a partial failure, since S28 made it to engine cutoff, but lost control and burned up reentering the atmosphere somewhere over the Indian Ocean. Flights 7 and 8, using the new Block 2 variant, both lost S33 and S34 before they could fully complete their mission, each disintegrating over the Caribbean in a spectacular show of streaks of flaming metal. Now I am skipping some details here, and there’s a good reason, let's talk about what has gone right with this program.
Successes
Flight 4 was a fun one. Starship launched flawlessly, stage separation went smoothly, and S29 was off into space. B11 performed it’s flip and boost back burn to a soft touchdown over the Gulf, prepping for a future catch attempt by the launch tower at the landing pad. S29 continued, reentering the atmosphere and stunning viewers with never before seen live footage of the intense plasma trail caused from slamming into the air at near orbital speed. After miraculously surviving, it flawlessly performed the bellyflop and landing maneuver, executing a perfect water landing, and then it exploded too (on purpose). Flight 5, the flight that changed history. Launch, stage separation, boost back burn, and second stage engine ignition all went perfect. This was the first attempt to catch the Booster with the two giant arms on the launch tower, dubbed Mechazilla. Yes, SpaceX was going to catch the world’s largest, heaviest, most powerful rocket out of mid air while it was under power. And they did it. First try! It was insane, indistinguishable from magic, it looked, felt, and was magic. They had achieved one of the most complex engineering challenges in modern times and made it look easy. For Flight 6 the launch tower sustained minor damage and B13 was unable to attempt a catch, but S31 continued on successfully to a splashdown. Flights 7 and 8 both caught their Boosters. Even though Flight 9 felt like a setback, this time it got through second engine cutoff but lost attitude control again and reentered in the wrong orientation. It did reuse B14 though, a first for the program and much sooner than Falcon 9 was reused. S36 was lost on the test stand after a pressure vessel exploded inside the payload bay, causing the fuel inside it’s tanks to spill out and ignite into a massive fireball, also destroying the test pad. After four losses of Ship it seems like SpaceX is taking two steps forward and 5 backwards. That brings us up to Flight 10.
Flight 10
In the next few weeks, SpaceX is attempting its 10th flight test of Starship, it’s been almost 9 months since a flight has achieved all of the planned goals. A new test stand for S37 was fashioned onto the orbital launch mount so that a static fire could be completed without waiting for the test site to be rebuilt. B16 was also rolled out and tested as is typical before a launch. Because Starship is critical for NASA’s Artemis program, with the goal of landing humans on the moon again, it’s paramount for the team at SpaceX to get this right. Another failure of Ship to make it through reentry will be problematic, they need the crucial data from the heatshield testing to know if the design changes have worked. They need to sort out the issues with the heatshield in order for Ship to be recovered. B16 and S37 need to make it.
I’m cautiously optimistic about Flight 10. SpaceX has some of the smartest and hard working people on the planet trying to solve these issues. And I believe they are solvable. As humanity strives for the stars, with the goal of setting foot on new worlds, these are the baby steps for making life multiplanetary. And if you’ve had kids, or been one yourself, you know babies fall down a lot, but eventually they learn to walk, then to run. SpaceX has already shown they can run, now they need Starship to soar.
