Musk: We will attempt to catch Starship like Superheavy, “hopefully early next year”
According to a tweet by Elon Musk on October 15, 2024, SpaceX is targeting early 2025 for the first attempt to recover Starship after launch, and to do it the same way it recovered Superheavy, by catching it with a set of launch tower chopsticks.
To do this will require getting that second launch tower at Boca Chica operational. It will also require SpaceX to successfully restart Starship’s Raptor engines in space, something it has not yet done. Once this is demonstrated to work, the company would also have to do another orbital test where Starship is put in a full orbit and then de-orbited precisely to a point over the ocean, demonstrating that such a return can next be done reliably over land.
In other words, a tower catch can only happen after at least two more test flights. Thus, to do it early next year means SpaceX will have to establish a test launch pace of a launch every one or two months. This is actually something Musk has said repeatedly he wants to do, but has been stymied repeatedly by FAA red tape from doing it.
I suspect Musk’s tweet is expressing his unstated hope that a Trump victory in November will force the FAA to ease its bureaucratic interference.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
According to a tweet by Elon Musk on October 15, 2024, SpaceX is targeting early 2025 for the first attempt to recover Starship after launch, and to do it the same way it recovered Superheavy, by catching it with a set of launch tower chopsticks.
To do this will require getting that second launch tower at Boca Chica operational. It will also require SpaceX to successfully restart Starship’s Raptor engines in space, something it has not yet done. Once this is demonstrated to work, the company would also have to do another orbital test where Starship is put in a full orbit and then de-orbited precisely to a point over the ocean, demonstrating that such a return can next be done reliably over land.
In other words, a tower catch can only happen after at least two more test flights. Thus, to do it early next year means SpaceX will have to establish a test launch pace of a launch every one or two months. This is actually something Musk has said repeatedly he wants to do, but has been stymied repeatedly by FAA red tape from doing it.
I suspect Musk’s tweet is expressing his unstated hope that a Trump victory in November will force the FAA to ease its bureaucratic interference.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Tanker turnaround time would benefit from tower landings, but HLS still needs landing legs, and probably ones with a wide stance!
What does “HLS” stand for?
David M. Cook: HLS is NASA’s acronym for “Human Landing System,” which in plain English (which I always try to use) is simply a manned lunar lander.
It’s also worth mentioning that NASA has awarded the first contract for HLS to SpaceX, based on the use of its Starship. While Starship is far from an HLS vehicle at present, it at least actually exists and is in early development. The other candidates that were proposed exist only in PowerPoint, and perhaps in plywood!
Mr Cook I believe HLS also needs several super Draco thrusters mounted high on the Starship as there are worries the raptor engines would throw up way to much dust making landing very tricky. However, it is just a variant on the Starship theme. The Mars bound ones will also probably need several modifications. SpaceX seems quite adroit at these kind of changes unlike any of their competitors.
Mr. Zimmerman I believe autocorrect may have mangled this line for you
something it has not yet down
probably you meant
something it has not yet done
Tregonsee34: Autocorrect has nothing to do with it. 70+ year old eyes and brain are the explanation. I have fixed the error. Thank you.
Ray Van Dune noted regarding a landing legs on a HLS :” . . . probably ones with a wide stance!”
Larry Craig-like, perhaps?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Craig_scandal
Naughty naughty!
I want Lunar Starship to be cargo-only at first.
Tregonsee314,
The HLS will have a ring of “high-pockets” landing thrusters but they won’t be Super Dracos. Super Dracos burn hypergolics. The HLS thrusters will burn methalox, just like the Raptors do.
HLS is eventually intended to be reused, open-endedly, as a lunar-orbit-to-lunar-surface and lunar-surface-to-lunar-orbit shuttlecraft. The SpaceX cis-lunar infrastructure will eventually include propellant depots in lunar orbit as well as in LEO. But those depots will be carrying methalox, not hypergolics. Oxygen will eventually be generated in massive quantities on the lunar surface as a by-product of metal smelting done there. Producing hypergolics on the Moon would be much harder as their constituent elements are in much shorter supply there.
There is considerable circumstantial evidence that SpaceX are already well along in developing the HLS landing thrusters. Nasaspaceflight.com has staffers tracking the goings-on at SpaceX’s McGregor, TX test facility 24/7. They know – very well – what Merlins, Raptors and even Super Dracos sound like when run on the test stands there. For some time these folks have heard occasional test firings of some sort of engine that is none of the above.
SpaceX has kept most other aspects of the HLS Starship variant’s development out of sight. I suspect the first sight of such a beast will probably be through the windows of the Starbase Starfactory when a “funny-looking” TPS-tile-free nosecone appears. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that sighting takes place well before the end of next year.