Eleventh Starship/Superheavy a complete success
Starship and Superheavy during ascent today.
On the eleventh orbital test flight today of Starship/Superheavy, SpaceX basically achieved all its engineering goals, with both Superheavy and Starship completing their flights as planned, with Superheavy doing a soft vertical splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, and Starship doing a soft vertical splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
The Superheavy flown was on its second flight, having flown on test flight #8. Of its 33 Raptor engines, 24 had flown previously. In returning, it successfully used a new configuration of engine burns, first firing thirteen engines, then six, then three.
More significant was Starship’s flight. The engineers had purposely left tiles off in some locations that would experience the greatest heat during re-entry, to find out if the ship could survive a loss of those tiles. It did, and did so in a truly remarkable manner, always flying in a controlled manner, even as it attempted a radical and previously untried banking maneuver as it approached the ocean in order to simulate a return to the launch tower chopsticks at Boca Chica.
Prior to splashdown and during its coast phase, Starship once again successfully tested the deployment of eight dummy Starlink satellites, as well as a relight of one of its Raptor engines to demonstrate it will be able to do a planned de-orbit burn once it enters a full orbit on future test flights.
Once again, the word to describe this flight is remarkable. While no else has yet been able to recover a first stage and reuse it, SpaceX has been doing it with its Falcon 9 for almost a decade, and doing it hundreds of times.
And now it has twice reused a Superheavy booster, out of only eleven test launches. Based on this and the last test flight, the company will almost certainly begin reusing Starship prototypes during next year’s orbital test flights, when it will begin flying full orbits using its third version of Starship, including returns to Boca Chica for chopstick tower catches. Furthermore, expect the deployment of real Starlink satellites on those missions.
The next mission should likely take place close to the end of this year, and it should likely be followed by additional flights about every two months.
“Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all
the inhabitants thereof.” Photo credit: William Zhang
While politicians and media swamp creatures focus on the relatively inconsequential race to do an Apollo-like manned landing on the Moon, the real American space program is being run privately by SpaceX, and its goal is to not only go to Mars, but to do so in a manner that will quickly establish a human colony. Along the way the company will help facilitate that government space program, but only as it helps SpaceX learn better how to get humans to Mars.
Most significantly, SpaceX is doing its space program entirely on its own dime. It is being financed by the revenues coming in to the company from the now more than seven million subscribers to Starlink. And those numbers will only rise with time, as Starship begins launching the next generation of satellites with capabilities that will dwarf all of SpaceX’s competitors.
Once again, freedom, private enterprise, and the American dream wins. May all humans someday live under rules that will allow them the same possibilities.
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The reentry tiles performed like never before too. No burn throughs that I could see, very little tile protection delamination and the engine bay area looked to have come through in fine shape. I did notice one engine out during either the 1st stage landing burn or the boost back burn. But with all of the engines sitting in reserve, this has to be a minor issue. And we saw a picture-perfect demo of the Starlink dispenser system. A near perfect mission profile indeed.
A great day with great results.
But I think the cadence of Starship launches next year will considerably exceed one every two months. Flight 12, as you note, is most likely a couple of months off, but Super Heavy 18, the first of the V3 boosters, should be caught after flight and should also be in much better shape than any of the caught V2 boosters. Given that Pad 2 is also designed to handle much faster turn-arounds than Pad 1 has been able to do, the main thing limiting Pad 2 cadence will be the time it takes to truck in propellant. Once the now-under-construction air separation plant comes on-line, 80% of truck-based propellant deliveries go away allowing a radical jump in flight cadence.
Then there is the LC-39A Starship launch pad which should be completed early in 1Q 2026. That site should also contribute materially to the 2026 Starship launch cadence using Super Heavies and Starships barged over from Starbase. By 2Q or 3Q 2026, Pad 1 at Starbase should be rebuilt to match Pad 2 and the LC-39A Starship pad and can add to the 2026 Starship cadence in the back half of next year. Methane refinement facilities at both Starbase and KSC/Canaveral will enable further increases to cadence. By year-end 2026, Starship launch cadence may well exceed one every two weeks.
Year-end 2026 is also when the Gigabays at both Starbase and Roberts Road come on-line. 2027 should see the completion of two additional Starship pads at LC-37. By year-end 2027, Starship launch cadence will probably exceed that of the Falcons – and from more pads, 5 vs. 4.
Tom,
Yeah, there was one engine-out in the middle ring on the Super Heavy boostback burn. But it lit right up for the landing burn.
Flight twelve will almost certainly not be this year, and I would not be at all surprised to see it as late as March. There is an enormous amount of work still to be done to get either launch pad ready for the next version ship and booster. But once they get the ground side operational, I expect flight cadence will be high.
From the very first Starship re-entry, it was amazing to have real-time video during the hottest parts of re-entry.
Remember on all of the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo capsule re-entry burns, where the plasma generated off of the heat shield caused 3-5 minutes of blackout? For several reasons, and especially because there are already thousands of Starlink satellites in place, we get to watch the entire Starship re-entry burn.
Once again, Robert Heinlein is smiling down from Heaven.
David Eastman,
Pad 2 is being built explicitly to accommodate the V3 boosters and ships – there is no retrofitting to be done. Work on Pad 2 seems to be nearing completion and there will certainly be no problem getting both a V3 Super Heavy and a V3 Starship into flyable shape well before the end of this year so I don’t know how you figure March of next year for flight 12. In think there is a decent chance we may see a Starship V3 stack launch from LC-39A by March if not before. What do you see as the long pole in the tent preventing flight 12 from launching this year?
Of the news sources I’ve seen, this paragraph from CNN’s coverage is my favorite:
“As the Starship prototype ejected its last dummy satellite during a payload deployment test, employees cheered loudly and began chanting “USA! USA!” in unison. It’s unclear why.”
https://www.cnn.com/science/live-news/spacex-starship-flight-11-launch-10-13-25
Dick Eagleson – As far as I’m aware, the plumbing for the deluge system is not complete, nor is the plumbing for the fuel lines, quick disconnects, etc. Most, but not all, of the big visible items are in place, but as the saying goes, the first 80% takes the first 80% of the time, then the other 20% takes the other 80% of the time. The devil is in all those little details. Just getting all the pad stuff complete, buttoned up, tested, and certified is likely more than a month of work, before they even think about rolling out a vehicle for initial tank tests, which given it’s a new vehicle, is probably another month. And it’s coming to the end of the year, so add in weather delays, vacation time, etc. I get late January as the optimistic answer. I’d be happy to be wrong, of course.
To Blair
That doesn’t surprise me.
Though it should have been “SEC! SEC! SEC!” :)
I just wish backers of winged spaceflight had their own billionaire backers.
Now, might Starship release a crew cabin using these two technologies?
Origami heat shield and parachute
https://phys.org/news/2023-05-origami-shield-reusable-reentries.html
https://www.zmescience.com/research/inventions/scientists-reinvent-parachutes-using-japanese-paper-cutting-art/
Starship would be empty upon landing, the crew module not needing its own heat shield?
now if Helion can just get Polaris working, the Solar System is ours
and someday soon the stars
Reminder: “Starbase, formerly Boca Chica Village or Kopernik Shores, is a city in Cameron County, Texas, United States, near the mouth of the Rio Grande.” 😉
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starbase,_Texas
They definitely earned the name change.
Minor edit in third paragraph: “The engineers had purposely”
“… employees cheered loudly and began chanting “USA! USA!” in unison. It’s unclear why.”
Well, to be fair, it is no doubt unclear to those at CNN why anyone would ever chant that. Similarly, it is unclear to me why anyone of even the slightest discernment would ever view CNN’s programming.
Andi: Fixed. Thank you as always!
The Block 3 rockets will be ready a lot sooner than the ground sides at both Starbase and the Cape. The logistics problem will be finding a place to store them before they are launched while keeping the production line operating. Shipping some around the Gulf to the Cape will work that problem a bit. The launch complex at the Cape is not all that far behind that at Starbase. Depending on who you believe, ETIC for Starbase is Jan or late Dec if magic happens. Slips are far more likely than magic, though the workaround for the destruction of the test stand at Massey’s went far quicker than anyone outside predicted after Ship 36 blew. I wouldn’t bet against SpaceX, as they seem to be really good at logistics, approaching that of Costco these days.
Once they figure out the initial testing of Block 3, I think we will see operational Starlink launches with the V3 satellites flying very quickly.
The big deal next year will be initial tests of inflight refueling, which will also start to address a growing wet drill between SpaceX and critics at NASA (Bridenstein, et al) over the number of inflight refueling flights necessary to get to the moon. SpaceX is guessing 10-ish, the critics 40+. The big deal on refueling will be care and feeding of large quantities of cryogenics for an extended period of time in orbit which I don’t think has been done.
Should be a fun year. Progress. What a concept. Cheers –
Anyone else read the comments on Marcus House? There’s a lot of Space X hate out there. “Waste” is one of their things. I don’t get it. It’s not possible to waste private money. One can spend it on things others disapprove of, but that’s not “waste”. “Musk lies” is another. I don’t get that either. Confidence is not posting “we’ll be sending a fleet to Mars in the next window”, which may or may not happen. Confidence is spending $10 millions on building new launch sites while the ship is still exploding, which it no longer is.
Betting against Musk’s timelines is reasonable. Betting against Musk’s goals is not.
Don’t hold your breath on Helion.
Yes, I am still a pessimist on fusion…and Starship.
Only Energiya/Buran’s single flight was truly a complete success (despite a failed nation) in that Buran returned home.
The U.S. Army, Navy, etc outlasted any one general, or Admiral.
The SpaceX Falcon program and Starlink could survive Elon’s death should he go the way of Charlie Kirk–but Shotwell can only do so much…and now I hear they want to kill Dragon XL.
Yesterday’s flight success may actually be due to the falling out between Musk and Trump–leaving Elon’s hands free to bear down on hardheads and deadbeats…and it showed.
This, to me, still leaves Starship/SuperHeavy in the same potential fix as N-1. Both vehicles required the bullying power of one man….in the USSR, that one man was Korolev. With Energiya/Buran, it was the even more caustic Glushko.
Without the force-of-will of the Chief Designers, Russia Space became a zombie…same with their fighting forces. With more oil facilities targeted–I look for coal fired drones before long.
Here, the death that mattered was that of Charlie Kirk…who I gather was friends with both Elon and the Donald…and rumblings are the falling out is healing. Jared’s re-floating might well be evidence of this healing.
Which leaves one question: if all this spells a return to a more active political career for Elon–what becomes of Starship?
The USSR was failing when Buran flew at the last.
Might we see the opposite with America’s recovery being the price of Starship failing at the last–political distractions being the norm once again?
Stay tuned.
Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.
David Eastman,
The first test of the Pad 2 deluge system was about a month ago. There have been several others since using increasing amounts of water and higher “throttle settings.” One of the Pad 2 quick disconnects – the LOX one I think – has been undergoing mechanical tests for a couple of weeks. I think Pad 2 is a lot closer to completion than you think. The only large item yet to appear and be installed is the ship quick disconnect arm. That seems likely to show up quite soon as it has been getting a lot of work done on it lately.
agimarc,
Like Mr. Eastman, I think you are a tad pessimistic about the current state of Pad 2 at Starbase and its counterpart under construction at KSC. But you are correct that V3 vehicles will quickly be available. Flight 12 will be suborbital and the flight profile should be similar to that of Flights 10 & 11 except that Booster 18 will be caught. But if Flight 12 goes as well as Flight 11, I think Flight 13 will be orbital, will carry and deploy real Starlink V3 birds and will also be the first ship to try for a catch upon re-entry.
You are also correct that demonstrating propellant transfer at scale between ships will likely be the mission of Flights 14 and 15. If Flight 14 puts up a prototype propellant depot version of Starship, then Flight 15 may be only the first of the flights needed to fill it to the capacity needed for transfer to a Moon-bound HLS. The string of pioneering tanker flights – however many prove needful – to fill the depot might be consecutive or there might be some Starlink deployment missions mixed into the flow. I’m inclined to think the latter will be the case. Important data on boil-off abatement efficacy can be gathered by making the topping up of the depot ship a less-than-minimum-possible-time exercise. Depot ships will be needed in hundreds in LEO to support future Mars-bound armadas and will be filled incrementally during the 26-month intervals between optimum departure windows so having the first depot ship keep its load on-orbit until needed by the first HLS test mission would kill at least three birds with one stone.
Ray Van Dune,
Ditto anent CNN. What clueless losers.
Jeff Wright,
Winged spaceflight did have its own billionaire – Richard Branson. Suborbital winged spaceflight to be sure, and only spaceflight if one acknowledges the McDowell Line rather than the Karman Line as the altitude where space begins and, hey, there sure have been a lot of missteps and Branson has done a slow fade-out, but still…
Jeff — Helion’s design manages to sidestep a lot of stability issues endemic to fusion, hopefully they are generating electricity by the end of the year
it’s very much an engineer’s design as opposed to the usual science projects
https://www.helionenergy.com/articles/more-on-helions-pulsed-approach-to-fusion/
It’s just so striking to see how hardware rich the Starship program is compared with SLS and Orion.
The Artemis II vehicles have been in production for several *years.* Integration of *this* stack (only scheduled for launch in February) began as far back as 2023. And next month, it will be three years since the last Artemis flight!
Meanwhile, SpaceX is flying a Starship stack every two months, with each one seeing substantial iteration over its predecessor. And given the dizzying pace of progress in StarFactory, it’s not hard to see what Dick Eagleson contends that the pace is only going to accelerate once V3 Starships start flying in a few months.
Re: The Flight 12 debate.
Eric Berger in the NSF live stream yesterday stuck to his broad-framed prediction of “1st Quarter 2026.”
I follow the pad work at Pad 2 sporadically, and fair to say they’re getting close to completion but there’s still significant work to do. I don’t think January is offbase as a prediction.
But I also think Dick is right that the pace will accelerate after that.
Despite stressing various regions by leaving off heat protection tiles, I noticed that for once there did not appear to be burn-through damage to the fins during reentry; something is going right in the design department. Either the buoy was pointed a little wrong or the “dynamic banking maneuver” didn’t quite get Starship to the right spot.
After flight ten, several people were disappointed that there had not been a camera attached to at least one of the Starlink simulators, but this time they showed an outside view of the dispensing simulators, showing that it all happened in the dark, making it difficult to see what was happening. A camera on the Starlink would have shown little except the lit-up hatch. It was the light coming from inside the payload bay that allowed us to see what little we could make out. The mechanism did a better job of smoothly dispensing the simulators, this time.
My understanding is that during its upgrade, Pad One will be given a flame trench, which suggests that SpaceX’s experiment with a flat flame deflector was a failure (which many rocket scientists would have predicted, if asked). Not everything that SpaceX tries succeeds, but at least they are willing to try things that come from thinking outside the box — they test reality and common sense, just to make sure that they aren’t missing something that could increase efficiency.
_________________
Robert wrote: “Most significantly, SpaceX is doing its space program entirely on its own dime.”
A space program it is. The company has a long term goal and has a plan to meet that goal. Both are ambitious, complicated, and expensive.
Like Kennedy’s speech announcing the U.S. goal to put a man on the Moon and return him safely back to Earth, SpaceX has the same goal for going to Mars. Just as Kennedy pointed out the many difficulties that no one had the technology to do, there are some technologies that SpaceX must also develop in order to build a colony on Mars with a population of a million people.
To suggest a few, SpaceX will need large numbers in the crew, like the Mayflower had. A colony would take a long time to reach the size that SpaceX imagines if we can only send four or seven at a time. Can we pack colonists like sardines the way they did on the Mayflower and other colonist ships?
Large quantities of propellant transfer. We would have invented this in the 1960s if Apollo had used the Earth Orbit Rendezvous method. Instead, we still have to invent the methods to transfer massive amounts of propellants in orbit.
Reuse for low cost. If we had had to make new rockets for each launch, the cost to go to Mars would have been enormous. In fact, NASA had put a very high price tag for this project in the early 1990s, which is why Robert Zubrin devised his own method for going to Mars on the cheap and wrote a book to publicize the idea. SpaceX is designing a variation on Zubrin’s idea.
Rapid turn around time, again for reduced cost, also for better availability, and rapid refueling during the transfer windows.
Manufacturing to support heavy use. Despite the reuse of flight hardware, SpaceX expects to need large numbers of flight vehicles in order to fly the large numbers of Mars colonists that they believe that they will need.
Space has never been used in the way that SpaceX plans to use it. There are areas that SpaceX is pioneering and pushing back the forefront of technology. Other companies are working on pioneering other areas, such as space manufacturing. Space station use may change significantly once commercial space stations come online. Mining (the Moon and asteroids) is another area that commercial space is interested in, but there are no real technologies, yet, for doing this economically.
SpaceX has shown that rapid development is still possible, and Rocket Lab confirmed the method is not unique to the one company but that other companies can also perform rapid development. This method should also benefit the space manufacturing and the space mining companies, too. These other three types of space companies may also create their own space programs in order to do their activities in similar large scales.
_______________
Jeff Wright asked: “Which leaves one question: if all this spells a return to a more active political career for Elon–what becomes of Starship?”
That is a big if. Musk’s dalliance into a government leadership role was limited by the type of position he was in. He could only be there for four-ish months. If he returns to government or politics, then Starship may be in a condition where Musk need not be overseeing day to day development operations.
But my guess is that he is more interested in Mars than DC. His taste of DOGE may been sour.
“Might we see the opposite with America’s recovery being the price of Starship failing at the last–political distractions being the norm once again?”
I don’t think that the failure of Buran was why the Soviet Union failed, so the failure of Starship is unlikely to be why America is made great again.
“Without the force-of-will of the Chief Designers, Russia Space became a zombie…same with their fighting forces.”
The Chief Designer was kluging together the Soviet Union’s space achievements. None of them were sustainable and had to be redesigned in order to make the Soviet space program functional. Once the Chief Designer died, there was no one to kluge together quick and dirty successes
“Only Energiya/Buran’s single flight was truly a complete success (despite a failed nation) in that Buran returned home.”
Well, the Space Shuttle returned home a few times, too, and it also was able to fly a second time, or more. Buran was too expensive for the Soviets or the Russians to afford a second flight. Or maybe Buran did not work as well as thought.
What makes Buran so remarkable to me is the fact it flew unmanned (even as Starship did) and was built by a failed economy.
That’s miracle territory to me.
Wonders are made by dire, dour, unsmiling men.
Hardware, engineering, etc. doesn’t interest me quite as much as intangibles do.
The average football player, like the average soldier, is young, dumb, and full of…..well…
Helmet, pads, footballs improved only somewhat.
The tech is relatively unimportant.
What makes the difference is the coach.
I have read on other boards how it seems that some of the best scientists all came from Hungary.
That would be fertile ground for sociologists to explore, if only they didn’t think space-advocates were all wicked. Sometimes, you have to be.
I still think Energiya-Buran was a better concept than STS, or even Starship.
Not as an RLV, but as a modular system that could inspire learning.
Hendrixx and Vis wrote a book on the system. On page 77 we read about a pre-Buran orbiter to be called OK-92.
This was to have turbojets to allow it to fly under its own power…range 1,600 km at a cruise altitude of 3 km, or 3,000 km by increasing the fuel supply “and using the emergency solid fuel motor as an afterburner on take-off.” [58].
That means both orbiter, booster, and strap-ons could each fly independently.
With engines under the External Tank (Energiya core-block/SLS) you could get away with more than one orbiter design. A different way to be hardware rich.
One orbiter a waverider, another like Buran, Faget straight wings, lifting-bodies. These very different craft would be released from the 747 orbiter ferry at low-speed, and side launched by Energiya for high speed tests. With the core-block having engines, the orbiter could be left off and a 80-100 ton payload taking its place.
These and wet-workshops are put to the express purpose of developing metallurgy in the microgravity environment.
Once all that is done, THEN you build an RLV like Starship, or whatever.
That is why Saban was the best coach out there–“The Process” was more important than the score.
Elon is trying to skip to the end…on the mistaken belief that an RLV should come first and space industrialization later. I on the other hand maintain that the opposite is true. Let us use whatever rockets we have to design advanced materials NOW, and the applications can be left to the market later.
I just wish I had money to pay for some Hazegrayart-level images to depict what I am trying to explain–then it would be self-evident for the viewer.
Both approaches deserve funding.
Dick Eagleson says….
“… agimarc,
Like Mr. Eastman, I think you are a tad pessimistic about the current state of Pad 2 at Starbase …”
I am both shocked and pleased to pass my Pollyanna mantle on to you. Like you, I do hope SpaceX is far, far ahead of where we think they are. Cheers –
Jeff Wright wrote …
“I still think Energia–Buran was a better concept than STS, or even Starship.
Not as an RLV, but as a modular system that could inspire learning.”
Huh? A system to inspire learning”? Starship IS a “modular system” with the demonstrated capacity to be fully reusable, albeit it to a “virtual” landing tower.
As for the “inspire learning”, I think we just saw “inspired” learning with 11 Starship launches.
With the last two flights we have the accuracy of reusable starships landing tail first on a column of flame on a landing area that would bring a tear to the eye of Robert Heinlein. Hmm, more learning.
The promo videos before the launch were the thing to watch. Looking back at the hand-shaped custom tiles being built for Shuttle vs. the Florida Bakery promo video – with heat shield tiles rolling out of production lines like loaves of bread at 7,000 per day. Just from ONE PRODUCTION LINE! That looks like something was learned.
I watch the Superheavy steering with it’s grid fins passing through all flight regimes (supersonic, trans-sonic, subsonic) from orbital heights to a CEP of what, < 30 feet! I see Rods from God that would bring a tear to the eye of Jerry Pournelle. Yet again, more learning!
And starship will launch fleets of satellites, 60TB at a time, so we have handheld communicators that talk to spacecraft for the average person anywhere in the world that would bring a tear to Gene Roddenberry's and Wah Ming Chang's eyes. Wow, that's some learning too!
We have artists, writers, and visionaries inspiring engineers and scientists to make something cool they see become reality.
I call THAT inspirational.
BTW you bring up Energia–Buran as "success", but you fail to mention that the only other flight, Energia–Polyus, was a failure because they mounted the payload (a prototype Soviet orbital weapons platform) on backwards. So much for a better concept.
Dude, it’s the Gulf of America!
I appreciate your excellent coverage. BZ
I was just musing on a little thought.
Could both the first stage and second stages actually land back on the very same launch tower.
The second stage could stay in orbit till the first stage is cleared off of the tower.
Just an idea
I think that they would carry real starlinks now, but they are legally prohibited from using anything functional until its out of testing and approved. That’s why Elon launched his Roadster to Mars, they couldn’t use a “real” payload.
The Soviets only launched Energiya twice because the nation died. N-1 with similar expense didn’t collapse the USSR. Buran gets the blame for that, but their Vietnam (Afghanistan) and the Baikal Amur Mainline is what broke them.
Starship is not modular. It requires SH.
SH can only fly with SS atop it.
Energiya strap-ons were EELV class launchers on their own–and were supposed to replace Proton and Zenit.
OK-92 could fly sub-orbitally under its own power, and glide if it must, unlike Starship.
Perhaps Starship can release large hypersonic boilerplates to return from orbit. The CFD guys are still scratching their heads as to SH maneuvers. Glushko and the F-4 Phantom both made possible the ultimate victory of thrust over aerodynamics, so there is that.
To pzatchok,
They might do that, but would prefer each to be caught by a separate tower due to an abundance of caution.
Still, I would like to see what a NSF forum member all but described as a “Ta-Da!” moment with Starship caught and put right back atop SH.
Then that duo and the milk-stool retired as an exhibit that would remain even if everything else SpaceX was removed or shuttered.
Edward & Jeff:
A key aspect of Korolev’s genius was his ability to successfully navigate Kremlin and industry politics to keep the whole program under his control, organized, and keep it reasonably funded. That doesn’t mean that a Korolev who doesn’t die on the surgical table would beat the United States to the Moon, a la FOR ALL MANKIND — he got the green light from Khrushchev too late to make that happen — but it helps point up that his talent went beyond kludging existing Soviet tech to squeeze out marginal space “firsts.”
Had Korolev lived, I think there’s at least a 1 in 3 chance that the Soviets could have got men on the Moon sometime in the early-mid-1970’s. (Whether they’d have gotten them back alive is another question!) But once he was gone, not only the kludging talent was irreplaceable, but so was the political talent, too. That mattered.
Fortunately for us, none of that applies to America’s future in space; we have far greater structural advantages. That said, it would sure help if Elon Musk stayed alive and in charge of his company for at least one more decade. Gwynne Shotwell does a terrific job in the day to day running of the company, but it’s still Elon who sets its tone and its org culture.
I would say it was Glasnost plus Chernobyl.
There is a lot to like about Buran but I still hesitate to feel confident in what it could have done for a Soviet Union that found another decade of life in an alternate timeline. We only saw it launch once.
Can we dispense with the idea of winged spaceships now? It is clear that spaceships do not need wings, which are useless on orbit and cause extra problems for heat shields on atmosphere entry. Would an aerodynamics winged vehicle have survived the burn throughs we saw on several Starship flights? I doubt it.
The Starship concept is being shown not only to work but work robustly.
With complex machinery it isn’t all that important that it works when everything goes right but how well it works when parts aren’t working quite properly.
I can not wait till people fly on this great ship.
I wonder if a three of four person module could be fitted to the side of the first stage. for pogo rides like BO.
Or could passenger “second stage” be substituted to add like 100 seats for a pogo flight. Though it would not disconnect and fall back on its own.
Jeff Wright,
You wrote: “What makes Buran so remarkable to me is the fact it flew unmanned (even as Starship did) and was built by a failed economy.”
Well, Starship is built by a company, not an entire economy. Seems to me that this is even more remarkable.
“I have read on other boards how it seems that some of the best scientists all came from Hungary.”
Like German born Albert Einstein? English born Stephen Hawking? Italian born Galileo Galili? Maybe Isaac Newton was Hungarian born.
“I still think Energiya-Buran was a better concept than STS, or even Starship. Not as an RLV, but as a modular system that could inspire learning..”
What learning did Energiya-Buran inspire? Both were abandoned and no one tried anything like it again. At least the X-37, X-38, and Dream Chaser are smaller versions of the Shuttle, and Starship has several improved aspects of STS. It looks to me like STS was more inspirational than Buran.
Richard M is correct. Without a second launch, we know nothing of how Buran actually performed or could perform. It did not prove it could keep a crew alive. It did not demonstrate it could carry any payload of any mass. It did not demonstrate that it could fly a second time, even after extensive refurbishment. All we know is that the system was too expensive to launch a second time. It launched three years before the Soviet Union melted down, and the Buran project was not suspended until 1993, which suggests that the Soviets and the Russians were doing something to bring about a second launch, during that five year period.
“Elon is trying to skip to the end…on the mistaken belief that an RLV should come first and space industrialization later. I on the other hand maintain that the opposite is true. Let us use whatever rockets we have to design advanced materials NOW, and the applications can be left to the market later.”
That almost sounds good, when said real fast in a vacuum. The problem is the cost to orbit. Space industrialization is still very expensive, but if Starship can launch for very low cost, say a per pound cost of 1/10th the cost of a Falcon launch, then space industrialization might be affordable. Or at least some amount of industrialization. It looks to me that space industrialization is waiting for low cost launches, like Starship and maybe New Glenn.
“N-1 with similar expense didn’t collapse the USSR. Buran gets the blame for that,”
Nobody thinks that Buran caused the collapse of the USSR.
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pzatchok mused: “Could both the first stage and second stages actually land back on the very same launch tower. The second stage could stay in orbit till the first stage is cleared off of the tower.”
Except that the idea is for an eventual reuse of Super Heavy shortly after being caught by the tower, so Super Heavy would be placed right back onto the launch mount immediately after being caught. For the same tower to also catch Starship means that the Ship would have to be caught, say, 90° from the launch mount, “around the corner” of the tower.
Starship will make its real money reusing both pieces. But these flights will be primarily for refueling and Starlink launches along with whatever commercial / military business decides to use the capability. Remember that Falcon 9 will continue flying for the foreseeable future. I expect Falcon Heavy to be retired once Starship is operational.
Things get interesting when you start looking at one way trips, expendable Starships which will be necessary for Artemis and all Mars flights. All following weights are in tons (T). Metric tons are 2,200#. Long tons are 2,240#. Standard tons are 2,000#. They are close enough that I will use all interchangeably in the following back of the envelope.
One thing forgotten is that the Shuttle was not a bad heavy lifter, capable of putting around 125 T into LEO (orbiter plus payload). Take an ET into orbit with you, and that grows to something around 150 T. Shuttle never lifted the 25 T max payload. Shuttle C variant also never flown was capable of carrying around 85 T, Proposed carrier mass was 40T. One shot, turnkey vehicle into orbit would have been 120T. It could have also lofted an ET into orbit, pushing that capability to around 150T. Shuttle C carrier was not reusable. For comparison, the S-V put around 150T into LEO on an Apollo launch.
Most recent speculation on Starship V3 is 116T empty with a capability to loft 1`80T into LEO fully reusable and pushing 300T expendable. V4, a couple years out will be even larger. The possibility of a 300T, turnkey, man-rated platform delivered into LEO on a single launch ought to make some in the commercial space world salivate. The Starship numbers come out of a discussion on NSF, so take them with a grain (or five) of salt.
While reusability is huge, don’t look past the solution to heavy lift already on its 11th flight.
One of the unrelated questions falling out of this is why didn’t the Artemis Smart Guys take a look at a Shuttle C variant with liquid strap-ons for SLS? Maybe they did and I missed it. Cheers –
Edward
I agree that the same tower will eventually have to be able to catch both first and second stage.
But the one thing I con not figure out yet in exactly why the dump off the ring during the burn back.
There must be a way to keep it attached so speed up any turn around.
There is no reason once the system is proven that a second stage has to land back on its own first stage.
pzatchok: SpaceX has always planned to keep that interstage ring attached for reuse once the initial testing period is complete.
I though so but didn’t know it positively.
thanks.
pzatchok,
The version 3 does keep its hot-separation ring attached.
The reason that it separates on version 2 (V2) is that SpaceX had not intended to have it when V2 was designed. V2 is able to slow down and be caught, but only if it does not have that heavy ring, so SpaceX jettisons it so that they can test V2 the way it was originally intended to work. With that extra weight attached, V2 would not had enough propellants to slow down enough to behave properly and would not stop and “hover” the way it does. It would not have the propellants left over in order to be caught by the tower. By separating the ring, they were able to prove that the chopsticks can catch a booster the way the Karate Kid could catch a fly, except the Kid did it in Hollywood, and SpaceX did it in reality. (If the engineers at SpaceX had realized that it was just a movie and not reality, would they have dared trying to catch Super Heavy in the same way?) Once again, popular fiction influences society, technology, and engineering.
Version 3 (V3) has been designed to handle the extra weight of the hot-separation section, which is designed-in as part of the booster, but it looks lighter than the V2 ring. You may notice that this new V3 hot-separation ring is very different: a bunch of hollow tubes that hold the Starship-attachment section, the ring at the top. The V3 ring will not separate and will ride down with the booster for reuse.
SpaceX had experimented with a walled section of the V2 hot separation ring so that the thrust of Starship would help push Super Heavy in its turnaround maneuver (slightly less propellant required for turnaround, more propellant available for launch, thus slightly more payload capacity), so I wonder whether SpaceX has a similar wall in the V3 Ring. I haven’t noticed such a thing, yet.
“There is no reason once the system is proven that a second stage has to land back on its own first stage.”
Correct. Starships should be able to land (catch) at any tower around the world, so long as they can reach the latitude of the tower. “Mix and match” may be a reasonable way to look at it.
I can imagine a plan in which SpaceX specializes various towers and pads. Perhaps some that specialize in tankers that take propellant to orbiting storage tanks, others that specialize in human passengers, more that specialize in Starlink satellites, and another that specializes in clamshell-released payloads. If they start doing point-to-point flights, then several would specialize for passengers and packages (for when it “absolutely, positively has to be there in an hour” packages) near large cities around the world — probably coastal cities (sorry, Paris). Such specialization would make it somewhat more likely that a Starship would return to its launch site rather than a different one.
Hi Mike,
You are right (of course) that we can do crewed vehicles to orbit without wings, or even a lifting body! I also think it’s hard to shake the sense that there is a lot of irrational attachment to the idea that refuses to die.
Wings or even a lifting body structure *do* introduce complications, like extra mass, to say nothing of complicating launch aerodynamics (which was turning into a real issue for Dream Chaser’s team when they were doing it as a Commercial Crew competitor). That said, there’s a niche case for it given its unique advantages: greater cross range and lower g-loads, and, with non-toxic hypergols, quicker access on the ground. That would be useful for medical emergency returns or perhaps special experiment returns. Is it enough to justify it, or close a business case? Hard to say. It would help if a contractor that’s more competent than Sierra Space were attempting it.
I would really like to see *some* competition for American crewed access to space besides SpaceX. But it’s still unclear if we’re going to see that actually happen in the foreseeable future, given the grief that both Starliner and Dream Chaser have come to.
Mr. Z wrote:
“While politicians and media swamp creatures focus on the relatively inconsequential race to do an Apollo-like manned landing on the Moon, the real American space program is being run privately by SpaceX”
If Apollo 8 was ” inconsequential” then why did he write a book gushing over it? Arty II will deserve the same praise—which I don’t expect from him.
I proffer this as an example of how Laissez-faire ideology hurt America.
“A company in my hometown help make the Apollo space suits. They made the textiles used. They left America in about 2005 and went to China for cheap labor. Laid off 800 workers. Back in the 1980s’ they upgraded the factory, added air conditioning, new looms that were 8 times faster than the original looms, cut the work force by slow attrition, no lay offs, from 1,100 employees to around 800 over time as they upgraded the looms. I talked to an engineer there that is retired, and he said they lost market share here because of the move. They had several factories across the south. They made sheets, towels, Van Husen and Arrow shirts, and Fruit of the Loom underwear. ”
“I say this to say, who is making the material and the astronauts suits now? We have not textile industry in America today so to speak. ”
From:
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=50806.msg2728275#msg2728275
Alabama had many textile mills murdered by Ayn Rand nonsense.