SpaceX now targeting early April for next Starship/Superheavy test flight
Based on a tweet posted by Elon Musk on March 7, 2026, SpaceX now targeting early April for next and 12th Starship/Superheavy test orbital flight.
According to this update at nasaspaceflight.com, the Superheavy booster, the 19th prototype and the first version 3 booster, is now on the launchpad for final checks.
On March 8, Booster 19 left Mega Bay 1 and rolled down Highway 4 towards the launch site and Pad 2. This is the start of pad commissioning and booster engine testing for Block 3.
Booster 19 is mounted on Pad 2 to conduct multiple tests over the coming days. This will likely include ambient pressure testing, tanking tests with Liquid Oxygen (LOX) and Liquid Methane (LCH4), spin primes, and eventually a static fire, maybe even a couple of static fires. These tests are not only to help test the booster but also to test all of the pad systems.
While crews have run operations with the Pad 2 tank farm many times, they have never loaded an actual booster with propellant. With a booster finally on the pad, this will help in the final commissioning process.
For these initial pad and booster check-outs, #19 does not have all 33 engines installed. It appears the company wants to test the launchpad fueling system first, with the minimum number of engines needed.
Meanwhile, the Starship prototype that will fly, #39 in the series, is in the assembly building after completing its own series of tanking and launchpad tests.
I want to highlight two numbers — 19 and 39 — in order to illustrate how SpaceX does things versus NASA. Not only has SpaceX already completed eleven test flights of Starship/Superheavy, it has tested or flown 19 and 39 prototypes of each, in one manner or another. The company has a very rich history of hardware and testing as it ramps up towards operational flights. This practically guarantees that those operational flights will not only occur relatively soon, they will be relatively safe and robust.
This was all done in less than a decade, though most of the testing of those prototypes has occurred in the last six years.
NASA meanwhile began work on SLS about fifteen years ago, and has built two rockets total, and so far flown only one. Though the agency did a lot of tests of pieces of the rocket, it flew only one test launch, in 2022. SLS’s design is so cumbersome and expensive, the agency could not afford to fly it multiple times. Thus, much of its testing was done on computer screens, in simulations.
Which rocket would you want to fly on when both are operational?
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
Based on a tweet posted by Elon Musk on March 7, 2026, SpaceX now targeting early April for next and 12th Starship/Superheavy test orbital flight.
According to this update at nasaspaceflight.com, the Superheavy booster, the 19th prototype and the first version 3 booster, is now on the launchpad for final checks.
On March 8, Booster 19 left Mega Bay 1 and rolled down Highway 4 towards the launch site and Pad 2. This is the start of pad commissioning and booster engine testing for Block 3.
Booster 19 is mounted on Pad 2 to conduct multiple tests over the coming days. This will likely include ambient pressure testing, tanking tests with Liquid Oxygen (LOX) and Liquid Methane (LCH4), spin primes, and eventually a static fire, maybe even a couple of static fires. These tests are not only to help test the booster but also to test all of the pad systems.
While crews have run operations with the Pad 2 tank farm many times, they have never loaded an actual booster with propellant. With a booster finally on the pad, this will help in the final commissioning process.
For these initial pad and booster check-outs, #19 does not have all 33 engines installed. It appears the company wants to test the launchpad fueling system first, with the minimum number of engines needed.
Meanwhile, the Starship prototype that will fly, #39 in the series, is in the assembly building after completing its own series of tanking and launchpad tests.
I want to highlight two numbers — 19 and 39 — in order to illustrate how SpaceX does things versus NASA. Not only has SpaceX already completed eleven test flights of Starship/Superheavy, it has tested or flown 19 and 39 prototypes of each, in one manner or another. The company has a very rich history of hardware and testing as it ramps up towards operational flights. This practically guarantees that those operational flights will not only occur relatively soon, they will be relatively safe and robust.
This was all done in less than a decade, though most of the testing of those prototypes has occurred in the last six years.
NASA meanwhile began work on SLS about fifteen years ago, and has built two rockets total, and so far flown only one. Though the agency did a lot of tests of pieces of the rocket, it flew only one test launch, in 2022. SLS’s design is so cumbersome and expensive, the agency could not afford to fly it multiple times. Thus, much of its testing was done on computer screens, in simulations.
Which rocket would you want to fly on when both are operational?
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
This is a critical point, and it cannot be repeated enough.
But there’s more! As the new 3-part YT series Zack Golden is doing on launch pad development underlines, the Starship launch pad has evolved as much as the rocket itself has! There is a world of difference between the pad that Flight Test 1 launched off of in 2023 and what is now emerging at Pad 2, and that includes everything from the tower to the propellant and deluge systems. So it is not just your rocket that has learned from relentless testing and iteration; it’s the launch pad you lift off from, too.
There is a very dangerous bit of A.I. slop being promulgated by Elon haters that you all need to be aware of:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0BqLcGEbIHQ&t=127s&pp=ygUuV2h5IHJldHV0bmluZyBmcm9tIG1hcnMgaXMgaW1wb3NzaWJsZSBGZXlubWFuIA%3D%3D
Feynman never said any of that–and even if he did, he would have been as wrong as NYT was about Goddard.
ISRU allows Mars Direct refueling that Starship is to use (if successful) and the MEM was going to use hypergolics.
Not that lifting off Mars is easy of course:
Simulations are only as good as the programs that sit underneath them. All too easy for something to look like it will work in the real world but in practice it fails or is a partial failure. Testing only gets you so far. Eventually, you have to build. Better to build quick and cheap, testing the real thing than spend a fortune on simulations.
I do have a bias – a trust simulations about as far as I can throw the computer.
To be fair, they did skip a number of numbers in the sequences of Booster and Ship numbers. But your point remains valid, They have built far more than 10 of each so far.
Richard M wrote:
“”relentless testing and iteration””
What a great phrase. When people ask me about a rocket blowing up during a test, I try to teach them about “test to failure.” Sometimes they listen. Just what are the limits? Outer space is very unforgiving. Tis better to have tested and failed, than never to have tested at all.
Jeff Write wrote about fake AI crap out there. Trust, But Verify is more important than ever.
Joe is correct. Simulations have their limitations, but usually if the simulation says it won’t work, then it almost certainly won’t. Make changes or try a different design.
Another reason that NASA sticks with simulations is because it can. SLS does not vary far from the tried-and-true rockets of the past eight decades. One of the reasons for reusing so many Shuttle parts is to remain close to a known working rocket. Past simulations are already reasonably close to the new design.
SpaceX, on the other hand, is doing things wildly different from the tried-and-true. We haven’t seen testing this extensive in two-thirds of a century, at least not in the U.S. SpaceX is reinventing the orbital launch vehicle, and they are pushing engine technology beyond what has been done before.
They are in full combat with the rocket equation while they try to put huge payloads into orbit on reliable rapidly reusable rockets, as Musk has called them. Those huge payloads are mostly propellants for use in getting large masses well beyond Earth orbit. While they fight the rocket equation to the death, they are staring-down the impossibility of huge payloads in a reusable rocket. It is hard to imagine, but it keeps looking like physics blinks. This is why so many people are so much more enamored by SpaceX than by NASA.
NASA once did the impossible, as explained by President Kennedy at Rice University, one hot day, but now they are struggling to do what they once could do four times a year. NASA engineers redefined the mission profile in order to make the Apollo mission possible. NASA made the physics blink, and we Americans put more trust in them than they turned out to deserve. They are, after all, a government organization run by government employees, funded and overseen by two branches of government. Embarrassingly, NASA can no longer even build a space suit.
Many people think that Starship is the be-all end-all of spaceflight, but it is undergoing compromises that other private commercial space companies can overcome with spacecraft dedicated for use outside Earth’s atmosphere. Some of those companies may even be able to build a better Starship.
When we had let government do things in space, all we got was what government wanted. Now that We the People are doing things in space, we are getting far more and getting what We want.
I was flipping through the idiot box, and saw Senator Kelly keep digging a hole for himself.
Now, if I could somehow possess him, Pazuzu style–and wanted to stir up controversy…my attack on Trump would have been something to the effect of:
—-“why didn’t the President do this during his first term? Then he only wanted a wall. Now that undocumented labor is scattering–and tariffs have prices up–did Wall Street give the Donald marching orders to pick up where Cheney left off?”
That would be an example of what I would call a bipartisan attack, in that it might play better across the aisle.
If I were still in possession of Kelly, I might also say “you know, if we had perfected Shuttle-Derived Heavy Lift Launch Vehicles (SD-HLLVs) years ago….we could have had a few rods from God strike Fordow without telegraphing our punches a week ahead…as is the case when you mobilize our antiquated, logistical nightmare that is the WWII/Cold War-era Force projection that has likely cost American taxpayers more money than Artemis…and that in only a few days.”
That attack might play to Hawks and Doves alike.
Hey Kelly? Call me.
——-signed, James Carville.
SpaceX will, even more than usual, be serving up a heapin’ helpin’ of tasty testing before Starship makes its dozenth flight in about a month – which will be still more testing. Trump and Netanyahu will continue their efforts to put the Islamic Republic of Iran into the past tense. Ukraine will continue its incremental battering of Russia back to the Stone Age. The Democrats will continue to demonstrate that they are categorically unfit to rule. And, in general, every day, in every way, the world will continue to get better and better.
I’m having a hard time deciding about James Carville. Does he look more like The Crypt Keeper from ‘Tales from the Crypt,’ or like Jim Carrey’s Fire Marshal Bill character from his days with the Wayans Bros. on ‘In Living Color?’ Or maybe just like The Third Orc From The Left in any given army of Mordor scene from ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy?
The scariest part is he’s only 7 years older than I am. I hope I’m not his doppelganger if I am fortunate enough to reach his current age.
He got that way trying to talk sense into his compatriots.
Meanwhile the spike in gas prices from the war might just make the Cybertruck look a bit less ugly, just like Elon Cheney hoped–kidding! Quit throwing rocks-OW!