SpaceX tentatively announces a June 5, 2024 Starship/Superheavy launch date
Click for original image at high resolution.
SpaceX today tentatively announced a June 5, 2024 launch date for the fourth Starship/Superheavy orbital test launch.
Before going into any details of the flight plan, as shown in the flight profile above, it is important to quote the first sentence in the announcement:
The fourth flight test of Starship could launch as soon as June 5, pending regulatory approval. [emphasis mine]
SpaceX has not yet gotten a launch permit from the FAA. It is likely it has inside information from the agency suggesting that permit will be issued by this date. It is also likely that SpaceX by making this announcement is applying pressure to the FAA to either get its paperwork done or waive the need so its red tape doesn’t delay the flight unnecessarily.
As for the flight itself, the flight profile is essentially the same as the previous test flight, with the Starship’s orbit designed for safety to bring it down in the Indian Ocean.
The fourth flight test turns our focus from achieving orbit to demonstrating the ability to return and reuse Starship and Super Heavy. The primary objectives will be executing a landing burn and soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico with the Super Heavy booster, and achieving a controlled entry of Starship.
To accomplish this, several software and hardware upgrades have been made to increase overall reliability and address lessons learned from Flight 3. The SpaceX team will also implement operational changes, including the jettison of the Super Heavy’s hot-stage following boostback to reduce booster mass for the final phase of flight.
All in all, this announcement is good news. SpaceX is ready to launch.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
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Click for original image at high resolution.
SpaceX today tentatively announced a June 5, 2024 launch date for the fourth Starship/Superheavy orbital test launch.
Before going into any details of the flight plan, as shown in the flight profile above, it is important to quote the first sentence in the announcement:
The fourth flight test of Starship could launch as soon as June 5, pending regulatory approval. [emphasis mine]
SpaceX has not yet gotten a launch permit from the FAA. It is likely it has inside information from the agency suggesting that permit will be issued by this date. It is also likely that SpaceX by making this announcement is applying pressure to the FAA to either get its paperwork done or waive the need so its red tape doesn’t delay the flight unnecessarily.
As for the flight itself, the flight profile is essentially the same as the previous test flight, with the Starship’s orbit designed for safety to bring it down in the Indian Ocean.
The fourth flight test turns our focus from achieving orbit to demonstrating the ability to return and reuse Starship and Super Heavy. The primary objectives will be executing a landing burn and soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico with the Super Heavy booster, and achieving a controlled entry of Starship.
To accomplish this, several software and hardware upgrades have been made to increase overall reliability and address lessons learned from Flight 3. The SpaceX team will also implement operational changes, including the jettison of the Super Heavy’s hot-stage following boostback to reduce booster mass for the final phase of flight.
All in all, this announcement is good news. SpaceX is ready to launch.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Weird that they’re jettisoning the hot staging ring. I’ve heard they’ve redesigned it to be more truss like the Russians use.
Probably just a temporary measure –this thing is supposed to be fully reusable!
Not that big a deal for testing.
It is inert.
Now where Starship’s dry weight is 220,000 pounds–SLS weighs 188,000 pounds.
A steamy hot stage less stressful to SuperHeavy perhaps
I wonder if one or two cheaper RS-68s or current RS-25s could send a whole SLS core to the Moon in one launch… payload and all.
Expensive, yes —but SLS could then hold hydrogen on the lunar surface, with that foam insulation would be a help.
And here is an excellent post describing some the many reasons why flying any part of the Artemis stack beyond the capsule and service module to the moon would be silly:
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/1829/would-it-have-been-possible-to-have-sent-the-space-shuttle-around-the-moon
Granted this post pertains directly to the Space Shuttle. However, the Artemis stack suffers from the same issues; remember that the exterior tank/first stage doesn’t actually make it to orbit, and even if it did, it’d be empty. Boosting more than the capsule and service module towards the moon would require several more tanker launches… and then you’re into Starship territory.
The difference being, of course, that Starship is designed specifically to accomplish these feats, while also delivering 100+ tons of cargo to the Lunar surface. Artemis is not.