Tag: Superheavy

FAA issues revised launch window and flight restrictions for future Starship test flights

11:00 am

Flight path for Starship's ninth test flight

Due to the breakup of Starship over the Atlantic during its last two test flights, the FAA today issued [pdf] revised launch window and flight plan restrictions for future flights, in an attempt to placate somewhat the concerns of the United Kingdom.

The map to the right, taken from the FAA assessment, shows in red the area where air traffic is impacted by the next Starship/Superheavy launch, now tentatively planned for next week. Note how the path threads a line avoiding almost all land masses, thus limiting the worst impact to just the Bahamas, the Turks & Caicos Islands. Though the launch will effect 175 flights and require one airport on these islands to close during the launch window, to minimize the impact the FAA has required that the launch window be scheduled outside peak travel periods.

At the same time, the FAA after discussions with the governments on these islands has approved this flight plan, noting that “no significant impacts would occur” due to the ninth flight.

The agency has not yet actually issued the launch license, but it will almost certainly do so in time for SpaceX’s planned launch date. Since the advent of the Trump administration the FAA has no longer been slow walking these approvals in order to retype the results of SpaceX’s investigation. Instead, as soon as SpaceX states it has satisfactorily completed its investigation, the FAA has accepted that declaration and issued a launch license. Expect the same this time as well.

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FAA approves SpaceX request to increase Starship launch rate at Boca Chica

11:40 am

The FAA today by email announced that it has released the final environmental reassessment that approves SpaceX’s request to increase the number of yearly Starship/Superheavy launches at Boca Chica to as many as 25.

The assessment is now available for public comment, and could still be revised. However, the FAA’s conclusions are clear, as indicated by the highlighted phrase:

The FAA is announcing the availability of the Final Tiered Environmental Assessment and Mitigated Finding of No Significant Impact/Record of Decision (FONSI/ROD) for the SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy Vehicle Increased Cadence at the SpaceX Boca Chica Launch Site in Cameron County, Texas (Final Tiered EA and Mitigated FONSI/ROD).

Under the Proposed Action addressed in the Final Tiered EA, the FAA would modify SpaceX’s existing vehicle operator license to authorize:  Up to 25 annual Starship/Super Heavy orbital launches, including: Up to 25 annual landings of Starship (Second stage); Up to 25 annual landinqgs of Super Heavy (First stage). The Final Tiered EA also addressed vehicle upgrades.

You can read the executive summary of this announcement here [pdf]. The full reassessment can be read here [pdf]. Its conclusion is quite blunt:

The 2022 PEA [Preliminary Environmental Assessment] examined the potential for significant environmental impacts from Starship/Super Heavy launch operations at the Boca Chica Launch Site and defined the regulatory setting for impacts associated with Starship/Super Heavy. The areas evaluated for environmental impacts in this EA [environmental assesssment] included air quality; climate; noise and noise‐compatible land use; visual resources; cultural resources; Department of Transportation Section 4(f); water resources; biological resources (terrestrial and marine wildlife); land use; hazardous materials; natural resources and energy supply; and socioeconomics, and children’s health. In each of these areas, this EA concludes that no significant impacts would occur as a result of SpaceX’s proposed action. [emphasis mine]

As I’ve noted repeatedly, this has all been self-evident for years, as proved by the environmental circumstances at the American spaceports at Cape Canaveral and Kennedy in Florida and Vandenberg in California. Spaceports help the environment by creating large wildlife refuges where no development can occur. We have known this for decades. That the FAA and the federal bureaucracy has in the past five years suddenly begun demanded these long reassessments time after time that simply restate these obvious facts can only be because that bureaucracy wants to justify its useless existence with make-work.

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NASA approves SpaceX’s Starship to bid for some launch contracts

9:48 pm

NASA yesterday announced that it has added SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy rocket to its launch services program, thereby allowing the company to bid that rocket for some launch contracts.

The NLS II contracts are multiple award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, with an ordering period through June 2030 and an overall period of performance through December 2032. The contracts include an on-ramp provision that provides an opportunity annually for new launch service providers to add their launch service on an NLS II contract and compete for future missions and allows existing contractors to introduce launch services not currently on their NLS II contracts.

This change is mostly bureaucratic in nature. SpaceX has not won a Starship launch contract from NASA. It has only been given the opportunity to bid that rocket in the future.

What is significant about this announcement is the change it signals in the way NASA’s bureaucracy functions. In the past these service contracts at NASA (and at the Pentagon) were routinely used to limit who could bid. NASA had to approve your company, and if it decided you weren’t good enough, or maybe didn’t like your politics, or possibly you weren’t one of the old-time big space companies the bureaucrats were buddies with, you stood no chance of getting in the game. For example, SpaceX had to sue the military when it would only allow ULA to bid while blocking any and all competitors.

These limits never made any sense. The best thing any customer can do is consider the products of as many businesses as possible, in order to get the best deal.

NASA decision here suggests its bureaucracy and management is loosening things up. Starship/Superheavy is not yet ready to put payloads in orbit, but this decision makes it possible for it to begin doing so, as soon as possible. No need to wait until it is 100% operational. NASA can now consider using it as a cheap way to launch some high risk missions during the testing period.

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Pick a perfect March Madness bracket and SpaceX will award you a trip to Mars

10:55 am

College basketball fans now have a second motivation for predicting perfectly the team results during the March NCAA championship finals: SpaceX will award a perfect bracket a trip to Mars.

In a post from X’s business account, the platform officially announced their bracket challenge, partnered with their sponsor Uber Eats, announcing that anyone with a perfect bracket would win a trip to Mars as a part of the SpaceX program.

Those who are at least 18 years old and submit their bracket on X between March 16, after the CBS Selection Show, and the first game of the Round of 64 on March 20 will be eligible for the prize.

For those who don’t wish to travel to Mars, anyone who fills out a perfect bracket in the challenge could alternatively accept a prize of $250,000 and additional perks involved with the SpaceX program. This includes 1 year of free residential Starlink service, the chance to train like a SpaceX astronaut for a day, an opportunity to send a personal item of choice to space on a Falcon 9 launch, VIP viewing of a Starship launch.

If no one picks a perfect bracket (which is normally the case) a $100,000 prize was be awarded to the best non-perfect bracket.

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Anonymous sources: Starship will need a major rebuild after two consecutive failures

9:38 am

Starship just before loss of signal
Starship just before loss of signal on March 6, 2025

According to information at this tweet from anonymous sources, parts of Starship will likely require a major redesign due to the spacecraft’s break-up shortly after stage separation on its last two test flights.

These are the key take-aways, most of which focus on the redesign of the first version of Starship (V1) to create the V2 that flew unsuccessfully on those flights:

  • Hot separation also aggravates the situation in the compartment.
  • Not related to the flames from the Super Heavy during the booster turn.
  • This is a fundamental miscalculation in the design of the Starship V2 and the engine section.
  • The fuel lines, wiring for the engines and the power unit will be urgently redone.
  • The fate of S35 and S36 is still unclear. Either revision or scrap.
  • For the next ships, some processes may be paused in production until a decision on the design is made.
  • The team was rushed with fixes for S34, hence the nervous start. There was no need to rush.
  • The fixes will take much longer than 4-6 weeks.
  • Comprehensive ground testing with long-term fire tests is needed. [emphasis mine]

It must be emphasized that this information comes from leaks from anonymous sources, and could be significantly incorrect. It does however fit the circumstances, and suggests that the next test flight will not occur in April but will be delayed for an unknown period beyond.

I think the tweet however is much too pessimistic. If the problems are all within the fuel lines, engine wiring, and the power unit, they are well localized. Moreover, the design of these components on version 1 of Starship apparently worked reasonably well, which gives them a good basis for that redesign. Nonetheless, if these facts are correct, my guess is the next test flight won’t occur before June.

The one saving grace is that FAA red tape is clearly no longer an additional obstacle. It is very clear now that with the change from Biden to Trump it is letting SpaceX lead all investigations, and immediately accepting its conclusions and fixes, rather than sitting on those conclusions as it retyped them for weeks or months in its own report.

Hat tip to reader Richard M.

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Once again the leftist propaganda press takes out its knives to stab SpaceX and Musk

11:18 am

Superheavy captured safely by the chopsticks, for the third time in four attempts
Superheavy captured safely yesterday by the chopsticks,
for the third time in four attempts

As should be expected, the destruction of Starship yesterday just before it made orbit on its eighth test flight was immediately used by partisan leftist media outlets to play “Let’s beat up on SpaceX and Elon Musk because he’s a friend of Trump!”

All these outlets decided to emphasize the falling debris and disruption to air traffic, but in doing so they all spun the story in a very dishonest way. First, both SpaceX and the FAA had been prepared for this possibility, and had used well-established procedures — in league with all other involved nations — to respond to the launch failure. The air space was cleared for only about fifteen minutes, as only this Florida Today article noted. Take-off delays at affected airports ranged from minutes to almost an hour, but hardly much different that normal delays seen every day.

Most important, no one was hurt, no planes were damaged, and there were no negative consequences. If anything, yesterday’s Starship flight illustrated the competence shown by SpaceX as it runs a very ambitious and radical development program of the most powerful rocket ever built. For example, why so little mention of the successful catch of Superheavy, something SpaceX has been able to do three times in the first four test flights? That achievement is truly mind-blowing.

The obviousness of these attacks is truly getting tedious. Moreover, why the hostility to one of the most spectacular efforts by an American company? Shouldn’t the American news outlets above be enthused by this effort? Have they become so hateful of their own country in all things, they want it to fail, always?

Sadly, I think we know the answer to that last question. The leftist indoctrination effort that now dominates almost all of America’s universities has produced a generation that does hate America, because they literally know nothing of its history except the distorted lies put forth by these Marxist colleges. They would rather destroy success than have America succeed.

It is both tragic and shameful, and a perfect example of someone cutting off their own nose to spite their face.

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SpaceX’s eighth orbital test flight of Starship/Superheavy ends like the seventh flight

4:54 pm

Starship just before loss of signal
Starship just before loss of signal

Today’s eighth orbital test flight of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy giant rocket has turned out to be almost identical to the seventh flight, with Superheavy completing its mission with a perfect chopstick catch at the launch tower in Boca Chica and Starship failing just before engine shutdown that would have put it into its orbit.

The screen capture to the right shows that moment. Note that graphic on the far lower right. It indicates that only two of the outside engines are firing, in an asymmetrical configuration. As a result Starship began tumbling, as shown by the fact that the Earth is not visible in the background. Shortly thereafter contact was lost, and I expect the flight termination system took over to destroy the ship. Expect videos from the Caribbean of it burning up overhead in the next day or so.

Superheavy however completed the third ever capture by the launch tower chopsticks. Musk has indicated that the company is pushing to reuse a Superheavy booster as soon as possible. The lose of Starship and the fact that two Superheavy engines shut down prematurely during the boost-back burn after stage separation likely delays that reuse at least one or two test flights. First, this Superheavy had issues, that might be solvable but they nonetheless exist.

More important, the loss of Starship just before its orbital coast once again means SpaceX was unable to do any of its orbital and return test program. It will not make sense to risk the next Starship flight with a used Superheavy when testing Starship has now been delayed twice.

Nor does it matter much. It will take many more launches before this rocket is reliably reusable. The first priority now is to make it more reliable on its first launches. Expect SpaceX to target the next test flight for sometime in mid- to-late April.

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Watch the eighth orbital test launch of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy

9:31 am

SpaceX is now targeting a 60-minute launch window on March 6, 2025 beginning at 5:30 pm (Central) for its eighth orbital test launch of its gigantic Starship/Superheavy rocket.

I have embedded the Space Affairs live stream below, as SpaceX’s X feed does not become active until it starts broadcasting about 40 minutes before the opening of that window.

As noted prior to the first launch attempt on March 3, 2025:

This flight has the same essential flight plan as the seventh flight, mainly because the prototype Starship on that previous flight was lost before it could achieve any of its goals. After Superheavy separates and attempts a chopstick landing at Boca Chica, Starship will go into a low orbit that will bring it down over the Indian Ocean. During the coast phase it will attempt to deploy four dummy Starlink satellites to test its deployment equipment, as well as do a Raptor-2 engine restart to demonstrate this works in order to prepare for a full orbit flight on a future test flight, possibly as soon as the next test flight.

Starship will also be testing a new configuration of thermal protection during its return, including leaving some places on its hull with no protection to see how those locations fare.

That first attempt was scrubbed at T-40 seconds because of issues on both Superheavy and Starship. Though it appears the team might have gotten those issues solved and launched, the decision was made to stand down and get them fixed properly, rather than rush things and possibly cause the mission to fail.
» Read more

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SpaceX reschedules Starship/Superheavy launch to March 5, 2025

8:48 am

SpaceX has now rescheduled the eighth orbital test flight of its giant Starship/Superheavy rocket for tomorrow, March 5, 2025, with its one-hour launch window opening at 5:30 pm (Central).

The new launch time was caused by the launch scrub yesterday for unspecified issues with both the spacecraft.

I have once again embedded below the Space Affairs youtube live feed of this launch. The SpaceX X feed will only be available once it goes live at about 4:40 pm (Central).
» Read more

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Starship/Superheavy test launch scrubbed

4:57 pm

Though the countdown got down to T-40 seconds, the eighth orbital test launch of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy was scrubbed today due to a number of issues that popped up relating to both spacecraft.

At the moment we do not know exactly what those issues were, and will likely never get detailed explanations. Nor do we know when the next launch attempt will occur, though SpaceX has additional scheduled opportunities over the next week.

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FAA issues launch license for 8th Starship/Superheavy test flight

9:12 am

The FAA yesterday announced that it has given SpaceX the launch license for its 8th orbital test launch of Starship/Superheavy, presently scheduled for March 3, 2025 at 5:30 PM (Central).

“After completing the required and comprehensive safety review, the FAA determined the SpaceX Starship vehicle can return to flight operations while the investigation into the Jan. 16 Starship Flight 7 mishap remains open,” the FAA’s emailed statement reads. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted phrase reveals much. There is a new boss in Washington now who will not tolerate unnecessary red tape that stymies private enterprise unnecessarily. SpaceX is the only entity qualified to investigate the loss of Starship in the seventh flight, and it has completed its investigation. All the FAA can really do in its own “investigation” is retype SpaceX’s conclusion. It might have some clean-up work of its own relating to clearing the air space after Starship was destroyed, but even there SpaceX’s conclusion note that the plan worked out before launch between the company and the FAA worked perfectly.

Under Biden the FAA would have made SpaceX wait while that retyping took place, likely assigned to someone who can only hunt and peck at an old manual typewriter. No more.

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SpaceX reschedules the 8th Starship/Superheavy orbital test flight to March 3, 2025

9:40 am

SpaceX has rescheduled the 8th Starship/Superheavy orbital test flight from today to March 3, 2025, with the launch window opening at 5:30 pm (Central).

The company gave no reason for the delay, but it also indicated that the FAA has still not closed out the investigation of the Starship failure on the last test in January, nor issued the launch license.

That SpaceX is pushing for this quick launch date suggests it either expects the FAA to issue the permit momentarily, or it is purposely highlighting continuing delay tactics and is applying pressure on the agency. Unlike the Biden administration, which was very hostile to Musk and SpaceX and worked to harass it with lawfare, Trump will not take kindly to such tactics. By making such tactics patently obvious Musk and SpaceX will force Trump to step in.

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SpaceX now targeting February 28, 2025 for 8th Starship/Superheavy test orbital flight

1:13 pm

Superheavy captured for the second time
Superheavy captured for the second time,
on January 16, 2025

SpaceX today announced it will attempt the eighth Starship/Superheavy test orbital flight this coming Friday, February 28, 2025, with a launch window beginning at 5 pm (Central). From the company’s website update:

The upcoming flight will target objectives not reached on the previous test, including Starship’s first payload deployment and multiple reentry experiments geared towards returning the upper stage to the launch site for catch. The flight also includes the launch, return, and catch of the Super Heavy booster.

The company also published today a detailed report on its investigation into the loss of Starship soon after stage separation in the 7th test flight.
» Read more

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SaveRGV drops lawsuit against SpaceX’s Boca Chica operations

9:29 am

SaveRGV, one of several fringe activist groups that has been using lawfare to try to shut down SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy operations in Boca Chica, suddenly announced yesterday that it has dropped a lawsuit against the company that claimed the potable water released in the launchpad deluge system during launches polluted the wetlands there.

Save RGV board member Jim Chapman said they dropped the lawsuit because the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality [TCEQ], the state’s environmental agency, granted SpaceX a permit that “moots” their lawsuit. “We think we’re right,” Chapman said in a phone interview. “We just didn’t feel like [the lawsuit] was going to move in a positive direction for us.”

According to the article at the first link above, SaveRGV and its partner fringe groups have filed a different lawsuit against TCEQ, challenging its decision to issue SpaceX that permit.

When TCEQ issued the permit last week, I wondered if the lawfare of these groups would begin to fade away because their funding is now drying up because of the Trump’s DOGE team effort to shut down the laundering of money illegally to such groups by many agencies in the executive branch. SaveRGV’s decision yesterday, only days after TCEQ’s decision, makes me think my theory might have some merit. It could be it no longer has funds to pay its lawyers for multiple lawsuits, and has decided to focus on one for the time being. Only time will tell.

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Texas commission rejects anti-SpaceX calls to deny company its Starship deluge water permit

2:27 pm

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality this week strongly and finally dismissed the repeated demands by various fringe activist groups to shut down SpaceX’s launch operations at Boca Chica and the use of the deluge system designed to protect the launchpad and the Superheavy booster.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality on Thursday denied requests from a dozen area residents and several groups to reconsider the commercial space company’s permit to dump as much as 358,000 gallons of water into wetlands during tests and launches of its Starship rocket from its Starbase east of Brownsville.

Commission Chair Brooke Paup introduced the item as “quite a big deal,” then quickly moved to deny additional hearings on the subject and issue the permit. She said concerns raised by individuals and groups including Save RGV, the South Texas Environmental Justice Network and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas failed to identify “new factual information or an error that would alter the executive director’s decision.

“The hearing requesters did not show that their ability to practice their religion or engage in recreational activities will be affected in a manner different than the general public,” Paup said.

The commission admitted in its ruling that there had been numerous technical errors by both the commission and SpaceX when it initially approved the permit, but none of those errors were significant.

It appears this particular effort by a very tiny minority of leftist anti-Musk activists has finally been shut down. We can only hope that these groups will now fade away, not because they want to give up but because their funding could be gone. I suspect their money came from somewhere within the fraudulent grant programs at EPA and other federal agencies that DOGE has now identified and shut down.

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Update on upcoming Starship/Superheavy test flights

9:23 am

Link here. As usual, this NASASpaceflight.com article provides an excellent overview of what SpaceX is likely to do on the next few test flights, including details about the possibility of reusing the Superheavy that was successfully recovered on the seventh flight.

And as usual, NASASpaceflight.com ignores the importance of politics and Trump’s election in changing the regulatory culture at the FAA. Just as it has made believe the Biden administration wasn’t forcing the FAA to slow-walk its license approvals to SpaceX, it is now making believe the Trump administration won’t do anything to force the FAA to speed its approvals.

We know however that it will. I fully expect that when SpaceX completes its investigation of the failures from flight 7 and describes its fixes, the FAA approval will following very quickly thereafter, within days. Under Biden that approval would still take months.

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FAA demands SpaceX do “mishap investigation” into the loss of Starship yesterday

1:04 pm

The FAA today announced that it is going to require SpaceX “to perform a mishap investigation into the loss of the Starship vehicle during launch operations on Jan. 16.”

Will this demand involve the same delays seen during the Biden years? I strongly believe they will not, for several reasons.

First, the FAA’s announcement seemed to me to have a decidedly different tone than in the past. It didn’t say “The FAA needed to complete a mishap investigation,” it said SpaceX had to do it. During the Biden administration the FAA made believe it was qualified to investigate any issues on a Starship/Superheavy launch, when in reality it had no such qualifications at all. It simply waited for SpaceX to complete its investigation, then would spend one to three months as it retyped SpaceX’s report.

Before Biden, the FAA let the company do the investigation, and quickly accepted its conclusions. That appears to be what it is doing now.

Second, Musk’s own response in announcing the preliminary results of the SpaceX investigation yesterday suggests he already expects the FAA to change its approach in this manner. “Nothing so far suggests pushing next launch past next month.” Right away he is signaling us that when SpaceX completes its work it expects the FAA to quickly okay the next flight. No long waits for paper work.

Third, there is Trump. If any FAA bureaucrats still try to play power games against SpaceX they will quickly discover they have no allies in the chain of command. Musk will make these games public, and Trump will come down hard against them.

That’s my hopeful prediction. We shall shortly see if my optimism has merit.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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Starship lost near end of its orbital burn; Superheavy successfully captured by chopsticks

4:06 pm

Superheavy captured for the second time
Superheavy captured for the second time

In today’s seventh test flight of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy large rocket, the results were decidedly mixed.

First the success: Superheavy once again performed perfectly, getting Starship up to speed and releasing it for its orbital flight. It then successfully returned to the tower at Boca Chica, where the chopsticks arms caught it. This was the second catch in three attempts. While we should all expect SpaceX to continue to refine Superheavy, right now it appears to be largely ready to go.

Next the failure: Shortly after stage separation Starship fired its own engines and proceeded upward towards orbit. At one point close to when it was suppose to shut off its engines to begin its orbital coast phase, something went wrong. Some engines cut off, but one did not, at least according to data projected on the screen. At that point all telemetry from the ship ended.

After another ten minutes of analysis flight controlers declared the ship lost. What happened remains unclear, but it is certain SpaceX engineers are digging hard to find out.

One unfortunate question remains that must be asked: Where is the ship, and is there a chance it will come down somewhere unexpected? Its orbit is such that it will naturally fall in the Indian Ocean, but the engine issues might have changed that orbit somewhat.

UPDATE: Locals in the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean post videos on X (here and here) of Starship breaking up overhead. It appears that if any debris reaches the ground it will land in the Atlantic.

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Live stream of the 7th test orbital flight of Starship/Superheavy

1:50 pm

I have embedded below the live stream of today’s attempt by SpaceX to complete the 7th orbital flight of its giant rocket Starship/Superheavy. The stream goes live at around 3:15 pm (Central), 45 minutes before the start of the one hour launch window beginning at 4 pm (Central).

For embed purposes I am using the youtube version provided by Space Affairs. Once SpaceX’s feed goes live on X you can then switch to it, found here.

The flight’s goals:

Superheavy: Complete the second catch of the booster at the launch tower using the chopsticks. The booster will also be reusing an engine from the fifth test flight to confirm its viability for reuse.

Starship: Test new avionics, a new fuel feed system, and new heat shield tiles as well as the ablative material used underneath the tiles. Test a different placement and configuration of the flaps. The ship will also test engineering that will eventually lead to it being captured by the chopstick tower on return.

There will be an engine restart during Starship’s orbital cruise phase to further confirm the Raptor-2 engines can work reliably when needed during a full orbit de-orbit burn.

Finally, the ship will test its Starlink deployment system, releasing 10 dummy Starlink satellites.
» Read more

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7th Starship/Superheavy test launch delayed one day

11:50 am

SpaceX has delayed its planned seventh test flight of its Starship/Superheavy rocket one day, from today to tomorrow, with the one-hour launch window now beginning at 4 pm (Central) on January 16, 2025.

It appears high winds and rain today were the main factor in the delay. Tomorrow will be better, with the weather continuing to improve over the next few days. We should not be surprised thus if the launch gets delayed one more time for weather.

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