No, Elon, Starship Won't Make Aviation Obsolete
The b*llshit merchant strikes again.
There is no denying it: Starship is damn impressive. It’s the largest man-made vehicle ever to fly and one of the most daring engineering projects on Earth right now. But even this insane rocket can’t live up to Musk’s ad-nauseam bullshit. For one, it is years behind schedule, far more expensive than promised, and has yet to actually achieve an orbital flight, let alone a commercial launch or human space flight. Despite all of this, Musk recently claimed that under Trump’s presidency, it would be possible for Starship to offer 30-minute passenger flights between London and New York. On X, Musk went further and claimed that flights like this across the entire world could be “approved in a few years” and that actually “this is now possible.” So, is Musk about to revolutionise the aviation industry? Hell no! Let me explain why.
Even if Starship fully passed human space flight regulations, no country would want Starships landing there regularly. Why? Sonic booms.
Starship breaks the speed of sound on takeoff and landing; in fact, it reaches Mach 6! It has to do this to reach orbital velocity soon after takeoff. Because it uses atmospheric resistance to slow down both stages during descent, it also reaches these Mach numbers during landing.
Anyone who remembers Concorde will know why this is a problem. The supersonic passenger jet could only break the speed of sound over the ocean, as it was banned from doing so over land. Its sonic boom was so loud that its shockwave would break windows, disturb livestock, and deafen residents. The FAA found that people could withstand regular sonic boom shockwaves with pressures of less than 0.3 pounds per square foot (psf) without deleterious effects. Once it hit the ground, Concorde’s shockwave had a pressure of 2 psf, so it was banned from supersonic flights over land.
But Starship is far larger and travelling far faster than Concorde. Researchers have measured the shock wave pressure of Starship during takeoff at 10 psf at a distance of 10 km! That is ten times greater than a Falcon 9 launch. And, when the Starship lands, it comes in significantly faster than when the fully staked rocket leaves the atmosphere, as it has sped up to orbital speed in the vacuum of space. It also doesn’t use retrorockets to slow down to subsonic speeds. Instead, it positions itself belly-first to use atmospheric drag to slow it down. So, it will be far less aerodynamic during landing and travel far faster than during takeoff, meaning its shockwave will be substantially larger on landing.
Will any country allow Starship to land or take off anywhere on or near their territory with these colossal sonic booms?
That is if Starship can actually survive a landing!
During Starship’s last test, it achieved a soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean, a vast leap forward from previous tests, but it did incur damage to its heat shield and control surfaces. Why is this a problem? After all, it was technically a safe landing.
This was a suborbital flight, meaning it was too slow to reach orbit. As such, this Starship re-entered the atmosphere 2,500 mph slower than it would do during a typical orbital operation. Now, again, Starship uses atmospheric resistance to slow down during landing, hence why it needs a heat shield, as without it, its kinetic energy would be converted through aerodynamic resistance to heat and melt the entire ship. What’s more, if you remember your high school physics, kinetic energy increases exponentially with velocity (it’s actually quadratically, but you get the point). So the fact that Starship didn’t survive a landing 2,500 mph slower than its intended reentry speed, even after multiple test launches, is utterly damning!
Why does this matter? A heat shield failing like this means Starship, in its current guise, won’t pass human space flight regulations, even for sub-orbital flight. But Starship needs to achieve orbital flight to run the tests and prove it is capable of any type of human space flight. So, this damage during reentry will make it incredibly hard for Starship to ever carry passengers. Not only that, but it makes SpaceX’s aim of reusing the whole rocket highly dubious and possibly too expensive to use as a replacement for a plane.
And there are other issues standing in the way of Starship and human space flight. Its cargo area isn’t pressurised, and its construction utilises architecture, like braces, making incorporating a pressurised compartment virtually impossible. In fact, Starship is currently so sensitive to internal pressures that it actually has clearly visible open vent holes in the side of the cargo area to relieve pressure during the flight! This means that even if Starship can get certified for commercial use, it is many iterations from, and years of developing away from, being approved for human space flight. In other words, it might not be able to achieve human space flight during Trump’s next stint as president.
But Trump could steamroller the FAA, rip up the regulations, let Musk do whatever he wants, and strong-arm US allies to open themselves up to Starship passenger flights. Indeed, Musk’s statements make it sound like that is their intention. But I don’t think this will change anything.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is one of the most reliable rockets ever, with a success rate of over 99% across over 400 launches. However, failures still happen. Indeed, the last time the rocket failed, it did so on the landing pad, with the booster catching fire during landing, tipping over, and exploding. Now, you might think this was a few years ago, but no, it was in August this year.
When you are launching a small number of normal-sized rockets, this failure rate is not a problem. But that isn’t the case with Starship.
Let’s be generous and say that Starship will have a similar failure rate as Falcon 9, despite being a far more complex and stressed vehicle, and that Musk’s Starship Airlines will only provide a very conservative 100 flights per year, which could be serviced by 2–3 Starships. Well, in that case, they would have roughly one explosive failure per year.
However, Falcon 9’s booster section (the part that lands) only uses roughly 10 tonnes of fuel and oxidiser to power its rockets during landing and lands with approximately 2.2% of this left in its tanks. So, when it explodes, it is a large explosion, but it isn’t catastrophic. On the other hand, Starship uses roughly 750 tonnes of fuel and oxidiser to power its rockets during landing, and due to its larger size, it will likely need a larger fuel reserve of 3%+. In other words, if Starship explodes on the landing pad, the reserve fuel in its tanks (13.5 tonnes of methane/oxygen fuel mix) will ignite with the same explosive yield (roughly 400 GJ) as MOAB, the largest chemical bomb ever used in war.
In other words, using Starship as a passenger vehicle in any great frequency without years upon years of immense scrutiny and meticulous development will make the Hindenberg look like a walk in the park.
So, considering that Musk seems to be rushing Starship development and pushing Trump to deregulate the FAA to make his underdeveloped rocket human space flight legal, how long do you reckon it will be until such a disaster happens? Also, do you think other flight agencies, airports, and potential consumers will have run this basic maths, too?
Using Starship as an aeroplane substitute makes zero sense, and claiming anything to the contrary is profoundly and worryingly wrong. The fact we now live in a world where this future might be forced into reality is utterly bewildering.
Starship is a damn impressive rocket. It doesn’t need Musk’s bullshit to hype it up. So, Musk, for the love of God, just stop lying and pushing dangerous technology onto us. Please, it is getting tiring now.
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Sources: Indy 100, CNN, ASA, Space News, Space.com, PBS, Arstechnica, The National Interest
It'll be like the Titanic submarine x10. A media shit show.