Starship Is Far From Ready
Starship Is Far From Ready
The latest launch was a leap forward, just not a big enough one.
Starship is set to be the biggest leap forward in space flight since the Apollo missions. It’s one of the first fully reusable rockets and the largest rocket we have ever built. As such, it promises to become by far the cheapest and most flexible route to space ever. Well, a few days ago, SpaceX conducted its fourth full-stack Starship test. The previous three ended in failure, with not a single stage of the rocket landing safely, which was the main selling feature of the Starship. In fact, one of these previous launches went so wrong that SpaceX lost its launch licence and is still facing environmental lawsuits. But this time, both Starship and its Super Heavy Booster made it to space and achieved a “soft landing.” On the surface, this seems like a giant step forward for the mega-rocket, but sadly, major questions and challenges hang over Starship.
So, let’s go over how the test went.
As with all major rockets, Starship has two stages, with the first getting the rocket off the ground before separating, significantly lightening the load, and letting the final stage fire its rockets, taking the vehicle into orbit. Starship’s first stage is known as Super Heavy Booster. All but one of its 33 rocket engines worked perfectly, with one failing to ignite initially, taking the Booster and Starship up to an altitude of 40 miles, where it successfully separated from Starship. It then successfully turned around and used its retro rockets to smoothly conduct a smooth splash landing in the Gulf of Mexico a few miles away from its launch site (which was planned).
Upon separation, Starship successfully ignited its six engines and made it to space and its planned suborbital flight path. It then conducted a reentry over the Indian Ocean. This time, Starship survived peak pressure and heat during reentry, which destroyed the previous test vehicle. However, video feeds did show one of the control flaps being damaged and many of the necessary heat shields falling off during reentry. Some commentators also noticed how the reentry was “chaotic” as the rocket struggled to cope with these issues. Despite these issues, it successfully conducted a soft splash landing.
A soft splash landing is a crucial step in developing rockets that land using retro-rockets, like SpaceX’s Falcon 9. A soft splash landing is where the rocket lands above the ocean as if it is actually solid land, using its retro rockets to reduce its velocity to zero just a few meters above the ocean surface before the rocket’s engines are cut and the craft sinks. Before this rocket has a proven record of landing safely, attempting this on a landing pad risks severely damaging the pad and incurring massive repair bills. This is an extra concern for Starship, as it is so large, it needs a “catch tower” to catch it as it lands, ensuring it doesn’t fall over. I can’t imagine how much those catch towers cost, so risking one with an untested Starship or Superheavy is unfeasible.
In summary, this test had two huge wins. Firstly, it proves that Starship can launch without blowing itself up, which is relatively important… Secondly, both stages were able to conduct a soft splash landing; as such (and as pointed out by Musk himself), this means that the next test could attempt a proper landing on terra firma, which, if successful, would enable the rocket to be used again!
But it also highlighted some serious concerns. One of the biggest issues of previous launches was how often the Raptor rocket engines failed. This launch was definitely better than previous launches, which had multiple full-on failures. However, the fact that there was still an engine acting irrationally even after multiple revisions raises questions about how reliable they can be. After all, Musk wants to use Starship for a plethora of human space missions, as well as frequent satellite launches. Like insanely frequent launches. As such, these engines need to be incredibly reliable. What’s more, the fact that one of Starship’s control fins and many of its heat shields failed is a huge point of concern. These failures could easily derail a landing to the point of catastrophic failure. Not only would this make reuse impossible, significantly impacting the financial benefit of Starship, but it also makes human space flight with Starship impossible. You see, human space flight missions that use Starship to launch will also use Starship to land back on Earth. In other words, if Starship can’t prove it can land safely with no hiccups pretty much every time, it can’t do human space flight.
To give SpaceX credit, this was never meant to be the last test launch. They, along with the entire space industry, know that they have a lot of work to do before Starship enters commercial use, let alone human space flight. It’s important to recognise how far Starship has to go before it even comes close to what has been promised by SpaceX and Musk. This test was a giant leap forward for this insanely capable craft. But it could still be years before we see a commercial launch by Starship and many, many years before it can conduct human space flight.
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Sources: BBC, The Economist, BBC, Neowin, Gizmodo, wccftech, Space News