Starship's Tenth Flight Is Imminent

Will it actually survive this time?

Photo by nader saremi on Unsplash

It’s 1971, and “Stairway to Heaven” blares out of radios across the country. Meanwhile, NASA’s own stairway to heaven, the Saturn V, makes its tenth flight, successfully taking its eighth crew to space and its fourth crew to the lunar surface. Created with slide rules and computers that would be outdone by a modern $15 Casio watch and built with archaic materials and methods, Saturn V was an engineering marvel. Fifty-four years later, and SpaceX Starship’s tenth flight is imminent. Designed by supercomputers and built from cutting-edge materials, it has yet to reach orbit or carry even a fraction of its promised payload and has exploded more times than not… Yeah, Starship isn’t doing that well, is it? But can Flight 10 turn things around?

After the catastrophic failures of both the Super Heavy Booster (SHB) and Starship during Flight 9, and the refuelling failure which destroyed the Starship destined for Flight 10 before it even got to the launch pad, SpaceX has made some changes after investigations finally established what went wrong.

SpaceX and the FAA recently concluded their investigation into Flight 9 and the diagnosis is painfully simple: they were both structurally unsound.

A gas diffuser, a device used to control high-pressure liquid fuel transfers, in the nose of Starship failed under normal conditions, causing a liquid methane leak, which changed its reentry trajectory, causing it to break up during reentry. These are relatively simple devices, so it is surprising that this was a failure point. The Booster was attempting a slightly more exuberant landing procedure during Flight 9, likely in an attempt to reduce its fuel usage. But its fuel tanks, which are structural, couldn’t handle the extra stress, and they failed, causing a huge explosion.

Starship also has its own fuel tank issues. A few weeks ago, a Starship meant to be used for Flight 10 exploded while being refuelled on a test firing rig. The root cause was the failure of its COPV (composite overwrapped pressure vessel) fuel tanks under normal conditions, leading to a huge explosion. So, again, not structurally sound.

But, have no fear, SpaceX has a solution! Sort of…

The gas diffuser has been replaced with one that has been tested under the conditions the previous one failed in. It’s baffling why this wasn’t done earlier. SpaceX are also conducting additional checks to ensure all their COPVs aren’t damaged and are lowering their operating pressure, which has reduced Starship and SHB’s fuel capacity. Likewise, future SHB landings will use a lower angle of attack (i.e., more vertical, using rockets to slow down, rather than aerodynamic resistance), and future iterations will have refined control grid fins.

So, is this enough?