Was Starship Launch 12 A Success?
Not really, no.
The media buzz around Starship has officially died. I was expecting this “highly anticipated” launch to be painted across the headlines, but it seems people simply don’t care that another one of Musk’s giant phalluses exploded in the Indian Ocean. By all accounts, the polish on this turd has tarnished as people have grown tired of waiting for this “revolutionary” tech to actually materialise instead of being an expensive trash fire. This is one of Musk’s seriously bad patterns. He has overpromised himself into multiple corners, from self-driving cars to Mars-bound rockets and even pathetic C-3PO wannabes, and now people want him to put up or shut up. The trouble is, as we have seen with DOGE and the Cybertruck, Musk can’t deliver, but he likes to ‘look like’ he has — and this launch was yet another example. If you buy SpaceX’s line, they have made a serious step forward. But if you actually look at the launch with even a slightly critical lens, that narrative totally falls apart.
The Launch
This was the first launch of the Starship V3. For this article, all you need to know is that this is a major redesign from V2. It’s bigger, carries more fuel, has upgraded Raptor 3 engines (which burn fuel faster and therefore produce more thrust), and the booster has more engines. Primarily, V3’s goal is to dramatically increase the payload of Starship. V2 was pathetic, with Musk claiming it could take just 35 tonnes to LEO, or more than a 65% shortfall in promised payload, but in reality, it only ever took 16 tonnes on a suborbital flight. V3 is aiming to reach the promised 100 tonnes to LEO (Low Earth Orbit) mark, which is critical to meeting all of Starship’s planned use cases. In other words, if they can’t achieve a payload of 100 tonnes to LEO, the project is a failure.
So, how did the launch go? Well, despite some glowing reports, not great.
The rocket launched, and the stages separated fine. But the Booster lost an engine during launch, and then the engines failed to reignite after separation, causing it to crash into the Gulf of Mexico at 900 mph! Not exactly conducive to being reusable. The upper stage carried on its suborbital trajectory without a hitch. It reached a maximum altitude of 194 km (121 miles) at a speed of just over 26,300 km/h (16,300 mph), where it deployed its payload of 44 tonnes worth of dummy satellites. It then conducted a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean, with the heat shield looking extremely charred but intact.
That sounds like a relative success, right? Sure, the Booster failed spectacularly, but SpaceX has seemingly more than doubled the payload! That is a serious step forward towards their goal, right?
Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but no.
The Sleight Of Hand
It is very important to mention that this isn’t 44 tonnes to orbit. This is 44 tonnes on a suborbital flight that reached a maximum altitude of just 194 km (121 miles) and only 26,300 km/h (16,300 mph). For some context, a Starlink satellite orbits at an altitude of 550 km (340 miles), which is nearly three times as high as this Starship reached. These Starlink satellites also travel at 27,320 km/h (16,976 mph), or a thousand kilometres an hour faster than this Starship!
I don’t think people realise what a colossal difference this small detail makes. The media is seemingly parroting SpaceX’s narrative that this means Starship now has a usable payload of 44 tonnes. But it doesn’t! Instead, the only thing this does is heavily imply that Starship still has a major payload deficit. Not just a small underperformance, but an underlying critical flaw which makes it totally unusable. But, by running with the 44-tonne figure and not the 194 km figure, that isn’t what people notice.
So, let me explain what all of this implies.
