Was Starship Test Flight 11 A "Success"?

Yes, kind of…?

Photo by nader saremi on Unsplash

I have a bit of a reputation as a “Musk hater”. And that is true — I hate any egotistical, maniacal oligarch who has an obvious problem with kleptomania. You would need to be a little delusional not to at this point. But I’m not inherently against Musk’s products, because they aren’t really “his”. Falcon 9 and the Model 3 were brilliant, even if they aren’t anything like the technological advancements Musk claims they are. However, calling these “Musk’s” projects is doing a disservice to the small army of engineers and technicians that actually did the grunt work to bring them to life. So, with Starship’s latest test flight, let’s try to do the impossible and separate the art from the artist and maybe give these engineers their own fair appraisal. Was this a success? Has it moved the needle forward on this arduous project?

Well, this test flight seems to have gone really well.

Firstly, the Super Heavy Booster (SHB) they used, B15, was previously used in Test Flight 8. B15 underwent extensive refurbishment after its first flight, from March 8 to September 5 of this year, before conducting this test flight. During the flight, it performed impeccably, launching Starship up and away, separating correctly, and then conducting a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. It tested new landing manoeuvres that could save weight by reducing the amount of fuel needed for landing, and because the splashdown went well, these seemed to go smoothly. This isn’t the first time SpaceX has reflown an SHB, as they also did so during Test Flight 9, but this is the first time it has been reflown successfully, which is a huge milestone.

Like all previous missions, this was a suborbital flight, but unlike the last test flight, Starship stayed at suborbital speeds and didn’t quite reach orbital velocity, being about 1,000 mph short. However, it did complete all of its targets. It delivered a 16-tonne dummy payload and conducted an in-space engine relight, reentry and controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean. Like with SHB, SpaceX was testing the effects of missing heat shield tiles in strategic locations and a “dynamic banking manoeuvre” with Starship, and as it made it to the splashdown site, this seemingly went very well.

As a mission, you can’t really ask for more. I genuinely mean it when I say the engineers and team behind Starship should be incredibly proud of what they have achieved here. From that viewpoint, the project is a success.

But, sadly, Starship isn’t a purely engineering exercise. It needs to work in the real world and actually be a viable launch vehicle. From that standpoint, you can’t really call the project a success. Let me explain.

Payload

The payload is far too small. A Falcon 9 can take substantially more than 16 tonnes to orbit, and its launch costs and turnaround time are a fraction of a Starship’s, even if they figure out how to fully reuse it. For Starship to make financial sense or be a viable launch vehicle, full stop, let alone for the complex missions that have funded its development, it needs to carry 100 tonnes, if not 150, to orbit, particularly when its reliability is under question (with more on that later).

But increasing a rocket’s payload is no easy feat, especially for one which also uses rocket engines to land. You see, to launch more mass, you need more fuel. But that fuel has mass, so you need more fuel to launch it, too. This is known as the rocket equation problem, and it means that to increase the payload, you need exponentially more fuel. Starship has this problem twice, as it also uses rockets to slow itself down during landing. Now, it is true that it will have deployed its larger payload before landing, so a larger payload doesn’t necessarily mean it needs more fuel for landing. But that doesn’t take into account the fact that the rocket will likely need more structural supports to carry a larger payload, which will add mass, or the fact that many of the missions it is being commissioned for, such as NASA’s Artemis, require it to land with substantially more than 16 tonnes onboard while also carrying a crew!

If SpaceX increases the thrust and specific impulse of Starship’s engines (which is insanely difficult) and makes it carry substantially more fuel, they could increase this payload by a few per cent. But increasing it by well over 100% is nearly impossible.

Still, I hear the Musk defenders claiming that SpaceX isn’t utilising the full payload yet, which is why the payload is so low, not because Starship has a payload problem. But that is wrong.

During test flights, rockets typically use a test payload of about half their maximum payload to the destination orbit. For example, Blue Origin’s New Glenn used a test payload of 25 tonnes on its maiden test flight to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), and it has a theoretical maximum payload to LEO of 45 tonnes.

Now, initially, there wasn’t going to be “generations” of Starship. Musk expected it to have a theoretical payload to LEO of over 100 tonnes right out of the gate, which means it should have test payloads of around 50 tonnes. But then Musk announced they were having thrust issues, which isn’t that surprising, as the figures he was quoting seemed made up, and in reality it actually had a payload to LEO of more like 45 tonnes. However, the first test flights actually had zero payload.

SpaceX had to completely rework the design with the “Gen 2” Starship to even start taking test payloads to orbit. Again, Musk claimed this second generation could take 100 tonnes to LEO, but all of the test payloads were around the 15-tonne mark. In recent months, this was revised, and now the Gen 2 Starship apparently has a payload capacity of 35 tonnes to LEO. That isn’t suspicious at all.

In other words, they aren’t hugely underloading it, and its current theoretical max payload to LEO is nearly half that of the Falcon 9 Super Heavy. Needless to say, that payload would make Starship financially unviable and unusable for the missions planned for it.

Test Flight 11 was the last of the Gen 2 craft. Musk claims that the upcoming Gen 3 will have a payload of 100 tonnes to LEO, just as he did with Gen 1 and 2, and that the Gen 4 rocket can take 200 tonnes to LEO. Though he has not detailed how on Earth they are going to magically nearly triple the payload capacity for Gen 3 or even increase it by a factor of 5.7 for Gen 4!

This is a typical Musk thing. He is moving the goalposts, kicking the can down the line to create the illusion of potential significant leaps, when in reality, that is not on the table. I cannot stress how much of a problem this is for Starship’s future viability!

Cryogenic Refuelling

Starship’s big goal is to take humans to the Moon and Mars. That is why people and government agencies have poured billions of dollars into it. But it can’t get there in one tank; it needs to be refuelled in orbit by another Starship. In fact, it will likely need refuelling multiple times in orbit before setting off for our celestial neighbours.

Again, I cannot stress how challenging this is. Getting such giant crafts to successfully dock without damaging critical parts (like the giant heat shield) is really hard. Then there is robotically transferring the cryogenic liquid fuel in microgravity and in the brutal conditions of space. NASA has been trying to crack this problem for decades on comparatively tiny craft and is still miles away. Yet, just a few months ago, a Starship suffered a catastrophic explosion during refuelling down here on terra firma.

SpaceX initially wanted to land a Starship on the Moon this year but has pushed its crewed Artemis mission back to 2027.

So effectively, SpaceX has a year to test and prove this technology to a level of safety fit enough for human spaceflight. But, right now, they can only take up enough payload to refuel just 3% of a Starship’s 1,200-tonne fuel tanks. That means it would need over 33 launches to fully refuel a Starship in orbit for such a mission, which at the current rate of launches would take over eight years! And, needless to say, this would not just increase the overall launch cost to biblically unviable proportions but also dramatically increase the risk of catastrophic mission-ending explosion in orbit to unviable levels.

The fact that SpaceX hasn’t got to the point of even testing this crucial part of their launch vehicle and is still miles away from having a payload capacity to make such an endeavour even semi-viable is shocking. It demonstrates just how far they have to go.

Heat Shields & Reusability

Did you notice that this Starship re-entered at suborbital speeds, or roughly 1,000 mph less than it would travel during a proper mission? That might not sound like a lot, but it means the object was entering the atmosphere with roughly 13% less kinetic energy than it should have had. Heat shields, which stop the rocket from melting and breaking up during reentry, typically operate right at the edge of what they can take, as too thick a shield will weigh too heavily and reduce payload capacity. As such, that 13% less is a substantial decrease when it comes to testing what these heat shields can withstand.

But that shouldn’t be surprising, as after 11 test flights, SpaceX still hasn’t sorted out their heat shield and are nowhere close to what they need.

For Starship to get close to even the pessimistic launch cost predictions, it needs a heat shield that can withstand multiple launches with practically no refurbishment. That way, it can be relaunched quickly, and relaunch costs will be tiny.

They need something totally cutting-edge, something pushing what is possible with material science.

But, as you can see from the brilliant video by Thunderf00t above, even by Test Flight 8, they were still using a worse version of the tiles used on the Space Shuttle. And, when I say worse, I mean it! Embedding metal supports within the ceramic tiles and bolting them to the rocket is one of the most mind-bendingly stupid things you could possibly do. The only way that makes sense is if you plan on rapidly replacing the entire heat shield after every launch. But that would cost an extravagant amount of money, potentially making reuse of the upper stage an unviable option.

It took them eight test flights to develop that shockingly bad solution, and they are now purposely undertesting the current heat shield. It is almost like Musk expected a miracle leap in material science to magically solve this problem. They simply don’t have a viable solution and are now grasping at straws.

Again, I cannot stress how much of an issue this is. If they can’t solve this without breaking the bank, the entire Starship endeavour will have been a waste of time. So again, the fact that they are still desperately trying to develop the heat shield after 11 test flights shows just how catastrophically far behind they are. This was meant to be a basic step in Starship’s development.

Safe Landing

SpaceX can’t escape the fact that for Starship to be certified for human spaceflight, it needs to prove it can land its crew back on Earth safely at a near 100% success rate. This is quite easy for entry vehicles like SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, as it uses parachutes to slow its descent and has multiple backup parachutes. Starship has no such redundancy. It has to prove it can basically never experience an error during landing.

While Test Flights 10 and 11 did finally get a Starship to achieve a controlled splash-down landing, these are not anywhere near proof that they can do this. These landings had zero payload, while a crewed landing, like the one SpaceX is meant to conduct in 2027, will have tens of tonnes onboard. That extra weight will make a huge difference.

There is also a question as to whether the current heat shield is letting too much heat in and is making the rocket’s interior uninhabitable during reentry. The fact that we no longer get a video feed of the interior of Starship during these launches suggests that this is possibly a noticeable issue. After all, if the heat shield was letting heat through, the metal interior could easily get hot enough to glow red.

There is also the issue of the “chopsticks”. Like SHB, Starship needs to be “caught” by a tower during landing. The SHB has proven this is possible, but it lands at far slower speeds and far easier flight paths. While these splashdowns do show that it is very likely possible Starship will be able to do this too, several people have raised concerns that it seems to be splashing down a few feet away from its target, which would be enough to render a “catch” a failure.

The fact that there have been 11 launches now, and SpaceX hasn’t even begun to demonstrate a reliable habitable internal temperature during landing with a payload on board with a successful tower catch — that is worrying! Not only do SpaceX need to get to that stage, but they also need to prove it time and time again with potentially tens of successful landings before we can even consider human spaceflight. Again, most of Starship’s contracts that paid for its development are for human spaceflight. The fact that they aren’t even beginning that process by now shows they are insanely far behind schedule.

Gen 3 Issues

All of these issues are compounded by the upcoming Gen 3 Starship. To solve the payload problem, Musk has made the Gen 3 rocket larger than the Gen 2, so it can carry more fuel. He has also removed critical heat shields from the rocket engines to save weight and is using ablative cooling (where we use the fuel to cool the engine) instead. Similarly, he is pushing the engines harder, so they will produce more thrust to compensate for the extra mass of the increased fuel capacity.

We have already seen Starship flights end in disaster due to ”flash events” within the rocket engines, which cause them to explode. Ablative cooling and pushing the engines hard will dramatically increase the chances of that happening again.

The added size and mass will make landing the upper stage far harder. The heat shield will have to cope with yet more kinetic energy. It will also have to cover a larger area and not fail over a larger area. What’s more, this will make replacing such a heat shield more expensive and time-consuming, making reusability harder, too, if they ever do manage to land it.

But just making a rocket bigger doesn’t necessarily increase the payload capacity. The extra size not only adds weight, but it will also require additional supports to keep structural integrity, adding even more weight, potentially reducing the payload capacity unless rocket engine performance increases. We have already seen Starship’s structural integrity fail, so we know they can’t build it much lighter than it already is.

Nonetheless, you can’t just turn up a rocket’s thrust — you also need to make it more robust to handle the extra force and vibrational stress that will ensue, particularly for rockets like Starship, which have multiple engines very close together, which transfer heat and vibrations to each other. So, even if the new engines can theoretically produce more thrust, in practice, there is a high chance they will need to be throttled back to survive launch. In fact, SpaceX has already had to throttle down its current engines to get them to survive launch. As such, don’t bet on Gen 3 massively increasing the payload capacity over Gen 2.

But also making Gen 3 larger means it needs more refuelling in orbit. This is already a major risk point in the Starship mission profile, as with each refuelling, you risk mission-ending damage during docking or a catastrophic explosion. This puts even more pressure on SpaceX to get this process 100% reliable. In doing so, it also sends the price of a Moon or Mars mission higher, as the additional refuelling missions could add literally a billion dollars to the mission cost.

Conclusion

So, was Flight 11 a success?

I cannot emphasise enough how impressive it is that SpaceX engineers managed to pull this off. It is deeply impressive.

But it is only impressive because the concept of Starship makes no sense at all. It needs veritable magic or colossal leaps in technology to even be a viable launch vehicle, let alone come close to its design brief. That is why progress has stagnated. There is an enormous gulf between engineering reality and what Musk is trying to do here, one that cannot be bridged with a lean team, little investment or involvement with the science world, and a few test launches.

That is why Test Flight 11 doesn’t just demonstrate that they are developing at an absolute snail’s pace but that the planned solutions to their problems make no sense. This test flight shows they have no way to cross that gulf. And I don’t know if I would call that a success.

The blame lies squarely at Musk’s feet. He is the one who decided the direction and concept of Starship. All these engineers do is attempt to bring it to life. This is what happens when control is concentrated in an egotistical, ill-informed oligarch, not dispersed through experts.

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Sources: BBC, CNN, Reuters, Thunderf00t, Will Lockett, Will Lockett, CNN, Space.com