Was Test Flight 10 A Success?

It's not as simple as yes or no.

Photo by nader saremi on Unsplash

The BBC called Starship’s tenth test flight a “much-needed comeback”. Indeed, much of the internet and media have burst into praise for Musk’s giant rocket. But was this really a comeback? Or should we actually exercise a tiny bit of critical thinking?

Let me be clear, I was deeply impressed by Test Flight 10. It completely smashed my expectations. For the first time, a Starship delivered a dummy payload at orbital speeds. Likewise, the Super Heavy Booster tested a new shallow angle of attack landing, which uses more rocket thrust to slow down than atmospheric drag, and the test went really well. All small but important steps forward.

Starship met every one of its mission objectives on this test flight, which is in stark contrast with its past few flights, which ended in spectacular failure.

So, is that it? Has Starship turned a corner? Should we no longer consider it a colossally pointless death trap? Next stop Mars?

No. Not at all. This is where that critical thinking comes in. This test flight was far from flawless, and with the context of its mission, it is actually a huge disappointment.

The biggest issues with Starship are its rocket engines and fuel system. Essentially, they keep failing and shutting down, or directly exploding and destroying the entire vehicle. Why? Well, we can only speculate. However, SpaceX has acknowledged that the Raptor engine is producing significantly less thrust than Musk intended, which severely limits the rocket’s payload. As such, SpaceX appears to be designing the rocket and fuel systems to be much lighter and more fragile than they should be and is pushing the rockets too hard. A perfect recipe for a catastrophic explosion.

Sadly, Test Flight 10 proved this is still a significant issue.

During takeoff, the Super Heavy Booster experienced an engine shutdown. It still managed to get the Starship upper stage up to speed, but Starship was far lighter than it was designed to be (with more on that in a minute). However, when Starship was in space at an altitude of 90 kilometres, an explosion occurred in its engine compartment, severely damaging the aft section of the vehicle.

All of these factors combined suggests that the issue of explosions caused by fuel leaks, flash events in the engines, and the like are still serious concerns during Starship launches. Need I remind you that a large chunk, if not the majority, of funding for Starship is for crewed flight? And no rocket with a noticeable risk of fatal explosion can pass human flight certification.

But remember how I said Starship was lighter?

Well, Starship is designed to carry 100+ tonnes to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), with a goal of reaching 150 tonnes while remaining fully reusable. Test Flights 1–6 carried literally zero payload, while Test Flights 7, 8, and 9 all failed under the stress of carrying utterly tiny payloads. Test Flight 10 had a dummy payload of a mere 16 tonnes. That is 10.6% of its target payload and just 72% of the payload to LEO of Falcon 9.

In its crewed Dragon configuration, Falcon 9 only has a payload to LEO of six tonnes (thanks to life support systems and safety systems), and that is barely enough to be usable. In other words, Starship doesn’t appear to have the payload capacity for a crewed launch!

This would have also made the Super Heavy Booster’s job far easier, not just because it has to launch 134 tonnes less payload, but also because it wouldn’t have to launch all the propellant to propel that extra weight into orbit. Furthermore, Starship landed with zero payload, which won’t be the case for many of its planned missions, which involve crewed landings or returning samples. So the Super Heavy Booster also didn’t have to carry the propellant needed to land any cargo back on Earth. When you consider that Falcon 9’s upper stage carries over 92 tonnes of propellant for its 22-tonne payload to LEO, that means that this Starship likely weighed hundreds of tonnes less than it is expected to in typical operational launches. This means that the Super Heavy Booster was lifting significantly less mass than it should have, which is why an engine failure didn’t derail this flight but could have on a fully loaded flight.

With this as context, Test Flight 10 looks a bit pathetic.

And it gets even worse when you compare it to Test Flight 5, which had no major engine failures, no explosions in space, successfully landed the Super Heavy Booster, which was later reused, relit the Starship engines, and splash-landed the Starship. The only difference between the test flight that happened nearly a year ago and the one that just happened was that one carried 0% of its promised payload capacity, and this one carried 10.6% of its promised payload capacity.

It took SpaceX five test flights and over $2 billion (the amount SpaceX has admitted to spending on Starship each year) to increase its potential payload capacity from nothing to almost nothing.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I know progress is never linear. But Starship has got Mount Everest to climb before it is even viable, let alone useful, and progress is also very rarely exponential.

So how far do they have to go?

Well, they have to increase the payload capacity by at least 625%, or ideally 937%. To do that, they will likely have to dramatically increase thrust and fuel capacity, which causes its own rocket equation issues. However, at the same time, they also need to make these engines far safer and more reliable. Rocket engines operate on the cutting edge of material science, so they are always a compromise between performance and reliability. Increasing both dramatically is incredibly challenging, if not impossible. Then, they need to be able to land both stages safely almost 100% of the time, given that Starship is expected to land with a crew. Sadly, even Falcon 9 boosters still fail around 3% of the time, so getting these much larger rockets to land with even higher safety margins is a gargantuan request. Then, to make the economy of operations make sense and get the Starship price per kilogramme to orbit below the likes of Falcon 9, it needs to be rapidly reusable, meaning both stages’ engines, heat shields, structures, and fuel tanks need to be reliable enough to conduct multiple launches and landings back-to-back without risk of failure. Considering they can barely do a single launch without failure, that is another gargantuan request. Oh, and then on top of everything else, for Starship to even consider conducting missions to the Moon or Mars, it needs to be refuelled in orbit reliably — an enormously challenging feat that NASA has purposely avoided for decades, and yet SpaceX hasn’t even begun to test or solve this.

Now, is all of this possible? I don’t know. Personally, I doubt it. I think the entire concept has some significant flaws. But that doesn’t matter.

What matters is that it took five test flights, billions of dollars, and an entire year of development to increase the promised payload capacity from 0% to 10.6%. At this rate of improvement, it will take 50 test flights, a decade of development, and well over $20 billion for Starship to reach its promised payload capacity. However, as we have just covered, Starship has far more issues to address than just payload. Sure, progress isn’t linear. But it will take more than a miracle for SpaceX to deliver on its Starship promises, even with billions of dollars and years of development time.

And, just to remind you, Starship is already behind schedule. It was supposed to have already landed on the Moon, and NASA still has it on the books for landing the Artemis III mission on the Lunar surface in 2027! There is no chance Starship can even be remotely ready by then.

Test Flight 10 was not a success, nor a comeback. Starship is lightyears behind where it needs to be, and this test flight was a desperate attempt to appear as though it is making progress — when in context, this project is stagnant and going nowhere.

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Sources: BBC, Wired, ABC, SpaceX, SpaceX, Payload Space, CNBC, CNBC, NASA, SpaceX, SpaceX, America Space