To Get To Mars, SpaceX First Needs Starship To Launch

This particular launch is almost two decades old. In early 2005, Musk indicated plans to build a giant rocket codenamed “BFR”.

Although the vehicle’s exact plans have changed over time, its purpose has remained the same: to land people on other worlds and fulfill Musk’s dream of human settlement on the Red Planet.

“Starship is the first vehicle capable of truly executing on Musk’s vision of making humanity multi-planetary,” said Caleb Henry, director of research at Quilty Analytics, a space consulting firm. ,

Once it’s operational, Starship will be the most powerful rocket ever built by humanity, capable of generating 16.7 million pounds of thrust at liftoff and carrying enormous payloads to Earth orbit and beyond. Its power and size make it an important part of SpaceX’s future, with the potential to launch massive satellites and large crews of astronauts. NASA plans to use the rocket as part of its strategy to return to the Moon, after awarding SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to help the agency get there. Starship is designed to be completely reusable, unlike any rocket ever built before. SpaceX says this will make its operations relatively cheap.

All of this means higher stakes for Monday’s launch. Before any of these big dreams can come true, SpaceX needs to prove that Starship can actually fly.

“We really need to understand this vehicle,” SpaceX President Gwen Shotwell told a group of reporters at a space industry conference in February.

the starship system

Standing more than 120 meters, or 394 feet, Starship is a behemoth, larger than even the Saturn V rocket that carried astronauts to the Moon in the 1960s and ’70s and NASA’s Space Launch System that launched its mission in November. The first test flight took place. It is also destined to be the most powerful in Earth orbit, capable of lifting 150 to 250 metric tons of cargo. SpaceX’s most powerful rocket at the moment, the Falcon Heavy, can only lift 64 metric tons into orbit. Starship will allow heavy payloads to be carried into space, such as SpaceX’s new, larger Starlink satellites. Elon Musk has also said that it can carry 100 passengers at a time.

The Starship system consists of two primary components: a massive rocket booster and a spacecraft to hold space-bound cargo and people.

The booster, known as the Super Heavy, is the large cylindrical rocket body that sits at the bottom of the system when fully stacked on the launchpad. At liftoff, 33 of SpaceX’s new methane-fueled Raptor engines are designed to ignite simultaneously, providing the immense power needed to lift such a heavy load out of Earth’s atmosphere.

The bullet-shaped Starship spacecraft itself sits atop the Super Heavy Booster. Its multidimensional capability makes it unlike any other spacecraft ever built. It can serve as a crew spacecraft, crew lander, propellant tanker and satellite dispenser.

Both of these pieces – the Super Heavy and the Starship – are designed to return to Earth and remain intact on the surface. However, their landing technique is a bit unorthodox: Two giant mechanical arms would extend outward from the launch tower, allowing the rockets to take off and “catch” the vehicles before they ever touched the ground.

This is extremely complex architecture, much of which has not been tested in flight.

“It’s really a flight test,” Shotwell told reporters. “And the real goal isn’t to blow up the launch pad. That’s success.”

test flight

No people or cargo will be aboard for Starship’s first test flight.

On Monday, during a window starting at 7 a.m. local time, SpaceX will attempt to launch Starship from the company’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, where the company has been mass-producing Starships for the past five years.

Less than three minutes after launch, the Super Heavy booster will separate from Starship and fall back to Earth for a controlled landing in the Gulf of Mexico. There, it will sink to the bottom of the ocean with no plans to recover. The test of the reusability of the Super Heavy would come in later tests.

Once separated from the Super Heavy, the Starship will ignite its own engines, propelling the Starship deep into space where it will reach near-orbital speed. About nine-and-a-half minutes after launch, the Starship’s engines will shut down, and the vehicle will orbit Earth — reaching an altitude of about 146 miles in space.

Starship will not make a complete orbit around the Earth. About 140 miles off the coast of Hawaii, the spacecraft will reenter through the planet’s atmosphere and plunge into the Pacific Ocean.

This awe-inspiring test is meant to prove something important: that Starship and the Super Heavy can separate as planned and that Starship is capable of reaching orbital velocities and then returning back to Earth.

the long road to starship

The launch will be the most important and complex test of Starship to date. Between the end of 2020 and the spring of 2021, SpaceX conducted a series of high-altitude test flights, sending Starship spacecraft prototypes up to an altitude of 32,800 feet and then attempting to land them again. Only one of those prototypes landed successfully without exploding. This will be the first in-flight test of the Super Heavy Booster.

Ever since SpaceX began seriously developing Starship in 2018, launches have always seemed on the horizon, with the company hitting most of Musk’s aspirational launch deadlines. The company also had to wait as the Federal Aviation Administration reviewed Starbase to determine the environmental impacts of the expanded facility. In June 2022, the agency said SpaceX would need to implement 75 mitigation measures to reduce its impact on the region. Finally on April 14, the FAA gave SpaceX the green light to launch Starship from Boca Chica.

Now that the license has been granted, SpaceX can launch Starship whenever it is able. And it needs to keep going, as SpaceX already has a number of major journeys planned for Starship — from launching NASA astronauts and tourists to launching all manner of satellites and cargo.

In February Shotwell said, “I would love to be able to do 100 Starship flights next year. I don’t think we’ll do 100 Starship flights next year, but maybe in 2025 we’ll do 100 flights.”