Why the Trump Card for Starship?

• Regulatory Relief: Posts on X and Musk’s own statements highlight a perceived regulatory bottleneck under the current administration. Musk has expressed frustration over the time it takes to get launch permits, which he claims can take longer than constructing the rockets themselves. A Trump White House, according to some X users and Musk, might streamline these processes through executive actions or policy shifts, reducing bureaucratic hurdles.
• Political Support: There’s a sentiment, as seen in various X posts, that Trump’s administration would prioritize business over what some perceive as excessive regulation. This aligns with Trump’s previous term where he was known for cutting red tape, which could be beneficial for SpaceX’s operational freedom.
• SpaceX’s Ambition: Musk’s vision for SpaceX isn’t just about making rockets; it’s about making humanity multi-planetary. The urgency of this mission, especially in terms of making Mars trips a regular affair, could be significantly influenced by the political climate. A less restrictive regulatory environment could mean more launches, faster development cycles, and quicker realization of these ambitious goals.

The Broader Implications

• Economic Impact: SpaceX’s expansion could lead to significant economic benefits, including job creation and boosting the aerospace industry. A supportive political environment could accelerate this growth.
• Environmental Considerations: While regulation often aims to protect the environment, SpaceX’s innovations in reusable rockets and reducing space junk could be seen as environmentally beneficial. However, there’s a counter-argument about the ecological impact of frequent launches, which might require a nuanced approach to deregulation.
• Global Competition: Space exploration is increasingly competitive. A Trump administration’s push to support SpaceX could be seen as a move to maintain or enhance the U.S.’s lead in space technology over nations like China or international players like the European Space Agency.

The Cosmic Catch

After the test, Elon Musk tweeted that BN3 was tested with three raptor engines. This is not the complete number of raptor engines the orbital flight will have. The booster used for the orbital flight, BN4, will have over 30 raptor engines. According to Nasa Space Flight, Elon Musk noted that they might test BN3 with 9 engines if progress on BN4 is slow. The 230 ft stainless steel booster will be a reusable and will aid Starship in flying to orbit.

Full test duration firing of 3 Raptors on Super Heavy Booster!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 20, 2021

For the test orbital flight, the Starship will launch from SpaceX’s launch pad in Boca Chica, Texas, the BN4 booster will detach from Starship and splash down near the Gulf of Mexico while Starship reaches orbit. After this, Starship will aim to land off the coast of Kauai and be recovered to be reused.

Although BN4 is already pre-stacked in the High Bay, the projected date for the orbital mission is not certain. Space News noted that Musk expects that the vehicle will be ready for the moon in 2024. SpaceX plans to use the BN4 booster for Yusaku Maezawa‘s Dear Moon project and NASA has prechosen SpaceX for their Artemis mission to land astronauts on the moon.

Excitement for SpaceX’s plans have really ramped up after Virgin Galactic successfully launched their space plane into orbit and at the time of writing this article, Blue Origin is hours away from embarking on their first orbital mission. I will be eagerly watching Blue Origin’s mission as it is a view into the next step in space exploration and for humanity.

On Thursday, Elon Musk’s SpaceX revealed in filings to the Federal Communications Commission new plans for the next steps in testing its massive Starship rocket in a launch that would see its return just off the coast of Hawaii.

Over the last year SpaceX has conducted numerous test flights for the prototype Starship rocket, but this plan is different in that it will be the company’s first attempt to reach orbit with Starship.

In 2019, Musk unveiled a version of the rocket that Starship prototypes continue to resemble. Standing at 160 feet tall or about the size of a 16-story building, and built of stainless steel. The initial launch of the rocket takes place on a “Super Heavy” – which makes up the bottom half of the rocket and stands at about 230 feet. Together totaling nearly 400 feet tall when stacked for launch mode.

According to the FCC filings, the Starship rocket will stack a Super Heavy booster at SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas development facility. The booster will separate and partially return “and land in the Gulf of Mexico approximately 20 miles from the shore.”

“The Orbital Starship will continue flying between the Florida Straits. It will achieve orbit until performing a powered, targeted landing approximately 100km (~62 miles) off the northwest coast of Kauai in a soft ocean landing,” SpaceX wrote in the filing.

The FCC, U.S. Air Force, NASA, and the FAA are all working in coordination with SpaceX for the launch, and the flight is scheduled to last just over 90 minutes in total. The timing for the flight is yet to be announced, but Musk said a few months ago that SpaceX’s ultimate goal is to launch the rocket into orbit by July.

Almost a year ago Musk told the SpaceX team that the progress on Starship needed to improve, “dramatically and immediately,” saying it was at the top of the company’s priority list. The program has moved at rapid speeds since then, with production, testing, and flights all steady in progress. SpaceX had its first successful landing and recovery of Starship prototype SN15 just last week, reaching the fifth highest altitude test flight, and the first prototype to finish a test without exploding.

The goal for the company’s Starship is to launch cargo, and even people, on missions to Mars and the moon.

Last month, NASA awarded SpaceX a roughly $3 billion contract to build a lunar variant of the Starship with plans to carry astronauts to the moon for the tentative Artemis missions. And as Musk’s team moves steadfast on the development of Starship, NASA ultimately suspended the work on the HLS program after Leidos’ Dynetics and Bezos’ Blue Origin each protested the contract award from NASA.

These plans have been discussed previously, and have manifested into SpaceX purchasing two rigs that are currently being retrofitted for use with Starship. The rigs are nicknamed Phoibos and Deimos, after the moons of Mars, and located in the Gulf of Mexico near SpaceX’s Brownsville, Texas development site.

Musk made a statement on his twitter account on Wednesday and claims one of the two rigs could be, at least, partially operating by the end of the year. Musk is known for his highly optimistic timelines, and the vast majority of them as of late have been relatively accurate.

One of them may be in limited operation by end of year

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 24, 2021

And by “limited operation”, it remains unclear what in specific that will entail. He is not saying SpaceX will be actively launching by the end of the year. But potentially that they are floating as scheduled, or simply able to host a Starship prototype. He added that there are increased plans to station launchpads for Starship in various places throughout the globe, and is not limited to just the Golf. These bold plans fall in line with his previously shared plan via CG concept videos when Starship debuted, where he outlined ideas of launch and landing facilities stationed in bodies of water closer to urban destinations.

We’ve literally put a probe into interstellar space (thank you, Voyager 2) where it is still​ ​ sending back reading of what it sees out there. Let that sink in.

We’ve put humans on the moon. We’ve put multiple pieces of equipment and rovers on Mars. News of something else getting to the red planet is almost overlooked, unthinkably, in light of other current events or happenings.

We’ve landed crafts on Venus and, just recently, have taken samples from asteroids and returned them to Earth. We’re not just bordering on the realm of science fiction, we’ve already entered it.

And yet, attention and hype seem to have plateaued. Maybe a large part of it is the glacially slow pace that NASA and its associated cohorts have made with regards to rockets, the price tags in the billions of dollars range and the overall not-so-good reputation of government red tape being slathered all over these projects which were supposed to fundamentally alter the shape of our future.

Enter SpaceX.

You’re well aware by now that SpaceX is revolutionary for several reasons. First, it’s a completely private company and the only four entities that have put astronauts into orbit aboard their rockets are the United States’, Chinese and Russian government-sponsored programs, and SpaceX. That alone is remarkable.

Prior to 2015, no one had ever landed their own rocket booster successfully for reuse. SpaceX has now done it 68 times.

The Starship program that is rapidly transforming a remote strip of land in South Texas has goals that will make the Falcon 9’s progress and all that came before it, as impressive and groundbreaking as it was, pale in comparison.

Starship isn’t just aiming to be the first ever reusable two-stage​ human/cargo transport system ever (revolutionary in and of itself), it’s doing it at warp-speed when compared to its competitors.

While Starship’s genesis stretches back to 2015 when it was still in the ideation phase of Elon Musk’s considerable brain, the last year-and-a-half have seen amazingly fast process. SpaceX has successfully built eight prototypes, flown two of them to 150 meters, and today had a successful launch with their fully built-out version of the second stage to 12.5 kilometers. Not to mention, it has established a production cadence that has seven other prototypes right behind this one (dubbed SN8 for Starship Number 8) should it not survive the testing. Also, it has begun production on the mammoth booster section that will assist in getting Starship to the moon, Mars and beyond.

Musk has described prototyping as the easy part of developing something, but building the “machine that builds the machine” as the trick, and arguably the hardest aspect. The real thing to be excited about with Starship and the future it will unlock are how quickly it is being developed and improved, not replicated.

Eagle-eyed observers near the Boca Chica facility have spotted components of parts ranging all the way up to SN16 with surely more to come in the near future.

It’s hard for the casual observer to really appreciate what is happening here in 2020 when feeds refresh every three seconds and news is curated/delivered in even less time. Starship’s fundamental design will change the cost of delivering people and cargo into space, which figures to change the economics of a dormant industry like we’ve never seen.

Innovation, speed, and improvement. SpaceX has established a pattern with nearly every craft it has developed and Starship appears to be the company’s and Musk’s 9th symphony.

Yesterday, Elon Musk showed a picture of Starship on its launch pad.

Out on the pad in South Texas pic.twitter.com/RcYOXXpTc2

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 7, 2020

According to their website, SpaceX wants to test, “how the vehicle’s three Raptor engines perform to the overall aerodynamic entry capabilities of the vehicle (including its body flaps) to how the vehicle manages propellant transition. SN8 will also attempt to perform a landing flip maneuver, which would be a first for a vehicle of this size.”

The rocket is a fully reusable vehicle. It has a section on the inside that allows for cargo and passengers to travel outside of the earth’s orbit. The ship is 160 ft high, has a 30 ft diameter, and is capable of carrying 100+ tons.

If everything goes according to plan, SpaceX estimates that Starship will reach an altitude of 8 miles. Before, Starship has performed “hops” that were only a few feet. But, there is a possibility that Starship will not take off. In the webcast description, a SpaceX representative writes, “the schedule is dynamic and likely to change, as is the case with all development testing.” The representative also emphasizes that it is ok if not everything goes to plan. This test is to see what they can learn and improve for Starship development.

You can watch the launch via SpaceX’s Youtube channel or through their website.

_{Starhopper 150 meter launch, August 27, 2019.}

Starship is SpaceX’s golden egg rocket, being capable of sending more than one hundred tons to low Earth orbit, the Moon, and Mars, and one hundred people to Mars. The company’s CEO, Elon Musk, claims that the cost per launch of Starship will “be like $2 million.” Due to the rocket’s high capability to orbit and low cost, it’s expected that Starship will ultimately replace SpaceX’s current fleet of rockets and capsules, Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Dragon.

_{Starship Mark 1 suffers a pressurizing failure during testing. Credit: Labpadre (Youtube)}

On November 20, 2019, the first prototype of Starship, Mark 1, suffered a terrible anomaly during a pressurization test, releasing liquid methane and liquid oxygen. Since then, SpaceX has built more iterations of the vehicle, but SN5 is the sole Starship to have completed all of the tests required for a low altitude flight. And on August 4, 2020, SN5 completed a pivotal test to one-day landing humans on Mars, a 150-meter hop, similar to its old predecessor, Starhopper.

_{Starship SN5 150-meter hop. August 4, 2020. Credit: Labpadre (Youtube)}

Viewers online were on the edge of their seats waiting for the rocket’s first flight, and it went flawlessly! After hitting the 150-meter apogee, its little landing legs extended from the skirt and made an excellent landing on a landing pad nearby.

_{Render of Starship SN5’s landing legs. Credit: Kimi Talvitie}

The stubby landing legs that SN5 used for its first 150-meter hop won’t cut it for uneven surfaces on the Moon or Mars. Musk proposes that the next iterations of the landing legs will be similar to the Falcon 9 and have capable of auto-leveling capabilities for stability.

V1.1 legs will be ~60% longer. V2.0 legs will be much wider & taller — like Falcon, but capable of landing on unimproved surfaces & auto-leveling.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 5, 2020

Furthermore, after SN5’s hop, Musk confirmed that SpaceX would perform more short hops before eventually moving to a 20km hop with a nose cone and aero flaps.

We’ll do several short hops to smooth out launch process, then go high altitude with body flaps

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 5, 2020

This is only the beginning of humanity’s journey to Mars, allowing us to become a multiplanetary species. The future sure is exhilarating.

You can watch Starship SN5’s exciting launch below:

This test happened a few days ago on June 23 and was captured by the cameras on Spadre.com (a South Padre Island tourist website) and NASASpaceflight.com. The tank was pushed beyond its capacity as SpaceX filled it with chilled liquid nitrogen to determine its ability to hold highly cold propellant for a real launch. At one point, the enormous tank exploded, spitting out clouds of the liquid nitrogen into the air.

The sight was captured by Mary (also known as BocaChicaGal on Twitter) who follows Starship news. A close-up of the video on NASASpaceflight.com was posted on Twitter and it shows the precise moment when the tank pops and collapses.

Preparing to lift SN5 on to the mount.

Mary (@BocaChicaGal) with the livestream. Jack (@thejackbeyer) with the chat along with Das (@KSpaceAcademy) who’s also drawing all over the screen.

Come join many thousands waiting for some sweet crane action.https://t.co/HeEBTwsxZr pic.twitter.com/wPDuKAWOCZ

— Chris B – NSF (@NASASpaceflight) June 24, 2020

This is just one of the series of tests that SpaceX is conducting at the Boca Chica facility to perfect its equipment and designs for the Starship. Eventually, the company wants to facilitate commercial travel to Mars and is currently using the spacecraft for moon landings, as a part of a NASA project. Starship is among the two other lunar vehicle designs that were chosen by NASA last month to launch its Artemis astronauts to the moon.

This SN7 tank is the second of the company’s prototype tanks to explode. The first was SN4, which exploded on May 29 after the Raptor rocket engine was tested.

On the other hand, some other tests were successful, including the rocket engine tests that happened in early 2019 and the test of the Starhopper spacecraft, one of the first versions of the Starship.

Nevertheless, the company’s CEO Elon Musk is relentless in his pursuit of developing the rocket. He says that SpaceX will learn from every failure it incurs and constantly update the designs. One development that occurred is that the company is now using 304L stainless steel instead of 301. On June 15, after the SN7 test, Musk said that it’s a good sign that the tank didn’t explode, only leaked.

He wrote on Twitter: “Tank didn’t burst, but leaked at 7.6 bar. This is a good result & supports idea of 304L stainless [steel] being better than 301. We’re developing our own alloy to take this even further. Leak before burst is highly desirable.”