Engineering:SpaceX Starship

Short description: Reusable super heavy-lift launch vehicle

Starship

Starship prototype in launch configuration: Starship spacecraft sits on top of Super Heavy.
Project cost	at least US$5 billion
Size
Height	121 m (397 ft)
Diameter	9 m (30 ft)
Mass	5,000 t (11,000,000 lb)
Capacity
Payload to LEO	Reusable: 100–150 t (220,000–331,000 lb)
Associated rockets
Derivatives	Starship HLS
Comparable	N1 Saturn V Space Shuttle Falcon Heavy Space Launch System Long March 9
Launch history
Status	In development
Launch sites	SpaceX Starbase Kennedy Space Center, LC-39A (planned)
Total launches	2
Successes	0
Failures	2 (IFT-1, IFT-2)
First flight	20 April 2023
Last flight	18 November 2023
First stage – Super Heavy
Length	71 m (233 ft)
Diameter	9 m (30 ft)
Empty mass	200 t (441,000 lb)
Gross mass	3,600 t (7,937,000 lb)
Propellant mass	3,400 t (7,496,000 lb)
Engines	33 Raptor engines
Thrust	7,590 tf (74,400 kN; 16,700,000 lbf)
Specific impulse	327 s (3.21 km/s) (sea-level)
Fuel	Liquid oxygen / Methane
Second stage – Starship
Length	50 m (160 ft)
Diameter	9 m (30 ft)
Empty mass	~100 t (220,000 lb)
Gross mass	1,300 t (2,866,000 lb)
Propellant mass	1,200 t (2,646,000 lb)
Engines	3 Raptor engines 3 Raptor vacuum engines
Thrust	1,500 tf (14,700 kN; 3,310,000 lbf)
Specific impulse	327 s (3.21 km/s) (sea-level) 380 s (3.7 km/s) (vacuum)
Fuel	Liquid oxygen / Methane

Starship is an American two-stage super heavy lift launch vehicle under development by the aerospace company SpaceX. It is currently the largest and most powerful rocket ever flown. Starship is intended to be fully reusable, which means both stages will be recovered after a mission and reused.

The Starship launch vehicle is designed to supplant SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, expand SpaceX's Starlink satellite constellation, and launch crews to both low Earth orbit and Mars. The vehicle is fundamental to SpaceX's ambition of colonizing Mars. SpaceX plans to use Starship vehicles as tankers, refueling other Starships to allow missions to geosynchronous orbit, the Moon, and Mars. A planned lunar lander variant of Starship was contracted by NASA to land astronauts on the Moon as part of the Artemis program by 2025, later delayed to September 2026.

Starship consists of the Super Heavy booster and the Starship spacecraft, which are both powered by Raptor engines, which burn liquid methane and liquid oxygen. Both stages are constructed primarily of stainless steel, instead of the carbon composite used in a series of prior designs. The booster is designed to use its engines to slow itself down, before being caught by a pair of mechanical arms attached to the launch tower. The Starship spacecraft is designed to be protected during atmospheric reentry by its thermal protection system, using a 'belly flop' maneuver where the spacecraft turns from a horizontal to a vertical position from which it lands using its engines.

SpaceX has stated that a long-term goal for the Starship system is to achieve frequent space launches at low cost. Development follows an iterative and incremental approach involving test flights of prototype vehicles which are often destructive. The first flight test of the full Starship system took place on 20 April 2023, lifting-off with three engines out and ending four minutes after launch due to a loss of control, resulting in the destruction of the launch vehicle. The second flight test of the vehicle took place on 18 November 2023, achieving stage separation with the Super Heavy booster exploding roughly 30 seconds later following multiple engine failures during its boostback burn. The upper stage was lost nearly eight minutes after launch prior to reaching orbit.

The development of Starship has resulted in several lawsuits against the FAA and SpaceX from environmental groups. Some conservationists have expressed concern over the impact of Starship's development in Boca Chica, Texas on species like the critically endangered Kemp's ridley sea-turtle, nearby wildlife habitats and national-refuge land.

Description

When stacked and fully fueled, Starship has a mass of approximately 5,000 t (11,000,000 lb), a diameter of 9 m (30 ft) and a height of 121 m (397 ft). The rocket has been designed with the goal of being fully reusable to reduce launch costs; it consists of the Super Heavy first-stage booster and the Starship spacecraft which are powered by Raptor and Raptor Vacuum engines. The bodies of both rocket stages are made from stainless steel and are manufactured by stacking and welding stainless steel cylinders. These cylinders have a diameter of 9 m (30 ft), a height of 2 m (7 ft), a thickness of 4mm (0.16 in) and a mass of 1,600 kg (4,000 lb) each. Domes inside the spacecraft separate the methane and oxygen tanks. SpaceX has stated that Starship, in its "baseline reuseable design", will have a payload capacity of 100–150 t (220,000–331,000 lb) to low earth orbit and 27 t (60,000 lb) to geostationary transfer orbit.

Super Heavy booster

The first-stage booster, named Super Heavy, is 71 m (233 ft) tall and 9 m (30 ft) wide. It contains 33 Raptor engines arranged in concentric rings. The outermost ring of 20 engines are of the "Raptor Boost" configuration, which lack gimbal actuators to save weight and cost. At full power, all engines combined produce 74,400 kN (16,700,000 lb_f) of thrust.

The booster's tanks can hold 3,400 t (7,500,000 lb) of propellant, consisting of 2,650 t (5,840,000 lb) of liquid oxygen and 750 t (1,650,000 lb) of liquid methane. In 2021 Elon Musk said that the final design will have a dry mass between 160 t (350,000 lb) and 200 t (440,000 lb), with the tanks weighing 80 t (180,000 lb) and the interstage 20 t (44,000 lb).

The booster uses four electrically actuated grid fins for control, each with a mass of 3 t (6,600 lb). The booster is lifted by protruding hardpoints, which are located between gridfins. Above the grid fins is the vented interstage, used for hot staging; a type of rocket staging in which the upper stage fires its engines before separating from the first-stage rather than after.

Underside of the Super Heavy booster prior to engine installation

Starship spacecraft

Starship's heat shield under inspection

Starship's heat shield is composed of eighteen thousand hexagonal black tiles that can withstand temperatures of 1,400 °C (2,600 °F). It is designed to protect the vehicle during atmospheric entry and to be used multiple times with minimal maintenance between flights. The silica-based tiles are attached to Starship with pins and have small gaps in between to allow for heat expansion.

Variants

For satellite launch, Starship is planned to have a large cargo door that will open to release payloads, similar to NASA's Space Shuttle, and close upon reentry instead of a jettisonable nose-cone fairing. Instead of a cleanroom, payloads would be integrated directly into Starship's payload bay, which requires purging the payload bay with temperature-controlled ISO class 8 clean air. To deploy Starlink satellites, the cargo door is to be replaced with a slot and dispenser rack, whose mechanism has been compared to a Pez candy dispenser.

Starship HLS

Starship Human Landing System (HLS) is a planned crewed lunar lander variant of the Starship vehicle that would be modified for landing, operation, and takeoff from the lunar surface. A leaked SpaceX CGI rendering from 2021 featured modified landing legs, a body-mounted solar array, a set of thrusters mounted mid-body to assist with final landing and takeoff, two airlocks, and an elevator to lower crew and cargo onto the lunar surface.

Starship is planned to be able to be refueled by docking with separately launched Starship propellant tanker spacecraft in orbit. Doing so could allow it to reach higher-energy targets, such as geosynchronous orbit, the Moon, and Mars. A propellant depot could store methane and oxygen on-orbit, and could be used by Starship HLS to replenish its fuel tanks. When fully fueled, Starship HLS is designed to land 100 t (220,000 lb) of payload on the Moon.

In 2021, the Government Accountability Office said that SpaceX would "require 16 launches overall", and in 2023, a NASA official estimated the number of Starship launches required for one lunar landing to be "in the high teens". In January 2024, SpaceX vice president of customer operations estimated that the number of launches would be "10-ish", though this number is subject to change. These launches will reportedly have to be in "rapid succession" in order to manage schedule constraints and cryogenic fuel boil-off. This number contrasts with Musk's statement in 2021 that between "four and eight" launches would be required.

As of 2023 NASA has delayed Starship HLS's critical design review until after SpaceX performs a mission demonstrating in-orbit transfer of cryogenic propellants. In January 2024 NASA announced that Artemis 3, the mission that will see astronauts land on the moon using Starship HLS, has been delayed from late 2025 to September 2026. The head of NASA's moon and Mars exploration strategy, said that this was partly due to "development challenges" with Starship HLS. The government accountability office noted, in their report to Congress dated November 2023, that SpaceX had made "limited progress maturing the technology needed" to conduct orbital refueling, and identified SpaceX's need to "develop the ability to store and transfer propellant while in orbit" as one of the major risks to the program's timeline.

Raptor engine

Sea level-optimized Raptor 1 engine, May 2020

Raptor is a family of rocket engines developed by SpaceX for use in Starship and Super Heavy vehicles. It burns liquid oxygen and methane in an efficient and complex full-flow staged combustion power cycle. The Raptor engine uses methane as fuel rather than kerosene because methane gives higher performance and prevents the build-up of deposits in the engine from coking. Methane can also be produced from carbon dioxide and water using the Sabatier reaction. The engines are designed to be reused many times with little maintenance.

Raptor operates with an oxygen-to-methane mixture ratio of about 3.6:1, lower than the stoichiometric mixture ratio of 4:1 necessary for complete combustion, since operating a higher temperatures would melt the engine. The propellants leave the pre-burners and get injected into the main combustion chamber as hot gases instead of liquid droplets allowing a higher power density as the propellants mix rapidly via diffusion. The methane and oxygen are at high enough temperatures and pressures that they ignite on contact, eliminating the need for igniters in the main combustion chamber. The engine structure itself is mostly aluminum, copper, and steel; oxidizer-side turbopumps and manifolds subject to corrosive oxygen-rich flames are made of an Inconel-like SX500 superalloy. Some components are 3D printed.

At sea level, the standard Raptor engine produces 2.3 MN (520,000 lbf) at a specific impulse of 327 seconds (3.21 km/s) at sea level and 350 seconds (3.4 km/s) in a vacuum. Raptor Vacuum, used on the Starship upper stage, is modified with a regeneratively cooled nozzle extension made of brazed steel tubes, increasing its expansion ratio to about 90 and its specific impulse in vacuum to 380 seconds (3.7 km/s). The main combustion chamber operates at a pressure of 350 bar (5,100 psi) exceeding that of any prior operational rocket engine. The Raptor's gimbaling range is 15°, higher than the RS-25's 12.5° and the Merlin's 5° (though most Raptor's on Starship are incapable of gimbaling). SpaceX has stated they aim to achieve a per unit production cost of US$250,000 upon starting mass-production.

Planned launch and landing profile

File:B7 Booster Integration.webm Payloads are planned to be integrated into Starship at a separate facility and then rolled out to the launch site. Super Heavy and Starship are then to be stacked onto their launch mount and loaded with fuel via the Starship quick disconnect (SQD) arm and booster quick disconnect (BQD) . The SQD would then retract, all thirty-three engines of Super Heavy would ignite, and the rocket would lift-off.

File:Super Heavy catching fast.webm At approximately 159 seconds after launch at an altitude of roughly 64 km (40 mi), Super Heavy cuts off all but three of its centre gimbaling rocket engines. Starship then ignites its engines while still attached to the booster, and separates. During hot-staging, the booster throttles down its engines. The booster then rotates, before igniting an additional ten engines for the boostback burn. After the boostback burn is complete, the booster's engines shut off with Super Heavy on a trajectory for a controlled descent to the launch site using its grid fins for minor course corrections. After six minutes, shortly before landing, it will ignite its engines to slow down sufficiently to be caught by two mechanical arms attached to the tower.

Meanwhile, the Starship spacecraft continues to accelerate to orbital velocity with its six raptor engines. Once in orbit, the spacecraft is planned to be able to be refueled by another Starship tanker variant. Musk has estimated that 8 launches would be needed to completely refuel a Starship in low Earth orbit. NASA has estimated that 16 launches in short succession (due to cryogenic propellant boil-off) would be needed to partially refuel Starship for one lunar landing. To land on bodies without an atmosphere, such as the Moon, Starship will fire its engines to slow down. To land on bodies with an atmosphere such as the Earth and Mars, Starship first slows by entering the atmosphere via a heat shield. The spacecraft would then perform a "belly-flop" maneuver by diving back through the atmosphere body at a 60° angle to the ground, controlling its fall using four flaps at the front and aft sides of the spacecraft. Shortly before landing, the Raptor engines fire, using fuel from the header tanks, and the spacecraft resumes vertical orientation, with the Raptor engines' gimbaling helping to maneuver the craft.

If Starship's second stage lands on a pad, a mobile hydraulic lift will move it to a transporter vehicle. If it lands on a floating platform, it will be transported by a barge to a port and then transported by road. The recovered Starship will either be positioned on the launch mount for another launch or refurbished at a SpaceX facility.

History

Early design concepts (2012–2019)

In November 2005, before SpaceX had launched its first rocket the Falcon 1, CEO Elon Musk first mentioned a high-capacity rocket concept able to launch 100 t (220,000 lb) to low Earth orbit, dubbed the BFR. Later in 2012, Elon Musk first publicly announced plans to develop a rocket surpassing the capabilities of their existing Falcon 9. SpaceX called it the Mars Colonial Transporter, as the rocket was to transport humans to Mars and back. In 2016, the name was changed to Interplanetary Transport System, as the rocket was planned to travel beyond Mars as well. The design called for a carbon fiber structure, a mass in excess of 10,000 t (22,000,000 lb) when fully-fueled, a payload of 300 t (660,000 lb) to low Earth orbit while being fully reusable. By 2017, the concept was temporarily re-dubbed the BFR.

In December 2018, the structural material was announced to change from carbon composites to stainless steel, marking the transition from early design concepts to the current design of Starship. Musk cited numerous reasons for the design change; low cost and ease of manufacture, increased strength of stainless steel at cryogenic temperatures, as well as its ability to withstand high heat. In 2019, SpaceX began to refer to the entire vehicle as Starship, with the second stage being called Starship and the booster Super Heavy. They also announced that Starship would use reusable heat shield tiles similar to those of the Space Shuttle. The second-stage design had also settled on six Raptor engines by 2019; three optimized for sea-level and three optimized for vacuum. In 2019 SpaceX announced a change to the second stage's design, reducing the number of aft flaps from three to two in order to reduce weight. In March 2020 SpaceX released a Starship Users Guide, in which they stated the paylod of Starship to LEO would be in excess of 100 t (220,000 lb), with a payload to GTO of 21 t (46,000 lb).

Low-altitude flights (2019–2021)

Further information: SpaceX Starship (spacecraft) § Hops (SN3–SN6), and SpaceX Starship (spacecraft) § High-altitude test flights (SN8–SN15)

Starhopper under construction, March 2019

A crane lifting Starship SN5, August 2020

The first tests started with the construction of the first prototype in 2018, Starhopper, which performed several static fires and two successful low-altitude flights in 2019. SpaceX began constructing the first full-size Starship Mk1 and Mk2 upper-stage prototypes before 2019, at the SpaceX facilities in Boca Chica, Texas , and Cocoa, Florida, respectively. Neither prototype flew: Mk1 was destroyed in November 2019 during a pressure stress test and Mk2's Florida facility was deconstructed throughout 2020. After the Mk prototypes, SpaceX began naming its new Starship upper-stage prototypes with the prefix "SN", short for "serial number". No prototypes between SN1 and SN4 flew either—SN1 and SN3 collapsed during pressure stress tests, and SN4 exploded after its fifth engine firing.

In June 2020, SpaceX started constructing a launch pad for orbital Starship flights. The first flight-capable prototype, SN5, was cylindrical as it had no flaps or nose cone: just one Raptor engine, fuel tanks, and a mass simulator. On 5 August 2020, SN5 performed a 150 m (500 ft) high flight and successfully landed on a nearby pad. On 3 September 2020, the similar-looking Starship SN6 repeated the hop; later that month, a Raptor Vacuum engine underwent its first full duration firing at McGregor, Texas.File:Starship SN8 launch render.webm Starship SN8 was the first full-sized upper-stage prototype, though it lacked a heat shield. It underwent four preliminary static fire tests between October and November 2020. On 9 December 2020, SN8 flew, slowly turning off its three engines one by one, and reached an altitude of 12.5 km (7.8 mi). After SN8 dove back to the ground, its engines were hampered by low methane header tank pressure during the landing attempt, which led to a hard impact with the landing pad and subsequent explosion of the vehicle.

Because SpaceX had violated its launch license and ignored warnings of worsening shock wave damage, the Federal Aviation Administration investigated the incident for two months. During the SN8 launch, SpaceX ignored FAA warnings that the flight profile posed a risk of explosion. FAA space division chief Wayne Monteith said SpaceX's violation was “inconsistent with a strong safety culture", and criticized the company for proceeding with the launch "based on 'impressions' and 'assumptions,' rather than procedural checks and positive affirmations".

On 2 February 2021, Starship SN9 launched to 10 km (6.2 mi) in a flight path similar to SN8. The prototype crashed upon landing because one engine did not ignite properly. A month later, on 3 March, Starship SN10 launched on the same flight path as SN9. The vehicle landed hard and crushed its landing legs, leaning to one side. A fire was seen at the vehicle's base and it exploded less than ten minutes later, potentially due to a propellant tank rupture. On 30 March, Starship SN11 flew into thick fog along the same flight path. The vehicle exploded during descent, possibly due to excess propellant in a Raptor's methane turbopump.

In March 2021, the company disclosed a public construction plan for two sub-orbital launch pads, two orbital launch pads, two landing pads, two test stands, and a large propellant tank farm. The company soon proposed developing the surrounding Boca Chica Village, Texas into a company town named Starbase. Locals raised concerns about SpaceX's authority, power, and a potential threat for eviction through eminent domain.

In early April, the orbital launch pad's fuel storage tanks began mounting. Starship prototypes SN12, SN13, and SN14 were scrapped before completion; SN15 was selected to fly instead. SN15 had better avionics, structure, and upgraded engines. On 5 May 2021, SN15 launched, completed the same maneuvers as older prototypes, and landed safely. SN15 had a fire in the engine area after landing but it was extinguished. According to a later report by SpaceX, SN15 experienced several issues while landing, including the loss of tank pressure and an engine.

First integrated flight test (2021–2023)

Starship during the first orbital flight attempt. Notice the multiple engine failures on the first stage.

In July 2021, Super Heavy BN3 conducted its first full-duration static firing and lit three engines. Around this time, SpaceX changed their naming scheme from "SN" to "Ship" for Starship crafts, and from "BN" to "Booster" for Super Heavy boosters. A month later, using cranes, Ship 20 was stacked atop Booster 4 to form the full launch vehicle for the first time; Ship 20 was also the first craft to have a body-tall heat shield. In October 2021, the catching mechanical arms, also known as "chopsticks", were installed onto the integration tower and the first tank farm's construction was completed. Two weeks later, NASA and SpaceX announced plans to construct Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 49.

In early 2022, the Raptor 2 engine was first spotted. In June 2022, the Federal Aviation Administration determined that Starbase did not need a full environmental impact assessment but that SpaceX must address more than 75 issues identified in the preliminary environmental assessment. In July, Booster 7 tested the liquid oxygen turbopumps on all thirty-three Raptor engines, resulting in an explosion at the vehicle's base, which destroyed a pressure pipe and causing minor damage to the launchpad. By the end of November, Ship 24 had performed 2- and full 6-engine static test fires, while Booster 7 had performed static fires with 1, 3, 7, 14, 11 engines and finally on February 9, 2023, a static fire with 31 engines at 50% throttle. In January 2023, the whole Starship stack underwent a full wet dress rehearsal.

After a canceled launch attempt on 17 April 2023, Booster 7 and Ship 24 lifted off on 20 April at 13:33 UTC in the first orbital flight test. Three engines were disabled during the launch sequence and several more failed during the flight. The spacecraft also lost thrust vectoring control of the Raptor engines later in the flight, which led to the rocket spinning out of control. The vehicle reached a maximum altitude of 24 mi (39 km).

Approximately 3 minutes after lift-off the rocket's autonomous flight termination system was activated. The system failed to destroy the vehicle, which tumbled for another 40 seconds before disintegrating. Had the launch proceeded as planned, the spacecraft would have continued to fly with its ground track passing through the Straits of Florida and eastward around the globe, with a hard splashdown in the Pacific Ocean around 100 km (60 mi) northwest of Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands, having made nearly one full revolution around the Earth.

The first flight test blasted large amounts of sand and soil in the air, reaching communities within a 10-km (6-mile) radius. Debris was spread across a brushfire on nearby state parkland also occurred, burning 3.5 acres of state parkland. Residents of Port Isabel (5 miles from the launch site) complained about 'particulate' matter covering their cars and homes, posting photos to social media. Later analyses showed the matter to be sand and soil from the launch site.

Second integrated flight test (2023)

Starship during the second orbital flight attempt

After the first test flight SpaceX began work on the launch mount to repair the damage it sustained during the test and to prevent future issues. The foundation of the launch tower was reinforced and a steel water deluge flame deflector was built under the launch mount. Ship 25 was rolled to the suborbital launch site in May and underwent spin prime and static fire testing ahead of flight. Once that was completed, Booster 9 was rolled to the launch site to undergo cryogenic proof testing, spin primes and static fires of its set of engines.

Following the failure of Starship's first flight, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) required SpaceX to conduct a mishap investigation in accordance with SpaceX's approved mishap plan under FAA oversight, preventing Starship from being issued another launch license pending the outcome of SpaceX's investigation. In August, SpaceX submitted to the FAA the 63 corrective actions they had to take before another launch could take place. Following SpaceX's final report, the FAA closed the investigation on September 8, 2023. By October 31, 2023, the FAA had concluded the safety review portion of the launch license.

On November 18, 2023, Booster 9 and Ship 25 lifted off the pad. All 33 engines continued to function until staging, where the second stage separated by pushing itself away from the first stage using a hot-staging technique. Following separation, the Super Heavy booster completed its flip maneuver and initiated the boostback burn before exploding following multiple successive engine failures. The vehicle breakup occurred more than three and a half minutes into the flight at an altitude of ~90 km over the Gulf of Mexico. The second stage continued until it reached an altitude of ~149 kilometres (93 mi), after over eight minutes of flight; prior to engine cutoff, telemetry was lost on the second stage. SpaceX said that a safe command destroyed the second stage, prior to achieving its planned orbit or attempting re-entry. It appeared to re-enter a few hundred miles north of the Virgin Islands, according to NOAA weather radar data.

Planned future launches

The launching of a SpaceX Starship requires an advance joint approval between the FAA and the SpaceX corporation. For the part of the FAA, in order to signify its official approval for a Starship launch, the FAA must first issue a "launch license" prior to any Starship launch. NASA OIG noted that SpaceX's philosophy involves extensively testing and flying their vehicles as early as possible—made possible by rapid in-house manufacturing capabilities that provide a steady stream of hardware—to aggressively reduce risks and acquire flight data.

Third Integrated Flight Test

SpaceX is currently planning its next Starship launch, Starship Integrated Flight Test 3 (Starship-IFT-3), for February 2024. As of January 2024, vehicles for Starship-IFT-3, B10 (Booster 10) and S28 (Starship Crew Capsule 28), have completed Static Fire testing. SpaceX is still awaiting the FAA's approval for the next Starship launch, which approval in turn depends upon the completion of the FAA's mishap investigation into the failure of Starship-IFT-2.

Cost and funding

SpaceX develops the Starship primarily with private funding. SpaceX Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen disclosed in court that SpaceX has invested more than $3 billion into the Starbase facility and Starship systems from July 2014 to May 2023. Elon Musk stated in April 2023 that SpaceX expected to spend about $2 billion on Starship development in 2023.

Musk has theorized that a Starship orbital launch might eventually cost SpaceX only $1 million to launch. Eurospace's director of research Pierre Lionnet stated in 2022 that Starship's launch price to customers would likely be higher because of the rocket's development cost.

As part of the development of the Human Landing System for the Artemis program, SpaceX was awarded in April 2021 a $2.89 billion fixed-price contract from NASA to develop the Starship lunar lander for Artemis III. Blue Origin, a bidding competitor to SpaceX, disputed the decision and began a legal case against NASA and SpaceX in August 2021, causing NASA to suspend the contract for three months until the case was dismissed in the Court of Federal Claims. Two years later Blue Origin was awarded a $3.4 billion fixed-price contract for their lunar lander.

In 2022, NASA awarded SpaceX a $1.15 billion fixed-price contract for a second lunar lander for Artemis 4. The same year, SpaceX was awarded a $102 million five-year contract to develop the Rocket Cargo program for the United States Space Force.

Potential uses

Particular missions

SpaceX plans to use Starship to launch the second generation of SpaceX's Starlink satellites, which currently delivers high-speed internet to over 70 countries. An analyst at financial services company Morgan Stanley stated development of Starship and Starlink are intertwined, with Starship's planned launch capacity enabling cheaper Starlink launches, and Starlink's profits financing Starship's development costs. In deficit from its inception until the end of 2022, Starlink was first reported to be cash flow positive in the first quarter of 2023, though Elon Musk said that Starlink had only reached "break-even cashflow" in 2023. In December 2023, the FCC stated that "At the time of the Bureau’s decision, Starship had not yet been launched. [...][Over a year later], Starship has not yet had a successful launch; all of its attempted launches have failed". The FCC [...] therefore issued a final denial of a $885M Starlink subsidy because of "Starlink’s continuing inability to successfully launch the Starship rocket".

As of 2022, the Superbird-9 communication satellite is Starship's first and only known contract for externally made commercial satellites. The satellite has a dry mass of 3 t (6,600 lb), planned for 2024 launch to a geostationary orbit. In the future, the spacecraft's crewed version could be used for space tourism—for example, for the DearMoon project or the third flight of the Polaris program. Musk stated that SpaceX would complete hundreds of cargo flights before launching with human passengers.

One possible future use of Starship that SpaceX has proposed is point-to-point flights (called "Earth to Earth" flights by SpaceX), traveling anywhere on Earth in under an hour. In January 2022, SpaceX was awarded a $102 million five-year contract to develop the Rocket Cargo program for the United States Space Force. The five-year contract is intended to "determine exactly what a rocket can achieve when used for cargo transport", and will see the Air Force Research Laboratory collect data during commercial launches of Starship. The contract includes an eventual demonstration mission with the launch and landing of a cargo-laden Starship in a point-to-point flight.

Space exploration

Artemis 3 launch profile of a human landing on the Moon, involving Starship HLS, Starship tanker variants, and Orion spacecraft

Starship's lunar lander Starship HLS was initially chosen by NASA as the sole lunar Human Landing System for the planned Artemis 3 and Artemis 4 crewed missions, as part of the Artemis program. The lander is to be launched into a low Earth orbit, and refueled by multiple Starship tanker spacecraft. Once fueled, it would perform a trans lunar injection burn and enter a near-rectilinear halo orbit around the Moon, with a perilune of 1500 km occurring over the north pole and an apolune of 70,000 km occurring over the south pole. The Orion spacecraft, launched by the Space Launch System, then would dock with Starship HLS and two of its four crew would transfer into the lander. The lander would then perform a burn to reduce its perilune to within 100 km of the lunar surface, leaving the Orion capsule behind. Upon reaching perilune over the lunar north pole it would use its engines to enter into a circular low lunar orbit. It would then use its engines to make a powered descent and land near the lunar south pole. After the crew performs the surface portion of their mission the HLS would ascend with the crew to rendezvous with the Orion spacecraft. The crew would transfer into the Orion spacecraft and perform a burn to return to Earth.

Opinions differ on how Starship's planned low launch cost could affect the cost of space science. According to Waleed Abdalati, former NASA Chief Scientist, the planned low launch cost could reduce the cost of satellite replacement and enable more ambitious missions for budget-limited programs due to the higher percentage of the total budget taken up by launch costs for lower budget missions. According to Lionnet, low launch cost might not reduce the overall cost of a science mission significantly: of the Rosetta space probe and Philae lander's mission cost of $1.7 billion, the cost of launch (by the expendable Ariane 5) only made up ten percent. Similarly the Juno mission had a total budget of $1.13 billion, with launch cost of $190 million making up only seventeen percent of the budget.

Astronomers have called to consider Starship's larger mass to orbit and wider cargo bay for proposed space telescopes such as LUVOIR, and to develop larger telescopes to take advantage of these capabilities. Starship's 9 meters fairing width could hold an 8 meters-wide large space telescope mirror in a single piece, alleviating the need for complex unfoldings such as that of the JWST's 6.5m mirror which added cost and delays. The low launch cost could also allow probes to use heavier, more common, cheaper materials, such as glass instead of beryllium for large telescope mirrors. With a 5 t (11,000 lb) mirror built using similar methods to the Hubble Space Telescope's mirror, the JWST would represents only 10% of the mass deliverable by a (refueled) Starship to the Sun-Earth L2 point, and therefore minimizing the weight of the telescope would not have been a dominant design consideration.

A fully refueled Starship could launch 100 t (220,000 lb) observatories to the Moon and the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point. A fully refueled Starship might also be capable of launching probes to Neptune, Jupiter's moon Io, or large sample-return missions. Astrophysicists have noted Starship could deploy multiple antennae up to 30 meters in length, opening up radio astronomy to frequencies below 30 MHz and wavelengths greater than 10m. This would give the ability to study the Universe's Dark Ages, unfeasible on Earth due to the atmosphere and human radio background.

Space colonization

SpaceX and Musk have stated their goal of colonizing Mars to ensure the long-term survival of humanity, with an ambition of having sent one million people to Mars by 2050. This timeline has been criticized as unrealistic by Kevin Olsen, a physicist at the University of Oxford who has said that "colony needs to become a factory" to produce air, fuel and water as it is "fundamentally impossible to create a completely closed environment in space", and that the technology to do so is "far, far behind the technology of space flight and habitation construction". Olsen also criticized the speed of Musk's timeline, stating that the desire to colonize Mars quickly "makes it even more dangerous". George Dvorsky writing for Gizmodo described Musk's plan as "pure delusion". Lord Martin Rees, a British cosmologist and astrophysicist also described Musk's plan as a "dangerous delusion". Serkan Saydam, a mining engineering professor from the University of New South Wales stated that we currently lack the technology to establish a Martian colony, and will likely lack the capacity to establish a Martian city with one million people by 2050.

Musk had maintained an interest in Mars colonization since 2001, when he joined the Mars Society and researched Mars-related space experiments before founding SpaceX in 2002. Musk has made many tentative estimates of Starship's Mars landing. In 2016, he estimated that a crewed mission could be achieved as early as 2024. In December 2020, he revised this estimate to 2026. In March 2022, he estimated that the first crewed Mars landing could occur in 2029. SpaceX has not published technical plans or designs about Starship's life support systems, radiation protection, docking system, or in-orbit refueling system.

Facilities

Testing and manufacturing

Ship 27, Ship 26 and Booster 10 forward section under construction in Starbase build site, March 2023

Starbase consists of a manufacturing facility and launch site, and is located at Boca Chica, Texas. Both facilities operate twenty-four hours a day. A maximum of 450 full-time employees may be onsite. The site is planned to consist of two launch sites, one payload processing facility, one seven-acre solar farm, and other facilities. (As of April 2022), the expansion plan's permit has been withdrawn by the United States Army Corps of Engineers, citing lack of information provided. The company leases Starbase's land for the STARGATE research facility, owned by the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. It uses part of it for Starship development.

Raptor engines are tested at the Rocket Development facility in McGregor, Texas. The facility has two main test stands: one horizontal stand for both engine types and one vertical stand for sea-level-optimized rocket engines. Other test stands are used for checking Starship's reaction control thrusters and Falcon's Merlin engines. The McGregor facility previously hosted test flights of landable first stages—Grasshopper and F9R Dev1. In the future, a nearby factory, which (As of September 2021) was under construction, will make the new generation of sea-level Raptors while SpaceX's headquarters in California will continue building the Raptor Vacuum and test new designs.

At Florida, a facility at Cocoa purifies silica for Starship heat-shield tiles, producing a slurry that is then shipped to a facility at Cape Canaveral. In the past, workers constructed the Starship Mk2 prototype in competition with Starbase's crews. The Kennedy Space Center, also in Florida, is planned to host other Starship facilities, such as Starship launch sites at Launch Complex 39A, the planned Launch Complex 49, and a production facility at Roberts Road. This production facility is being expanded from "Hangar X", the Falcon rocket boosters' storage and maintenance facility. It will include a 30,000 m² (320,000 sq ft) building, loading dock, and a place for constructing integration tower sections.

Launch sites

The under construction orbital launch mount for Starship at Starbase launch site, August 2021

Starbase is planned to host two launch sites, named Pad A and Pad B. A launch site at Starbase has large facilities, such as a tank farm, an orbital launch mount, and an integration tower. Smaller facilities are present at the launch site: tanks surrounding the area containing methane, oxygen, nitrogen, helium, hydraulic fluid, etc.; subcoolers near the tank farm cool propellant using liquid nitrogen; and various pipes are installed at large facilities. Each tank farm consists of eight tanks, enough to support one orbital launch. The current launch mount on Pad A has a water sound suppression system, twenty clamps holding the booster, and a quick disconnect mount providing liquid fuel and electricity to the Super Heavy booster before it lifts off.

The integration tower or launch tower consists of steel truss sections, a lightning rod on top, and a pair of mechanical arms that can lift, catch and recover the booster. The decision to catch the booster with the arms rather than landing with landing legs was made to enable flights and reduce the rocket's mass and part count. The mechanical arms are attached to a carriage and controlled by a pulley at the top of the tower. The pulley is linked to a winch and spool at the base of the tower using a cable. Using the winch and the carriage, the mechanical arms can move vertically, with support from bearings attached at the sides of the carriage. A linear hydraulic actuator moves the arms horizontally. Tracks are mounted on top of arms, which are used to position the booster or spacecraft. The tower is mounted with a quick disconnect arm extending to and contracting from the Starship spacecraft; its functions are similar to the quick disconnect mount that powers the booster.

Since 2021, the company is constructing a second Starship launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida, in Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39A, which is currently used to launch Crew Dragon capsules to the International Space Station. SpaceX plans to make a separate pad at 39A's north, named Launch Complex 49. Because of Launch Complex 39A's Crew Dragon launches, the company is studying how to strengthen the pad against the possibility of a Starship explosion and proposed to retrofit Cape Canaveral Space Launch Complex 40 instead. The towers and mechanical arms at the Florida launch sites should be similar to the one at Starbase, with improvements gained from the experience at Boca Chica.

Phobos and Deimos were the names of two Starship offshore launch platforms. The two nearly-identical oil platforms, Valaris 8501 and Valaris 8500, had been purchased from Valaris Limited in June 2020. Further analysis from SpaceX deemed the offshore platforms unsuitable for Starship launches, and both were sold in early 2023.

Reception

Starship SN15 and SN16 juxtaposed with a local tiki bar

Economic impact

Among nearby locales, reception to Starship's development has been mixed, especially from cities close to the Starbase spaceport. Proponents of SpaceX's arrival said the company would provide money, education, and job opportunities to the country's poorest areas. Fewer than one-fifth of those 25 or older in the Rio Grande Valley have a bachelor's degree, in comparison to the national average of one-third. The local government has stated that the company boosted the local economy by hiring residents and investing, aiding the three-tenths of the population who live in poverty. In June 2021, Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz threatened to prosecute SpaceX for unauthorized road and beach closures, as well as employing security officers who may not be licensed to carry handguns.

In 2021, Activist Elias Cantu of the League of United Latin American Citizens said the company encourages Brownsville's gentrification, and fears an ever-increasing property valuation and a risk of low-income residents being pushed out of the neighborhood.

Launches from Starbase in South Texas have attracted SpaceX fans, gathering and taking photos. YouTube channels with large followings such as LabPadre or NasaSpaceFlight have been covering Starship's development since 2019, setting up cameras around the launch and production complex and broadcasting 24-hour livestreams.

In June 2021, Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz threatened to prosecute SpaceX for unauthorized road and beach closures, as well as employing security officers who may not be licensed to carry handguns. United States Fish and Wildlife Service said that SpaceX had caused 1,000 hours of highway closures in 2019, well above the permitted 300 hours, prompting concerns of economic impacts from the extra 700 hours of road closures.

Environmental reception

Residents of Boca Chica Village and Brownsville, along with environmental activists, have criticized the Starship development program, stating that SpaceX has harmed local wildlife, conducted unauthorized test flights along with infrastructure's construction, and polluted the area with noise. Environmental groups have warned that SpaceX's Starship program threatens wildlife in the area, including 18 vulnerable and endangered species. Parts of the wildlife refuge were covered with rocket debris after early failed test launches in 2021 (which took three months to clean up). Debris including sand, soil and concrete were spread across the wildlife refuge as far as 5 miles from the launch site again in 2022 after the failed first orbital test flight of Starship, with concerns by environmental groups over further damage to the habitat caused by cleanup efforts.

The Center for Biological Diversity said that Starbase is "surrounded by state parks and national wildlife refuge lands" and include "important habitats for imperiled wildlife" including the critically endangered Kemp's ridley sea-turtle, raising concerns about the impact of Starbase's activities to these habitats and endangered species within. Biologists have raised concerns over the impact of Starsbase's noise and light pollution on migratory bird species that use the nearby tidal flats. Stephanie Bilodeau, a conservation bird biologist, said that piping plovers and red knots, both threatened species of birds, have "all but disappeared" from the flats after SpaceX began construction of Starbase in 2021. Additionally, in 2021, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee complained of "unauthorized encroachments and trespass on the refuge" by SpaceX employees. The Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe and environmental activists accused SpaceX of overpolicing the area and disrupting indigenous ceremonies and local fishing.

In 2021, some of the early suborbital hop tests ended in large explosions, causing disruption to residents and wildlife reserves. Residents in the village of Boca Chica had to leave the area prior to each launch due to their proximity. In May 2022 a 3.5 hectare fire broke out on state parkland as a result of IFT-1. In September 2022 a static-fire test of a Raptor engine by SpaceX caused a 68-acre fire on the protected wildlife reserve, killing wildlife and eventually being contained by firefighters. The blaze occurred in the Las Palomas Wildlife Management Area in the Rio Grande Valley, home to several protected species.

In 2022, following the failed first test launch of Starship, residents of the nearby Port Isabel complained of a "dust" covering homes, cars, and streets. This dust reportedly consisted of fine particles of sand and soil that had been kicked up into the atmosphere from the launch of Starship. According to Dave Cortez of the Sierra Club environmental advocacy group, several residents complained of broken windows in their businesses and the sand/soil particles covering their homes. Spectators of the both the IFT-1 and IFT-2 launches have reportedly caused damage to local habitats in the nearby wildlife reserve, prompting criticism by environmental groups. After reports of damage to tidal flats south of the launchpad following IFT-2 in November 2023, the US Fish and Wildlife Service said that they are working with SpaceX "to educate the public on the importance of tidal flat habitat".

Starbase had originally planned to launch Falcon rockets when the original environmental assessment was completed in 2014, the site in 2019 was subsequently used to develop Starship and therefore required a revised environmental assessment. Responding to environmental concerns from the public and environmental groups the FAA allowed the public to comment in October 2021 on the Boca Chica launch site's environmental impact statement draft, released on 19 September. Pat Parenteau, a law professor and senior counsel for the Environmental Advocacy Clinic at Vermont Law School, described the draft as unusual for omitting details about potentially significant amounts of natural gas for a proposed power plant, and speculated that failing to consider that impact in the final assessment might contravene U.S. National Environmental Policy Act requirements. In the final assessment, SpaceX clarified it no longer planned to build a power plant due to changes in infrastructure and Starship requirements after the draft assessment was released.

Environmental protection groups have accused regulatory agencies of not doing enough to protect the environment and wildlife in the area surrounding the launch site. In May 2023 several environmental groups sued the FAA and later SpaceX, alleging that the FAA allowed SpaceX to bypass environmental reviews due to Musk's financial and political influence.

Political and commercial reception

In order to compete with SpaceX and close their technological gap with the company, the China Aerospace Science and Tech Corp and other aerospace actors in China have reportedly been working on their own version of Starship – the Long March 9 superheavy rocket, which is also designed to be fully reusable.

In 2021, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) showed a rendered video of a rocket noted to be "strikingly" similar to Starship in appearance and function. In a 2022 event organized by the International Astronautical Federation and the Chinese Society of Astronautics, the CALT communicated doing research on a manned launch vehicle powered by LOX-methane propellant, with a second stage that was very similar to Starship's. SpaceNews noted that the Chinese start-up Space Epoch and engine maker Jiuzhou Yunjian were developing a smaller Starship-like rocket with a methane-LOX engine similar to Raptor, stainless steel tanks and an iterative design. Starship's reusability and stainless-steel construction might also have inspired Project Jarvis, a reusable upper stage for Blue Origin's New Glenn super heavy-lift launch vehicle intended to replace New Glenn's expendable upper stage in the future.

In 2021, Members of Congress voiced concerns about the FAA's response to SpaceX's launch license violations following the explosion of SN8, calling on the FAA to "resist any potential undue influence on launch safety decision-making". In 2023, following the second failed orbital test flight of Starship, the government accountability office (GAO) made recommendations to the FAA to "improve its mishap investigation process", finding that historically they have always allowed the launch operator to conduct their own investigation with the FAA supervising. They proposed, and the FAA concurred, to conduct an independent review of the effectiveness of operator-led investigations and to establish specific criteria determining when the FAA would directly manage the investigation instead of the operator.

In 2023, prior to the failure of SpaceX's second orbital test flight, SpaceX's vice president Bill Gerstenmaier made statements at the U.S. Senate about his beliefs on the importance of innovation in light of "strategic competition from state actors like China". He said SpaceX was under a contract with NASA to use Starship to land American astronauts on the moon before China does, and that the Starship test flights campaign was being held up by "regulatory headwinds and unnecessary bureaucracy" unrelated to public safety. Senator Ted Cruz has said that the second Starship launch was "after months of delay stemming from bureaucratic red tape from AST, Fish and Wildlife and other agencies injecting themselves into the process" resulting in "asinine delays". FAA associate administrator Kelvin Coleman said that the environmental reviews Senator Cruz referred to were required in order to "ensure compliance with NEPA and related environmental laws" and were being conducted in accordance with US law. Several environmental agencies however disagree, with lawsuits against the FAA and SpaceX claiming that environmental reviews were bypassed due to Musk's political and financial influence.

See also

• Comparison of orbital launch systems
• Comparison of orbital launcher families
• SpaceX reusable launch system development program

External links

• Programmatic Environmental Assessment by the Federal Aviation Administration
• Starship of SpaceX on eoPortal directory, administered by the European Space Agency
• Tim Dodd's Starship interviews with Elon Musk on YouTube:
  • A conversation with Elon Musk about Starship, 2019
  • Starbase and Starship tour, 2021: part 1, part 2, and part 3
  • Launch tower and Raptor engine tour, 2022: overview, launch infrastructure, Raptor engine