Today it’s a 95% complete prototype that will soon fly to space and may even make it back in one piece. Two years ago Starship was a design concept and a mock up. While I am 100% certain that the Starship design will continue to evolve in noticeable ways, the progress in two years cannot be understated. The Boca Chica rocket factory and launch site are now enormous ongoing operations, as seen in this video tour with Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut. SN9 on the pad (wikimedia).Īs of late October 2021, SN20 and the booster SB4 have performed basic fit checks and individual static fires, while the ground support equipment and the launch tower are being assembled with truly gigantic cranes. In just two years, practically all the low TRL science projects have been solved. SpaceX can try to make a better, cheaper, lighter one but if it doesn’t work out, they can always trade some mass and just use PICA, like Dragon. For example, many mature heat shield (TPS) designs already exist. There are still major risks on the critical path between now and a fully reusable Starship, but no miracles are required to solve them. They’ve done a full system test of the landing process, and they’ve ramped up QA in construction. SpaceX has qualified their full flow staged combustion engine. Today, these major programmatic risks are largely retired. Two years ago, Raptor was unproven, aero flaps had never been demonstrated, and stainless steel rocket construction was still troubled. SN5 and SN6 hopped to 150 m in August and September of 2020, followed by 10-12 km flights of SN8, SN9, SN10, SN11, and SN15 between December 2020 and May 2021, the last of which stuck the landing.
Starhopper had completed two untethered flights. To catch you up, two years ago SpaceX unveiled their boilerplate full scale mockup of Starship. As usual, this blog represents my own opinions and I do not have any inside information. While the Starlink post has aged quite well, Starship is still not widely understood despite intervening developments. It has been exactly two years since my initial posts on Starship and Starlink. Another entry into my blog series on countering misconceptions in space journalism.
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