NASASpaceflight reports that SpaceX wants to start attempts to launch orbital starships on July 1, 2021, in less than four months.
In no uncertain terms, this is an internal target, which means it’s much more likely than not that SpaceX’s first attempt at launching an orbital starship will not happen in July. However, the existence of the target implies that SpaceX sees a real and viable – albeit narrow – way to launch the Starship into orbit for the first time, in just four months.
To put it differently, SpaceX believes it has six months of margin to pass the preliminary Super Heavy reinforcement test (possibly including one or more jumps), to qualify an updated starship project (SN15 onwards), to complete approximately one complex of orbital launch and deliver two dozen Raptor engines with orbit capacity before the end of the year. Although it is not clear, it is also possible that the milestone will require SpaceX to qualify and ship the first Raptor Vacuum engines in flight condition – another major challenge.
In itself, completing any of these great engineering feats would be impressive. Completing all of them simultaneously – even if the effort is delayed for more than five months – would be nothing short of extraordinary. As such, it is fair to assume that SpaceX will fall well short of its incredibly ambitious development schedule, even if the company almost invariably does what it sets out to do.
In this case, it means that there is a very real chance that the Starship will reach orbit before the end of 2021, reaching a goal that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and COO / President Gwynne Shotwell have reiterated in recent months.
Even after reaching orbit for the first time, SpaceX is likely to continue the development of the starship virtually unchanged, treating the orbital regime as just another sandbox to test and refine the starship’s prototypes. Given all the extraordinary problems that SpaceX will need to solve in order to reach orbit, there is also a decent chance that the first attempt at orbiting the starship or the Super Heavy will fail. If the launch is initially successful, it is equally likely that the Super Heavy will fail on its first hypersonic launch and landing attempt.
If the starship itself goes into full orbit, any number of problems can kill the vehicle in space. If you survive long enough, complete a 90-minute orbit and line up for reentry, descent and landing, the starship’s first atmospheric orbital speed reentry – one of the biggest challenges in aerospace engineering – could easily destroy the spaceship. If the starship somehow manages to pass through the reentry on its first attempt, the voltages of orbital space flight and this reentry can prevent its Raptor engines from running nominally during their motorized turn and landing flare maneuver.
This is all to say that, even with SpaceX eyeing orbital flight, the trajectory is still a continuation of an ongoing test program and iterative development process. While spacecraft capable of orbiting are likely to be much more expensive than their suborbital sisters, the differences are small enough that SpaceX will undoubtedly continue to push the envelope and risk losing prototypes to discover and fix bugs and design flaws as soon as possible. early as possible.
Along the way, there will undoubtedly be more hiccups of the SN8 / SN9 / SN10 type. Given the history of the development of Starship, however, it is starting to look like nothing short of a catastrophe that will prevent SpaceX from launching the Starship into orbit before the end of the year.