When is the Starship orbital launch?

The Rocketry Forum

Help Support The Rocketry Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Lord Rory Gin

Well-Known Member
TRF Supporter
Joined
Apr 1, 2021
Messages
543
Reaction score
552
Location
Regina, Saskatchewan
Sometime last fall, I mentioned that SLS would launch well before Starship and that it would likely be spring before Starship's orbital launch would happen. This was based on all the testing that was still required to be done as of last October. I also remember somebody laughing scornfully at me. Well, I certainly have the last laugh. Elon has announce the earliest launch of Starship would be late February and more likely March pending the results of tests and the rebuild of stage zero to handle the issues. Anyone want to bet there will be additional delays?
 
2024?

'Memba when in early June 2021, "Elon said" it would launch by end of July 2021?

I am so over "Elon said", and have been for years.

Oh, BTW, around August 2022, "Elon said" that they were targeting the SECOND Orbital launch for November 2022. And wow did the SpaceX fanbois lalp that up.

If "Gywnne said" by a certain date then I'd take that seriously. Gwynne Shotwell is COO of SpaceX, and a few months ago was officially put in charge of the Starship project. Elon takes the glory and publicity, Gywnne runs the ship.

I suspect there may be enough pad problems that they may have to stand down and do a major pad revision. The first 33 engine firing is months overdue (well, technically, about 1.7 years overdue).

BTW - I am all in favor of Starship working. But I'm not buying into the hype. And I think it is very likely that NASA's Artemis project will end up years late, waiting on SpaceX's lunar landing version of Starship, HLS (which needs many orbital refueling flights to provide enough fuel to get to the moon, land, and get the crew back ito lunar orbit).
 
Last edited:
Each iteration of testing results in more rework to damage and flaws exposed by the previous iteration. The 33-engine test seems likely to do the same, if it's even the next notch up in testing. With one thing and another, I'd guess late '23 or early '24, but I won't be shocked if they launch it by mid '23. Will be (pleasantly) surprised if it's sooner than that.
 
It seems like too complex a design to me. There are too many points of failure in a 30+ engine cluster. The 30 engines in the soviet N1 did not work out so well for them.
 
BTW - I am all in favor of Starship working. But I'm not buying into the hype. And I think it is very likely that NASA's Artemis project will end up years late, waiting on SpaceX's lunar landing version of Starship, HLS (which needs many orbital refueling flights to provide enough fuel to get to the moon, land, and get the crew back ito lunar orbit).
I, too, am excited about Elon Musk's Starship. There are many new innovations that are typical of Space-X. However, will they work remains to be shown. Sending the whole second stage to the moon is amazing, but depends on refueling in orbit. The idea of using micro-gravity to refuel in-orbit strikes me as amazing, but this is a good reminder that it will take many re-fuelings other Starship tankers being put into orbit. The amount of propellant in each tanker is limited by all the propellant it takes to get into orbit plus the amount of propellant to de-orbit and land.
 
It seems like too complex a design to me. There are too many points of failure in a 30+ engine cluster. The 30 engines in the soviet N1 did not work out so well for them.
It's probably an apples and oranges comparison though. The N1 was (as everything else was then) a rushed project with ever reducing resources at that time. There weren't many Soviets with great confidence in the design or project management. What's more, Russia's chief engine supplier had no love of the project due to a colossal spat with Korolev leading up to this, forcing Korolev to find alternatives.
Anyway, because of this, if an engine was lost on the N1, an accompanying engine opposite needed to be shut down to keep things in balance - there just wasn't the time and resources to computationally deal with thrust imbalance well enough to reliably control the rocket. This put an immense strain on redundancy of which there were limits. The vehicle was designed to cope with some lost engines, but not enough.
Starship doesn't have many of these constraints.

TP
 
It seems like too complex a design to me. There are too many points of failure in a 30+ engine cluster. The 30 engines in the soviet N1 did not work out so well for them.
It's not the number of engines. Falcon Heavy uses 27 engines, and has flown 5 times with no problems. And the 6th launch is scheduled for this Friday.

N-1 failed for the most part, for being "built on the cheap", with little to zero testing. It never had ground vibration testing as Saturn-V and shuttle had. It never test fired a stage, the first time 30 engines ignited was for liftoff. It used a never-tested guidance control method of temporarily shutting down a few engines on one side to cause a thrust imbalance to steer it (Russia never tried that method again). And that was part of why flight #1 failed, during launch the system shut down a good engine, and then shut down all but one engine, IIRC. Also, it had no rocket thrust for correcting roll (all engines were fixed). The 3rd or 4th flight, it was close to staging, when it began to roll out of control and broke apart.

For Starship, it is looking like a massive oversight in not giving its launcher flame tranches, or not simply building the pad legs to be much taller, with a center set of deflectors (think of a 6 sided pyramid, maybe curved to the sharp at the tip and curving outwards towards the base). If indeed that is a problem, they are going to have a hell of a time "fixing" that. And possibly might have to build a new pad. Or, maybe they temporarily live with what the have to get in that first launch using the flawed pad, but start work on a better pad.

There is a StarShip pad being bult at KSC at 39A. I've not kept track, and it is way harder for the public to get pics of it (unlike Boca Chica with the public road running right past, and freedom of the skies to get aerial photos as it is not a military-cntrolled facility). So I wonder if they are building a copy of the Boca Chica pad, or trying to address these problems with major improvements.

Meanwhile, I'll take the StarShip orbital launch date more seriosuly when a few major space groups I trust (not run by fanbois), indicate it really, really, really, is expected to fly say a month later (then I'll double that timeframe). Much as I lived thru (and learned) with the serial chants of "6 months, 6 months, 6 months" for years, waiting for Falcon Heavy.
 
Looks like there’s a wet dress rehearsal today.

 
Last edited:
I’m excited to see Starship fly, but I really don’t take most of what Elmo says very seriously anymore, especially with regards to predicted dates. He is mostly focused on being King of the Trolls these days and giving a platform to bigots and whackos and squandering his fortune. The dude is losing his mind.
 
... I really don’t take most of what Elmo says very seriously anymore, especially with regards to predicted dates. He is mostly focused on being King of the Trolls these days and giving a platform to bigots and whackos and squandering his fortune. The dude is losing his mind.
The way I see it is if he wants to do more at Tesla and Space X, he's always welcome as it always seems to help. But if he wants to do something else, and I would understand that, it's up to him. At this point, Tesla and Space X seem to be doing very well despite whatever it is he's doing elswhere. He started out breaking the internet with Paypal, so he's kind of "back home" now. I mostly follow EVs and Tesla in all this. News on rockets and his other companies just come to me as kind of a side effect.
 
Last edited:
For a trip to the moon you need to hit escape velocity first. Then use fuel to slow down and land entirely under power. You cant refuel on the moon yet. Then still have enough fuel left to lift off and return to earth and land. For Mars you need to hit escape velocity and maybe a bit more. When you get to Mars you bleed off your velocity in the martian atmosphere where you kill off over 90% of your velocity then have just enough fuel left to land. You refuel on the surface and return. The Moon trip, since it has no atmosphere requires much more fuel.
 
For a trip to the moon you need to hit escape velocity first. Then use fuel to slow down and land entirely under power. You cant refuel on the moon yet. Then still have enough fuel left to lift off and return to earth and land. For Mars you need to hit escape velocity and maybe a bit more. When you get to Mars you bleed off your velocity in the martian atmosphere where you kill off over 90% of your velocity then have just enough fuel left to land. You refuel on the surface and return. The Moon trip, since it has no atmosphere requires much more fuel.

I wonder how long, or how many flights, it will take before fuel is available on Mars.
 
Last edited:
Also, it had no rocket thrust for correcting roll (all engines were fixed). The 3rd or 4th flight, it was close to staging, when it began to roll out of control and broke apart.
The N1 did have roll control. The problem was that all flights before the one you discussed had at least one engine fail (and the automatic systems took out the opposing mate). On the flight you mentioned it was the first time they got an entire ring of exhausts. This caused a rotation vortex of some sort which added to their predicted roll needed and exceeded to roll control authority. The FTS then terminated the flight.
That is a pretty big question. With no flame diverter trench how can it possibly survive? I assume they must have some sort of plan, but I can't figure out what it is. Will be exciting. :)
Maybe some weird flow regimes under the engines keep the stresses on the pad down. There will be a lot of turbulence there. It might be like their starting a rocket engine into a hypersonic flow. Nobody had tried that before and it worked better than expected.
 
I wonder how long, or how many flights, it will take before fuel is available on Mars.
The first crews will have to set up the fuel manufacturing and mine enough ice to fill it up. They will have a constant stream of starships resupplying them with food and supplies until they succeed.
 
The first crews will have to set up the fuel manufacturing and mine enough ice to fill it up. They will have a constant stream of starships resupplying them with food and supplies until they succeed.
I was guessing the fuel-making systems would be set up robotically, so as to be be ready to go when the first human crews get there.
 
I am sure the processing plant will be built into one of the starships ready to go when it lands. Just add water and electricity.
Whew. I’m glad it’s as simple as just adding water and electricity. I was starting to think it might be hard. 😉
 
I posted this on another thread but I think this is where it really belongs.

Today's 33-raptor static fire test:







 
Last edited:
Back
Top