After Thursday’s flight, Starship is already the most revolutionary rocket ever built

 

One of the best things about spaceflight is its power to dazzle us.

 

I will never forget seeing the first images of Pluto and its moon Charon for the first time, with their vibrant colors and exotic geology. A world with super-sized ice volcanoes? Oh my. Similarly affecting were up-close views of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, revealed by Europe's Philae lander. And it is difficult to forget the harrowing footage of NASA's Perseverance rover landing on Mars.

 

But no space agency or company has dazzled us more in the last 10 years than SpaceX. The company produces moments of wonder and originality that are both breathtaking and full of promise. What SpaceX does best is provide us a glimpse into a tantalizingly close future.

 

And that happened again on Thursday with the third Starship launch.

Was that sci-fi?

The moment of true amazement came about 45 minutes into the flight, as Starship descended an altitude of 100 km and began entering a thicker atmosphere. For a couple of minutes, we were treated to unprecedented views of atmospheric heating acting on a spacecraft. It's one thing to know about the perils of plasma and compression as a spacecraft falls back to Earth at 27,000 km/hour into thickening air. It's another thing to see it.

 

Let's step back for just a moment to realize how these unprecedented views were possible.

 

Starlink terminals on the ship were sending signals to satellites in low-Earth orbit, which then sent them back to Earth. This is not a new idea. For the last 40 years, NASA has used a small constellation of Tracking and Data Relay Satellites to communicate with spacecraft, beginning with the Space Shuttle. Starship was able to communicate with these satellites upon its reentry, but it was only at a low data rate, and it dropped out as the plasma thickened. The Starlink connection remained longer and is what enabled the stunning video of reentry.

 

To accomplish this, SpaceX had to build a reusable rocket, the Falcon 9, which is capable of reflying many times. This enabled the company to launch more than 5,500 Starlink satellites and create a global network. (SpaceX operates, by a factor of 10, more satellites than any other company or country in the world). Because of this, it was able to produce unprecedented data and video of Starship's turbulent reentry.

 

 

The journey to reach this capability has produced many of those dazzling moments. There was that first land-based landing of the Falcon 9 rocket days before Christmas in 2015. It was followed a few months later by the first landing of a booster on a drone ship. (For me, this CRS-8 booster landing on a boat felt like the first actual sci-fi thing I'd ever seen in my life). There was Starman in orbit and the dual booster landing with the first Falcon Heavy launch. And so on.

 

These SpaceX moments feel like a portal opening into the future. That is their power. The first booster landings hinted at the possibility of reusing first stages. The dual booster landing suggested it could be done at scale. Today, we're seeing this promised future as some Falcon rockets fly 20 times, and SpaceX is likely to approach a truly unprecedented 150 launches this year. This high launch cadence enabled Starlink, through which SpaceX has delivered high-speed broadband around the world and in space.

 

What Thursday's revelatory reentry footage promises is a world in which launch is cheap and abundant. No longer will we need to worry so much about mass or volume, which have been tyrannical overlords to mission planners since the inception of spaceflight nearly seven decades ago.

Where Starship goes from here

This was the third test flight of Starship, and for the second time in a row, the Super Heavy booster completed a full-duration burn and executed a successful "hot staging" separation from the Starship upper stage. This is significant because it means the most powerful first stage ever built can now be considered operational.

 

SpaceX still hasn't quite mastered the art of landing this first stage. On Thursday, Super Heavy performed a flip maneuver and a boostback burn to reorient itself for a soft landing at sea. However, not all of the requisite Raptor engines relit for a landing burn, and the rocket exploded about 500 meters above the Gulf of Mexico.

 

This is fine progress for just the third test flight, and it seems reasonable to expect a soft landing at sea during the next mission or two. SpaceX has pretty much solved first-stage landings, with some 275 successes with its Falcon 9 rocket. Therefore, it would not surprise me to see the company land a booster back at its Starbase facility in South Texas this year. Reuse of these massive stages could begin in a year or two.

 

Starship will clearly take longer. It is the more difficult technology. Notably, the vehicle completed a full-duration burn on Thursday and could easily have put itself into a stable orbit around Earth. Just to put a fine point on this, Starship this week did what every rocket in history this side of the Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Space Shuttle has done before: achieved a nominal orbital insertion and lost its first and second stages.

 

The flight "failed" only because SpaceX is pushing Starship for full reusability. During its coast phase Thursday, the vehicle began to roll. This precluded an attempt to re-light the vehicle's Raptor engines in space, the company confirmed Thursday night.

 

So we're probably a flight or two from SpaceX understanding and controlling Starship in space. Still bigger questions surround the vehicle's ability to survive that fiery reentry with a (hopefully) reusable tile system. A fully reusable Starship upper stage is certainly years away.

Already an amazing vehicle

But even with those caveats, Starship is already the most revolutionary rocket ever built. Because of a relentless focus on costs and cheap building materials, such as stainless steel, SpaceX can likely build and launch a fully expendable version of Starship for about $100 million. Most of that money is in the booster, with its 33 engines. So once Super Heavy becomes reusable, you can probably cut manufacturing costs down to about $30 million per launch.

 

This means that, within a year or so, SpaceX will have a rocket that costs about $30 million and lifts 100 to 150 metric tons to low-Earth orbit.

 

Bluntly, this is absurd.

 

For fun, we could compare that to some existing rockets. NASA's Space Launch System, for example, can lift up to 95 tons to low-Earth orbit. That's nearly as much as Starship. But it costs $2.2 billion per launch, plus additional ground systems fees. So it's almost a factor of 100 times more expensive for less throw weight. Also, the SLS rocket can fly once per year at most.

 

Then there's the European Space Agency's Vega rocket. Its costs are roughly on par with a Starship that has a reusable first stage. For $37 million, with Vega, you get about 1.5 metric tons to low-Earth orbit. Again, that's a factor of 100 times less payload than Starship.

 

Perhaps you're beginning to understand the revolution that's underway with the Starship vehicle?

 

But it's not just the cost or the payload. It's the cadence. SpaceX has four more Starships, essentially, ready to go. We have already seen SpaceX's proficiency with the Falcon 9 rocket. Does anyone doubt we'll see double-digit Starship launches in 2025 and many dozens per year during the second half of this decade? Access to space used to be a rare commodity. What happens to our species and its commerce in space when access is not rare or expensive?

 

This is the future into which we got a glimpse this week.