Not content with having one successful space shuttle in the Crew Dragon, SpaceX cruises forward with another – larger – spaceship: the Starship. And the car recently went an important milestone: the first flight.
One of the prototypes, named SN5, completed a hop test, launched 500 feet above the ground before returning to land. The whole flight lasted less than a minute. While SN5 is essentially just a flying cylinder – smaller than the final Starship will be and powered by just one Raptor engine, it’s a promising step forward.
Starship SN5 completes a hop test.
The Starship will be a fully reusable transportation system that can transport people and cargo – to the Moon and all the way to Mars. The spacecraft will be 160 feet long, with a diameter of 30 feet – and SpaceX claims that its loadload volume of 59 feet by 30 feet is the largest of any current or evolving space launcher. The spacecraft will be powered by six Raptor engines, SpaceX’s new reusable stacked combustion engines that can have 440 pounds of power. The Raptors use sub-cool liquid methane and liquid oxygen (“methalox”) fuel.
In its charge configuration, the car can carry 100 tons of materials to the Moon and Mars – while the passenger version could ferry up to 100 people between planets. The crew’s configuration even has private cabins, spacious common areas and a viewing gallery, as well as solar storms and central storage.
Starship would originally be made of carbon fiber, but last year SpaceX announced that it was transitioning to stainless steel. Although heavier than carbon fiber, stainless steel is much cheaper and has a higher melting point – making it better able to withstand the stresses of atmospheric recovery.
Starship would ascend and land vertically. And while the car would have the power to lift the moon and Mars on its own, it would have to be launched on Earth on the booster: SpaceX’s massive Falcon Super Heavy, which will have capacity up to 37 Raptors of its own. Super Heavy is also reusable – it will return to the start page and touch on its six legs while Starship continues on its journey.
SN6, which is similar to SN5, is expected to perform the same test soon as SN5 – the two cars are expected to form a sort of test tandem for the company. And more prototypes are coming. SN7 was a test tank made of 304L stainless steel alloy that was deliberately inflated to see how much pressure it could handle (the other prototypes are made of 301 stainless steel, and SpaceX is working on its own alloy). SN8 will be another flying prototype, with a nosecone, fairing dome, fins and aerodynamic control surfaces according to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Exposed with those components, SN8 is expected to fly higher than the other cars – up to 12 miles – and will likely be equipped with three Raptor engines. And SN9 is in the early stages of production.
SpaceX follows an aggressive testing and development scheme, aiming to perform multiple hop tests daily – the kind of short, fast flights that would generate rich data needed for longer journeys.
In fact, the whole project has been on a fast track since it was first announced in 2017. An earlier, smaller prototype, “Starhopper,” conducted a tethered hop test to 500 feet in September 2019, and a full-sized prototype SN4 conducted a static test fire in May 2020. But it has not all been smooth sailing: in April, prototype SN3 imploded during a test (“rockets are hard,” Musk tweeted afterward), and SN1 and SN2 also experienced failures. But that’s why prototypes are built and tested – to find out what works … and what doesn’t.
The company plans to launch commercial flights of its Starship in early 2021 – with a trip to the moon planned for 2023 (famous for having Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, who has supported SpaceX, and a group of artists) . And Starship is one of the finalists for NASA’s Artemis moon lander project.
And Musk clearly has Mars in his sights, by pushing to get Starship cargo missions to the red planet by 2022 – and the first humans on Martian soil in 2024. In fact, SpaceX plans to build a fleet of Starships and Falcon Heavies which would regularly enrich people to and from Mars.
And although Musk has a history of preaching too many confident timelines, when Starship is finally ready to launch, it could turn the aerospace industry on its ear. With its previously unusual capacity for crew and passengers, Starship will be a whole new option for space travel. Probably costing close to $ 10 billion to develop, the Starship system represents the culmination of SpaceX’s long-term plans for space flight. The Falcon Super Heavy will be much more powerful than the current Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, which will launch in time. And Starship will eventually replace the Crew Dragon.
“Starship lets us inhabit other worlds,” Musk said tweeted last year. “Make life as we know it interplanetary.”
Read more about SpaceX’s sometimes rocky demand to build the Starship at SpaceX’s Starship SN3 Crumbles Time Testing.
