The Story
Starship V3 has a long way to go before its ready to land astronauts on the Moon.
SpaceX (via X) The latest SpaceX Starship is quietly bobbing in the middle of the Indian Ocean. That may not seem like where a space rocket wants to be, but it actually represents a successful splashdown for the upper stage of the newest Version 3 model. It also landed on-target and may be recovered by boats and dragged back to shore. But there are problems lurking right there…
To be clear, the heat shield worked, in the sense that the Starship’s upper stage made it back to Earth in one piece. Even the heat shield itself is in one piece, er, mostly. Of its 18,000 tiles, only a small handful fell off. But it didn’t ace this test: According to a joint post by current and former space professionals, “Many dozens to hundreds of tiles were cracked,…
If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the exact same procedure that the space shuttle had to go through during its life cycle, as Ars Technica notes. This is part of what prevented the shuttle from flying as frequently as airplanes, one of the original hopes of that project. SpaceX has the same hope for Starship, and in fact, it’s insanely high (though falling) valuation…
In fairness, that’s a long-term problem. The current heat shield system will be sufficient to test Starship, which is very much still in its prototyping phase. It will probably be enough to start launching the new Starlink V3 satellites, which can only fit on Starship, not Falcon 9. (SpaceX really bet the farm on Starship.) So it won’t be for many more years until Starship…
The trouble, though, is that this is also a decades-old problem. Starship’s shield uses the same basic technology as the space shuttle did. After NASA built that tech, it canceled all future R&D due to, what else, budget cuts. Sure would be nice if NASA got some more funding instead of, say, constantly being threatened with even more cuts (although Congress is trying to…
Why It Matters
If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the exact same procedure that the space shuttle had to go through during its life cycle, as Ars Technica notes.
CarMotion Daily’s Take
In fairness, that’s a long-term problem. Watch this space over the coming weeks.
📝 Source & Copyright Notice
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