Starship

Starship is SpaceX revolutionary fully reusable rocket system design that is designed to fulfil Elon Musk's dream of humanity become a multiplanetary species and the reason for getting out of bed as we move towards our destiny out there in the stars.

Link to SpaceX STARSHIPUSERSGUIDE (PDF)

The first Starship orbital test  was on 17th April 2023 from Starbase Boca Chica Tx. Overall it was an amazing success even though the stage separation failed due to issues with  7 of the Raptor 2 engines failing in the first couple of minutes of flight.

ITF3 March 2024, using an upgraded booster B9 and launch pad, with better engine shielding, Using Starship S25.

The next test ITF4 will be NET May 2024, using an upgraded booster B11 and launch pad, with better engine shielding, Using Starship S28.

Starships will initially be for launching people and hardware into space, especially the SpaceX Starlink Satellites, yet Elon Musk aspirationally aims was to send an unmanned Starship to the Moon in 2022(now 2025) and follow it in 2026 by sending a group of artists around the Moon in 2026 see #bluemoon

On 30 April 2020 SpaceX won a 10 month $135 million NASA contract to look into building a special Lunar  version of Starship, SpaceX have now received a $2.9 Billion contract for the Lunar Starship to land two NASA astronauts on the Moon in Sept 2026.

In 2026 if the development goes well the first two unmanned Starship will be sent to Mars with a Manned landing on the Red planet in 2026 but this is a very extreme timeline yet SpaceX may achieve it by 2029/31.


As of 13 May 2023 Using the latest Raptor v3.0 engines that now have 269 tons of thrust, Starship Super Heavy Booster 33 Raptors, will have s total thrust of 8877 tons or 19.5 million pounds. Plans for a Raptor V4.0 are in action as of April 2024.

The first Starship V2 are also currently being constructed using V3.1 Raptors. V3 Starships will be over 10 meters larger at 150 Meters Tall 

Starship Launch Animation

 'Starship' and 'Super Booster'( also known as Super Heavy)

Note: Used to be called BFR 'Big F***g Rocket' or 'Big Falcon Rocket' System

The first Orbital Starship Test flight has now been changed to inspirationally to be in 2021 (See also  StarHopper and Starship ORBITAL prototype) The SN8 test Starship took a 12Km test hop 9th Dec 2020 and SN9 10Km both failed to land unlike SN10 that blew up 8 minutes after landing on the Pad (SN15 may even have an Orbital attempt as soon as April 2021).

Starship S24

The Starship 24 newly stretched upper stage; number of Raptor 2.0 engines has increasing 3 more space optimised vacuum engines to now 6 vacuum + 3 sea level engines(9 in total), thus significantly increasing the payload ability.

SN20 and Booster 4 

The first orbital test flight is due to take place in Mid 2022 with Starship SN24 and Booster 7.

Starships SN9 and SN10

Starship SN10

Starship | SN10 | High-Altitude Flight Recap

Starship SN8 successful proof of concept (Tim Dodd)

Starship SN5 150m Hop (4 Aug 2020)

The much awaited update from Elon Musk on the current Starship design was on 28th Sept 2019 from SpaceX's Boca Chica Production and Launch site that unveiled the MK1 Starship to the press ready for its first test hop in Oct 2019.  

According to Elon Musk’s Starship presentation on the 28th September 2019 SpaceX is aiming to launch the first humans in Late 2020(Now 2024). This will be after a series of 10 test launches earlier in 2021. This is possible as the Starship design is FULLY reusable so rapid testing of the prototypes can take place for basically not much more than the basic liquid Methane fuel and Liquid Oxygen(LOX) cost. Expected the tests of the development Starships to take place up to twice a month from March 2021.

From Musk’s presentation it may be fair to postulate the first Starship human test flight will orbit the Earth 4 times and land around 6 hours later.

Starship design Updated 28 Sept 2019

Latest Starship design (Updated 28 Sept 2019) Overview

Payloads

What payloads may we see with the 9 meter diameter Starship capable of lifting 150 tons and only costing less than $5m to launch and not requiring years to have a rocket ready to launch them but just weeks?

There will be many amazing advantages to launching hardware to Space with Starship Cargo version, With many of the current weight, size and cost limits removed spacecraft will no longer be required to have special lightweight materials and complex miniaturization saving vast amounts of money and development times.

A vastly better space telescope that can costs just a few million dollars can be built faster than ever before, Earth observation satellites with unprecedented capabilities can be built cheaper and faster. 

Missions to all the planets with multiple probes and rovers can be built and launched affordably. Space Stations undreamt off until now become praticatable and more importantly affordable to develop and implement.

If Starship is flying commercially by 2024 these payloads should be being worked on now.

SpaceX hope to fly their first robotic Starships to Mars in 2024 time frame with equipment on board for generating power and fuel on Mars ready for the first human missions to Mars.

These early missions will also have rovers based on Tesla autonomous electric designs for exploring the local landing areas.

Past Starship/BFS presentations

Starship(BFS) design (Updated 15 Sept 2018)

 starship(BFS) passing the Moon

Starship (BFR) system composes many items: 

The Starship (BFR) will be launched and then return to land on a launch 'Mount' 

Simulation of BFR landing

Starship (BFR) Production

The initial BFR facility was by the water in LA in 2018, but has now moved to SpaceX's new launch site at Boca Chica Beach in South Texas also where the StarHopper was constructed and Starship ORBITAL prototype MK1 is both being constructed.

There will eventually also have a number of production sites by the launch sites including at Kennedy Space Center where the MK2 Starship Orbital prototype is now being produced. Elen said that there will also be a MK3, Mk4 and MK5 Starship prototypes built to test out ever growing capabilities, the 3 raptor engined Mk1 Starship is due to have its first test flight in Oct 2019 from Boca Chica to a height of around 20 km. Starship Mk3 or Mk4 hopes to reach orbit in 2020.

SpaceX starhopper 'Hopper' test article was built at South Texas with an updated version of Stainless steel construction using a different alloy mix. super 300 Series Stainless! had its First Test flight was in April 2019 with its final flight on the 27 Aug 2019.

MK1-MK5 Starship test Articles

Currently(Sept 2019) the MK1 Starship ORBITAL prototype is almost completely built at Boca Chica and MK2 is nearing completion at Coca in Florida. MK3,will be built at Boca Chica starting in Oct 2019 followed by MK4 in Cocoa Florida and MK5 Starships is still unknown were it will be built.

Timeline is a possible orbital attempt by March 2020 and the first manned mission test could be as soon as the end of 2020. As the Starship is reusable SpaceX hope to do 10 unmanned test flights at a rate of one/two a month.

SpaceX then plant to build 10 production Starships with turn around times of one to two days. eventually to have 3 flights a day.

Cost speculations

It is very interesting to do speculative calculations as to the cost of using the Starship(BFR) system.

The initial cost of developing the Starship(BFR) system, the Booster(SuperHeavy) and the Starship(BFS), Elon Musk has put at around $5B.

The first Starship launch sold is for a trip around the Moon in 2023 has sold for between $120M and $250M

The next few launches will likely be be sold for less, Yet maybe around $100M each to start to recoup some of the development costs.

To keep financing SpaceX's ongoing development cost, I suspect we would see the price for the next 100 launches after the above being around $50M per launch, this will easily compete with other satellite launch capabilities within the next 7 years. We are already beginning to see with the Falcon Heavy(FH) that increased payload to space at lower cost is starting to see heavier satellites designs, let alone the possibilities for 110 tons to LEO and then refueled to go fly out in the solar system. NASA really need to get onboard now with 'Blue skies' thinking for its mission possibilities within the next 5-10 years with such payloads that don't need to cost so much to build either due to the weight and size requirements.

On the satellite launches it will also be interesting to see if the BFS will be able to fly to Low Earth Orbit(LEO) deploy satellites and then fly to GEO and deploy some more satellites on the same flight this again will reduce the cost of access to space. 

After the primary development costs have been covered it gets very interesting.

Elon has stated the Starship will be cheaper to launch than the Original Falcon 1 that first flew successfully in 2008 that had a sales ticket of around $6M

Next we have Gwynne Shotwell with the estimated cost of the Earth to Earth tickets being between Coach and Business Airline cost, So I will make some guesses here that it will carry around 800 people for say $4000 each that make it $3.2M for SpaceX to make a profit after overheads and also that it will not always fly full with such a system in 10 years time.

This would lead to a speculative profit at $2M a launch.

At that price the cargo version will compete very well with even launching a single smallsat into orbit.

I expect that the Starship(BFS) will have WiFi on board and fast internet access, I wonder what will happen when everyone on board all move at once to see a view out of windows on one side and if they will all use mini 'NOT fire extinguishers' to move around in weightlessness :)

Future

Elon Musk is looking even further ahead from the Starship designs to a truly massive version with a core diameter of 18 meters currently referred to as the 'generation 2 system'.

It will be very interesting to know what type of rocket engines SpaceX propose for such a enormous  rocket will have and what payload capacity.

Starship Generation 2.0

Not to be confused with Starship V2 or  V3 designs

A roughly to-scale comparison of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets and proposed Starship(BFR) variants, including Starship (BFR 2018) and an 18m-wide rocket teased by Elon Musk. (Teslarati/SpaceX)