# Starship development and progress \[previous title: Will Musk's starship reach orbit this year?\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Tags:** elon-musk\ **Created:** [July 7, 2022, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-development-and-progress-previous-title-will-musks-starship-reach-orbit-this-year/967583 "2022-07-07T22:05:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 42
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2024, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-development-and-progress-previous-title-will-musks-starship-reach-orbit-this-year/967583/821 "2024-03-16T15:40:56Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > As for non-crew missions, there will be many, many Starlink flights among them. Those alone will prove out the reliability. Starlink is the seldom-spoken partner in the Starship program. AIUI the original impetus behind SpaceX was that after crunching the numbers it was concluded that for the scale of the Starlink constellations it would be cheaper to develop an in-house launch capacity than to try to buy launch service for what was then being charged. Furthermore, because of its requirement of putting large numbers of satellites in the same inclination orbit, Starlink is one of the few things (currently) that can efficiently make use of Starship’s payload capacity. Given fixed per-launch costs, larger rockets mean a proportionately lower per-ton payload cost. And if full reusability works and Starship becomes absolutely cheaper, the sky’s the limit no pun intended. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2024, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-development-and-progress-previous-title-will-musks-starship-reach-orbit-this-year/967583/822 "2024-03-16T19:53:13Z")
Ms. Tereshkova wasn’t a pilot, either, but a parachutist, and she was horribly space-sick throughout the flight. There have been rumors that she was also pregnant (i.e. morning sickness) but if she was, she lost it because she married another cosmonaut a few weeks after her flight, and had her only child about a year later. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2024, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-development-and-progress-previous-title-will-musks-starship-reach-orbit-this-year/967583/823 "2024-03-16T20:32:04Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Starlink is the seldom-spoken partner in the Starship program. AIUI the original impetus behind SpaceX was that after crunching the numbers it was concluded that for the scale of the Starlink constellations it would be cheaper to develop an in-house launch capacity than to try to buy launch service for what was then being charged. I have not heard that. As I recall, Starlink wasn’t even on SpaceX’s radar when they developed Falcon 9. Musk first started talking about a satellite constellation of about 700 satellites in 2014. The design for Starlink started in 2015. That’s 13 years after the founding of SpaceX, and five years after Falcon 9 and Dragon first flew. It’s really the other way around. Rather than building Starship to fly Starlink, Starlink was designed as a funding source to pay for SpaceX’s Mars ambitions, which is what Starship was designed for. Also, Starlink requires large numbers of flights, which helps SpaceX maintain a high launch cadence and lower per-flight costs. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2024, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-development-and-progress-previous-title-will-musks-starship-reach-orbit-this-year/967583/824 "2024-03-16T20:41:38Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > Can you summarize it so I don’t have to watch a two hour livestream? - Elon Musk atupid - Starship is stupid. - Okay, Starship might make orbit. - Booster crashed! All Elon can do is crash things! Ha Ha! - Look! Leaking! Hahahah! - It’s getting farther than I thought it would. - Out of control! Oh noes! - Okay, it’s actually re-entering. That’s mildly impressive to make it this far. - Ha Ha! Two billion dollars of government money to create two debris fields! - Elon Musk is stupid. I think that about covers it. The guy witnesses one of the great engineering projects of our lifetime, and his hatred of Musk and need to keep the Musk-hating eyeballs on his channel only allowed him to be be negative and snarky about it. And it wasn’t government money. That money is for HLS. They are currently spending the six billion in equity financing raised for Starship development. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2024, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-development-and-progress-previous-title-will-musks-starship-reach-orbit-this-year/967583/825 "2024-03-16T22:40:45Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > > [@Lumpy](#): > > > > Starlink is the seldom-spoken partner in the Starship program. AIUI the original impetus behind SpaceX was that after crunching the numbers it was concluded that for the scale of the Starlink constellations it would be cheaper to develop an in-house launch capacity than to try to buy launch service for what was then being charged. > > I have not heard that. As I recall, Starlink wasn’t even on SpaceX’s radar when they developed Falcon 9. Musk first started talking about a satellite constellation of about 700 satellites in 2014. The design for Starlink started in 2015. That’s 13 years after the founding of SpaceX, and five years after Falcon 9 and Dragon first flew. > > It’s really the other way around. Rather than building Starship to fly Starlink, Starlink was designed as a funding source to pay for SpaceX’s Mars ambitions, which is what Starship was designed for. Also, Starlink requires large numbers of flights, which helps SpaceX maintain a high launch cadence and lower per-flight costs. I stand heavily corrected. Ignorance fought. Regardless of which is driving which, they do seem to be highly complementary. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2024, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-development-and-progress-previous-title-will-musks-starship-reach-orbit-this-year/967583/826 "2024-03-16T22:48:24Z")
No problem. The timeline isn’t that clear unless you realloy pay attention. Yeah, absolutely. When you get the cost of spaceflight down, it opens up adjacent possibles. SpaceX has been really good at taking advantage of those. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2024, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-development-and-progress-previous-title-will-musks-starship-reach-orbit-this-year/967583/827 "2024-03-17T00:32:45Z")
That’s true, but the Apollo 1 fire happened ON THE GROUND. Had it happened anywhere in space, I suspect it would at least have had a much more significant delay. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2024, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-development-and-progress-previous-title-will-musks-starship-reach-orbit-this-year/967583/828 "2024-03-17T01:22:28Z")
On the ground, they could do extensive engineering forensics on exactly what happened. In space they probably wouldn’t have ever gotten the capsule back (although that failure mode would only have happened during launch). ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2024, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-development-and-progress-previous-title-will-musks-starship-reach-orbit-this-year/967583/829 "2024-03-17T06:22:01Z")
Nitpick: If it happened in space it would have been no big thing. Oxygen at 3.5 PSI doesn’t make things combustible the way it does at 15 PSI. That was the ‘failure of imagination’ John Glenn talked about at the hearings. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2024, 9:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-development-and-progress-previous-title-will-musks-starship-reach-orbit-this-year/967583/830 "2024-03-17T09:19:00Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > Had it happened anywhere in space, I suspect it would at least have had a much more significant delay. Sure, but the point is that no one said “Well, I guess humans weren’t meant to go to the Moon–let’s pack it in” (or at least no one with any political power). Starship is even less subject to political contingencies and SpaceX has enough money to iterate for a very long time, especially given how low they’ve driven their vehicle costs. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2024, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-development-and-progress-previous-title-will-musks-starship-reach-orbit-this-year/967583/831 "2024-03-17T22:04:32Z")
Some great 4k footage of the launch: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/VNK07WuH6GQ/maxresdefault.jpg "[4K Slow-Mo] Starship Flight 3 Supercut w/ Incredible Audio") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNK07WuH6GQ) No rock tornado this time, but it still knocked over all the cameras 🙂 . ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2024, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-development-and-progress-previous-title-will-musks-starship-reach-orbit-this-year/967583/832 "2024-03-21T16:30:30Z")
Musk has to put an “X” on everything! > **[Man discovers unusual "souvenir" left behind from SpaceX Starship launch](https://www.newsweek.com/man-disocvers-unusual-souvenir-spacex-starship-launch-1881451)** > > Nick Stacey took to Reddit to share something leftover from the launch that had incurred almost "no damage." ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2024, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-development-and-progress-previous-title-will-musks-starship-reach-orbit-this-year/967583/833 "2024-03-22T14:03:34Z")
Was that a piece of the thermal protection system? Not the kind of thing you want to leave behind at the launch site, if so. ---
**Author:** ![Zakalwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zakalwe/32/270_2.png) [@Zakalwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zakalwe)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2024, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-development-and-progress-previous-title-will-musks-starship-reach-orbit-this-year/967583/834 "2024-03-23T02:33:10Z")
> [@gnoitall](#): > > Not the kind of thing you want to leave behind at the launch site, if so. One of the challenges with Starship has to be the extreme forces imposed on the ship and cargo during takeoff. That’s a lot of shaking/vibration/transients. They may have also not have worried too much about securing some of the tiles since the ship wasn’t going to survive for reflight even if the mission had gone perfectly. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2024, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-development-and-progress-previous-title-will-musks-starship-reach-orbit-this-year/967583/835 "2024-03-23T03:58:57Z")
Here’s a side-by-side between IFT-2 vs. IFT-3: [![Imgur](https://i.imgur.com/zgbm2B3.jpeg "imgur.com") ](https://imgur.com/zgbm2B3) The right side isn’t as sharp, but you can nevertheless see that it lost way fewer tiles at launch. Maybe half a dozen vs. several dozen. Most likely, Starship can survive the loss of a few isolated tiles. The stainless steel is pretty heat resistant and the structure may be able to smooth out any remaining hotspots (particular in the tank areas, which will have some residual gases. At any rate, they’re clearly getting better at tile attachment, even if they aren’t yet perfect. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2024, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-development-and-progress-previous-title-will-musks-starship-reach-orbit-this-year/967583/836 "2024-03-23T05:06:17Z")
A big advantage of the iterative approach to development is that you can fly once you have a minimum viable rocket for testing an engineering solution without having to have solutions to every problem so long as you are satisfied they are feasible. So it’s totally okay for now for the tiles to be ‘in development’ so long as the flight closes out other issues pr provides valuable data. And if you have to bet the entire finished rocket on every engineering and design decision, you have to take ultra care, slow down, test everything heavily as you go. Costs go up, the stakes go up for errors, so many people demand sign-offs and you get rule by committee and risk avoidant behavior. SpaceX practices ‘hardware rich’ development, where you make sure you are not limited by lack of hardware. They already have four more Starships that will be ready to go as fast as SpaceX needs them. Their Raptor production rate is insane compared to other rocket engines. And their vertical integration means fewer or no supplier bottlenecks. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2024, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-development-and-progress-previous-title-will-musks-starship-reach-orbit-this-year/967583/837 "2024-03-23T15:54:45Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Dunno about “outer” space. But anyway, speed is more important. It’s easy to go 100 km straight up. _Much_ harder to go 100 km up and 24,000 km/h sideways. Why not just go straight up and out in an arc and let gravity assist with the needed speed coming back to orbit? ---
**Author:** ![xtenkfarpl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c2a13f/32.png) [@xtenkfarpl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xtenkfarpl)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2024, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-development-and-progress-previous-title-will-musks-starship-reach-orbit-this-year/967583/838 "2024-03-23T16:03:10Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > Why not just go straight up and out in an arc and let gravity assist with the needed speed coming back to orbit? Gravity only accelerates you towards the center of the earth. It’s not going to help you achieve orbital speed at right angles to that vector. And in any case, you have to get the energy from _somewhere_. Gravity is a conservative force, it doesn’t provide you with energy ‘for free’. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2024, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-development-and-progress-previous-title-will-musks-starship-reach-orbit-this-year/967583/839 "2024-03-23T18:48:07Z")
Indeed “gravity loss” is a huge issue in orbital launches. In theory the most economical possible use of reaction mass would be if you could expend it all instantly in a single huge impulse like being shot out of a cannon; obviously this isn’t possible in real life. Every second a rocket spends taking off is a second where only it’s thrust is keeping it from intersecting the Earth’s surface. If the thrust was too low the rocket would expend its entire fuel supply just hovering in place. It’s like climbing a vertical ice face where you have to climb fast enough to overcome the fact that you’re constantly slipping downward. Because of this rockets start moving downrange as soon as it’s practical for them to do so, so the Earth’s curvature dropping away reduces gravity loss. Orbit is when an object is traveling sideways fast enough that the gravity loss is zero. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2024, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-development-and-progress-previous-title-will-musks-starship-reach-orbit-this-year/967583/840 "2024-03-23T19:29:53Z")
Or, to put it another way: Picture a rocket whose thrust exactly matches its weight, which is just hovering still on its exhaust plume. It’s consuming huge amounts of fuel, to accomplish absolutely nothing. Even if your thrust is high enough to give you 5 gs of acceleration, you’re still losing 20% just to fighting Earth’s gravity, instead of using it to go up or go faster. And any given payload (including humans) has a maximum safe acceleration, which often isn’t much more than that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-development-and-progress-previous-title-will-musks-starship-reach-orbit-this-year/967583.md?page=41) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-development-and-progress-previous-title-will-musks-starship-reach-orbit-this-year/967583.md?page=43)