Depends on the eccentricity of the orbit. There are plenty of orbits with higher energy than a typical LEO where the perigee is in the atmosphere, and where at typical LEO altitudes the velocity relative to earth’s surface is actually higher than a stable LEO.
I don’t actually know exactly what trajectory they’ve been burning to, though, so maybe they are still going a bit slow. Still, the idea that they aren’t actually testing orbital launch capability and reentry because they’re only going halfway around the planet is inaccurate. The difference between a trajectory that takes you halfway around the planet and one that takes you all the way around is minuscule, as any KSP veteran can tell you.
Because the way they’re doing it, if shit goes wrong and they lose control of Starship, or if the engines don’t relight, or whatever, it will still splash into the Indian Ocean relatively harmlessly instead of being a LEO hazard until its orbit decays enough to re-enter gods know where, survive reentry, and potentially hit something someone cares about when it piles into the surface.
Why Louisiana? If SpaceX is to fulfill its ambitions to launch thousands of Starship rockets a year to build a massive constellation of orbital data centers, among other purposes, it needs more launch sites. Currently, the company has one operational Starship launch site at its Starbase Texas facility, and another in development. Three more pads are being built in Florida at Cape Canaveral.
But both the Florida and Texas sites are land-constrained, and SpaceX eventually plans to launch dozens of Starship rockets a day. In Louisiana, the company would have no competition for range access, as in Florida, where a half-dozen other private launch companies operate, and far more space than in Texas… SpaceX is expected to have unfettered access to about 125,000 acres in southern Louisiana, in an area generally referred to as Pecan Island.
Starship is scheduled to complete six orbits on Tuesday
Starship’s first orbital mission is expected to fly at an altitude approximately 275 km above Earth and complete approximately six orbits around the planet over the course of a nearly 10-hour flight, with splashdown targeted in the Pacific Ocean to the west of Chile.
Is Starship expected when operational to have enough cross range to do a return to base after just one orbit, or will they have to remain in orbit for 12-24 hours before the Earth’s rotation brings the launch site back into the plane of orbit?
They play to launch 26 Starlink satellites into orbit for this launch, and they want multiple orbits to position better position them.
Since one orbit is only about an hour and half long, 6 orbits will be about 10 hours in orbit and they want this long of time to see how the various components of the craft operates a longer time in a vacuum. Remember trips to the Moon or later to Mars take a long time.
They are not going to return to base; they are going to splashdown in the Pacific off of Chile.
I was thinking of the airliner-like cadence they hope to someday achieve. How quickly could a Starship return to base for relaunch? Or is the plan that having multiple bases (Florida, Texas, Louisiana) expands their options?
SpaceX wants to dump the Falcon 9 and replace it by the Starship by 2028.
Musk has said SpaceX will shift its engineering and manufacturing resources away from Falcon and toward Starship once the newer vehicle is flying often enough to justify the move. He said the company would make the shift only after Starship can fly dependably several times a week. The goal would then be to increase Starship’s flight rate to several launches a day, eventually allowing SpaceX to phase down Falcon operations.
Makes sense, IF they can get Starship up and running. One person on a Mastodon account I follow insists that Starship is a scam and that announcing the phasing out of Falcon 9 is a ploy to keep SpaceX’s stock up. If the next test flight makes orbit and deploys operational satellites, great. If there’s a snag it won’t look good.
Not really. Ever ordered a ball-point pen on-line and have it arrive in a box big enough for a microwave? One-size-fits-all doesn’t fit all. It only makes sense if SpaceX is willing to concede the smaller launches to the competition. Which doesn’t make sense.
It depends on the economics. A huge number of people have a big SUV or pickup, but they only need the large cargo or seating capacity a few times a year. You are suggesting they have two vehicles, the other being a small car since the substantial majority of trips are one person and they could get better gas mileage by using the small car. But the economics are that the amount they save on fuel is vastly outweighed by the extra money they are spending on depreciation of this second vehicle, insurance, registration fees etc. Similarly for SpaceX. Note that ride-sharing (where SpaceX is launching multiple satellites for multiple customers in one launch) is an option for many of the smaller launches.
The Falcon launch cadence today is ~10 per month. The claimed goal for Starship is several per day ~= 150-200 per month.
Multiply the greater number of launches per month by the increased payload, whether in Kg or m3, and you see the customer demand for launch services needs to multiply by a thousand or so.
Yes, the goal is low cost per Kg or m3. But I think they’ll be throwing far too much supply at not nearly enough demand. That gets dangerously expensive for SpaceX very quickly.
Well of course SpaceX expected to create its own demand. First by launching larger, more capable and more numerous Starlink satellites at presumably lower cost than the Falcon now provides. And even if thousands of ships making colonization voyages to Mars never happens, they’re hoping that placing data centers in space takes off (no pun intended) in a big way. I don’t remember if I’ve posted a link here on the Dope but there was a YouTube video explaining that it is VASTLY more profitable for SpaceX to devote launches to its own in-house moneymaking ventures than to sell launch capacity to anyone else.