Next SpaceX Starship Launch and First Mechazilla Catch in 4 Weeks

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SpaceX Starship will have its fifth orbital launch mission in 4 weeks and it will have the first actual booster catch attempt.

If the booster catch is successful, then SpaceX Starship becomes about 80% reusable. Starship will become as reusable as the Falcon 9 when the booster is reliably recovered and reused. The Falcon 9 recovers its first stage booster.

SpaceX has radically improved the heat shield on the Starship upper stage. They have added an ablative second layer between the tiles and metal skin. I believe SpaceX will have over-engineered this solution and there should not be any damage to the metal skin and the main components of the Starship during re-entry.

I will predict that SpaceX will be able to get an intact Starship to land undamaged in the ocean. The Starship will then get water damage and likely sink. If this is what happens then the next flight (IFT6) will see a Mechazilla booster catch and an attempted Starship catch.

13 thoughts on “Next SpaceX Starship Launch and First Mechazilla Catch in 4 Weeks”

  1. I just relish in the thought of how impossible this whole HLS/Artemis program would be without Musk’s and SpaceX’s bravado.

    They are building a second generation catch tower while testing the catch on the first one. risking it will be destroyed, but still pushing on regardless.

    Crazy, preposterous. And the only way forward.

  2. I think this is madness. There are lots and lots and lots of abandoned oil rigs in the gulf. I think they should land on one of those “several” times before they crash that thing into their fuel tanks and assembly bays. I do not think it would be significantly more difficult to refit and launch off of an oil rig than it would be in their present location. Fuel could be kept in boats. The starship could be lifted with the launch tower crane from a boat.

    A question that doesn’t seem too odd to ask is what is the big ass hurry that they could not do this offshore? They fail one landing. Land another booster ok, but risk a large amount of infrastructure on limited data. Are they SURE that nothing else can go wrong? I wouldn’t be.

    BTW the amount of scripts you have on your site is stupendous!!!!!

    • Mechazilla would allow a turnover for a new flight of only a few hours. Landing on an oilrig can’t do that.

      • Ah, actually it could, depending on how the oil rig was equipped. There’s no principled reason a floating launch platform couldn’t include a fuel tank farm. In fact, it would pretty much have to, since these rockets are too large to transport any significant distance by any means except flying them.

        But doing all this AND floating is more expensive than doing it on land, so maybe they’ve decided that buying small islands around the world is cheaper?

        • Most oil rigs don’t float. What I’m talking about is using them for a start. You could easily use old oil tankers, small ones actually, to carry fuel. An oil tanker not safe enough to go around the cape in South Africa could be plenty strong enough for a fuel farm in the gulf. They are sold for scrap metal prices. Cranes could carry satellites and have a hanger on the oil rig. I’m not suggesting he do this forever, but if things go wrong it could destroy the whole tank farm, assembly factory, the whole works. I don’t believe it’s worth the risk compared to a not exorbitant cost to use an oil rig for a year or so of launches.

          And unspoken is what could have been. It’s likely the long delays that they put him through in Texas would not have happened as long or at all if he was launching from oil rigs. He could have been much farther ahead. How MUCH did that cost him? A lot, I bet.

    • Folks have been yelling “This is madness!” at Elon since he started. Fortunately he has ignored them and hopefully will continue to do so.

    • They bought a couple of them awhile back and worked a bit at clearing off the scrap. They called them Phobos and Deimos. They seem to have concluded that it was an expensive distraction since it’s not part of the designed work flow that allows turnaround in a few hours. They got a lot of data from the last landing attempt at a virtual tower in the ocean. Apparently they concluded that the system was ready for a real catch attempt.

      • [ variable drilling loads for the ENSCO 8500/8501 platform type is ~8000t
        (TGW weight?)

        common weights of oil rigs are ~20000-120000tons, with a biggest exception ~495000tons in the North Atlantic (designed for withstanding 500yrs-probability-events of 1.1M tons iceberg), one declared for ~100,000 barrels oil (with biggest mentioned at ~360000barrels) and ~200M cft of natural gas each day, some storing a 1-2weeks production for oil
        drill depths up to ~9500ft(2800m)-10kft

        (a vessel crane ~72ktons having a ~12ktons lifting record, with each crane capable of up to 14-15ktons and drillships are possibly capable of drill depths of ~12kft)

        (Ocean) Odyssey was converted for Zenit 3SL (~460ktons, ~59m, ~3.9m, ~6tons payload) rocket launches (~1999), being a 436ft(~133m) to 220ft(~67m), submerged ~50ktons platform ]

    • [ What’s a guess for the mass of a SpaceX launch tower steel construction?
      ~10-25-50times the mass of Superheavy&Starship (fueled)? (thx) ]

  3. I think this is madness. There are lots and lots and lots of abandoned oil rigs in the gulf. I think they should land on one of those “several” times before they crash that thing into their fuel tanks and assembly bays. I do not think it would be significantly more difficult to refit and launch off of an oil rig than it would be in their present location. Fuel could be kept in boats. The starship could be lifted with the launch tower crane from a boat.

    A question that doesn’t seem too odd to ask is what is the big ass hurry that they could not do this offshore? They fail one landing. Land another booster ok, but risk a large amount of infrastructure on limited data. Are they SURE that nothing else can go wrong? I wouldn’t be.

  4. You using the same image you did for an article several weeks ago, And if not, this looks very close. I know your a great website, I do like to chime in on the many issues you cover because what you talk about is new, very cool technology related stuff. I love to be able to be able to “connect the dots”, and the society we experience at this moment. IMO, our society is the expression of our culture at any one moment. That’s why, IMO, what we call “culture” is basic and foundational to who we are. But our music, our fashions? That changes all the time. But what we call culture? As an American, I believe that changes very slowly.

    I love your website, because you let me and others of course, connect the dots, between the latest technology, and our current societies. and our cultures it may one day, create the nature of. Thank you for making me feel so cool, even when I’m a dumb ass. Oh, that’s so f****** sweet… Thanks… I needed that…

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