On Thursday, SpaceX launched the Starship system for the third time, and this time the craft reached space, where it stayed for almost an hour and some tests were conducted. Both components exploded upon return to Earth, but the test was a success and speaks volumes about SpaceX’s organizational culture and methods. It cannot be said that everything went well.

The main thing is to issue releases with an interval of less than two months

The first two tests of the Starship prototype in 2023 ended very quickly and with explosions, but Thursday’s launch was clear progress that marked many of the ambitious goals proposed.

• VIDEO SpaceX successfully launched the Starship megarocket, two attempts ended in explosions / Impressive images after entering the atmosphere

The Starship ascended to an altitude of 230 km, conducted a series of tests (such as hatch and fuel re-entry tests), but the ship disintegrated during re-entry. The good part is that it mostly accomplished its mission and it was also possible to collect data on the behavior of the heat shield after re-entry.

There were also stages that were abandoned: for example, the Raptor engine re-ignition test was canceled due to problems with the ship’s orientation control.

The Super Heavy launch vehicle, which was supposed to make a controlled low-speed landing in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, exploded at an altitude of about 460 m. However, it also performed well for most of the mission.

Compared to what happened in November, it was a huge progress, and we can’t talk about a failure, because this is the “SpaceX method”: doing more and more tests, even if there is a risk of an explosion, the idea is to learn from mistakes and quickly correct them in in subsequent releases. With this method, you don’t expect big “jumps” from one release to the next, so it’s no surprise that things didn’t go perfectly.

SpaceX says they have four Starship and Super Heavy kits ready, and Elon Musk has said he would like at least six more Starship launches this year, but much depends on getting environmental clearance for each one. Permission is granted by the FAA, but only if SpaceX makes a series of changes to the rocket and launch pad, changes that can sometimes take a long time.

Seven months passed between the first and second releases, and four months for the third. If all goes well, we can expect a fourth release sometime in June and a fifth around August, with less than two months between attempts after that.

Even so, SpaceX’s speed may not be enough, as NASA’s missions to return humans to the moon are already delayed by SpaceX, and the schedule could see further changes if there are problems with the megarocket. Humans are supposed to set foot on the moon in the fall of 2026, but complications and delays are making it increasingly likely that the Artemis mission will take place in 2027.

Compared to giant aerospace companies, SpaceX’s engineering culture is notoriously risk-tolerant. SpaceX is conducting real-life tests, pushing the ship closer to maximum endurance, and wants to do as many tests as possible in as little time as possible. It should not be forgotten that the Falcon 9 rocket also had problems in the beginning, but now it is super reliable after years of success and trials.

SpaceX engineers are also known for the fact that, under pressure from Musk, they often found ingenious solutions to reduce the cost of various components, finding simple, durable options, sometimes even ten times cheaper than the components used by the “heavyweights” of the aerospace industry.

“It’s always better to sacrifice materials than to sacrifice time,” Elon Musk told employees, referring to a strategy of moving fast, testing a lot, being somewhat risky, and in short intervals.

A SpaceX rocket consists of two parts: the Starship is the spacecraft/booster stage (with six Raptor engines) and the Super Heavy is the booster/main (propulsion) stage with 33 Raptor engines needed to escape Earth’s gravity. The rocket has a height of 120 meters and is the largest and most powerful ever created.

Why the Starship did not make an orbital flight, but a very close orbit

Many sources wrote that Starship entered orbit on Thursday, but this is not the case. Physicist Claudiu Tănăselia of the website parsec.ro explained on Facebook that “of Starship we can say that it ‘reached space’ or even that ‘it was very close to orbit’, but the current flight remains, by all definitions, suborbital flight”.

This is what Claudio Teneselia writes

“The starship has not reached orbit. Today’s test was not an orbital flight. And this is not a criticism of SpaceX, because the Starship could have gone into orbit, but that was not the purpose of today’s test.

Orbit means not only a certain altitude (on Earth, orbits below 100 km quickly become unstable due to the atmosphere), but also a certain speed, which Starship has not reached today. Again, not because they couldn’t, but because that’s how SpaceX designed the test, the flight, the trajectory. An orbit is the path that allows you to always pass a planet in free fall, so you can go around it without using engines (the moon doesn’t have engines, but it orbits the Earth for a while).

Starship was launched from Texas and crashed into the Indian Ocean; in flight, after the second stage engines shut down, the Starship continued on its trajectory, but gravity swept it into the Indian Ocean. It did not fly around the Earth, did not reach orbital speed, could not launch satellites. The fact that it reached orbital altitude (that is, the altitude that would allow it to move stably in orbit if it had sufficient speed) does not mean that it was in orbit: intercontinental ballistic missiles can have an altitude of 1000 km (with 5 times larger than a Starship today), but that doesn’t mean they “go into orbit” (because that’s not their purpose, and they don’t have enough speed to do that either).

Not every object that enters space ends up in orbit (although the opposite is obviously true). The New Shepard capsule reaches space (height above 100 km), but does not go into orbit (again, because it does not have enough speed to do so). Starship can be said to have “reached space” or even “been very close to orbit,” but today’s flight remains, by all definitions, suborbital.

He then went on to explain why it would be better if the Starship didn’t go into orbit:

“It’s really a good thing it didn’t go into orbit: SpaceX said a Raptor engine re-ignition test was canceled due to problems with the spacecraft’s orbital control.

If the Starship were in orbit, it would need to be decelerated in order to return through the atmosphere in a controlled manner, and this involves firing at least one engine when the craft is properly oriented (otherwise it risks reaching a higher orbit). So we would end up in orbit with 100 tons of uncontrolled orbital debris already throwing up debris (as seen live).

If the Starship remained in orbit without control, after some time it would come back through the atmosphere, but without control. Remember how we worried about the Changheng-5 primary stage that did this and that was 20 tons, not 100.”