Space 2023: SpaceX's Starship Leads List of Two Dozen New Launchers That Could Fly This Year

Part 3 of a Series

SpaceX's massive Starship/Super Heavy launcher leads a list of more than two dozen new launch vehicles that could have their maiden flights this year. The manifest included new launchers from established players Arianespace and United Launch Alliance as well as scrappy startups across the globe. Payload capacities to low Earth orbit range from 100 metric tons down to 65 kg.

With the caveat that launch schedules are notoriously unreliable, and that not all of these boosters will launch this year, let's take a look at what lies ahead in 2023.

SpaceX's Big Rocket

The most anticipated launch of the new year is SpaceX's Starship/Super Heavy booster from the company's Starbase facility in south Texas. Starship will land in the ocean off the coast of Hawaii without completing a full orbit around Earth.

SpaceX's fully-reusable system is designed to lift at least 100 metric tons into low Earth orbit and radically reduce launch costs. The company will eventually attempt to land Super Heavy back on the launch pad where it lifted off.

The success of the giant two-stage launcher is critical to NASA's Artemis lunar program and Elon Musk's plan to colonize Mars. SpaceX is developing a version of Starship to land astronauts at the Moon's south pole no earlier than 2025.

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has booked a trip around the moon on Starship for himself and eight selected individuals. The mission is on the books for this year, but there is a high probability it will slip into 2024 or later given that the rockets haven't flown yet.

New Boosters for a New Year

In addition to SpaceX, four other large launch vehicles are scheduled to make maiden flights this year.

Launch Vehicle Maiden Flights, 2023

United Launch Alliance's (ULA) Vulcan Centaur's maiden flight will carry Astrobotic Technology's Peregrine lunar lander. NASA is paying the Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic to transport experiments and technology demonstrators to the moon under its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.

Vulcan Centaur will also carry the KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2 communications satellites for Amazon's Kuiper constellation. Jeff Bezos’ company will eventually consist of 3,236 satellites.

Amazon also plans to launch Kuiper satellites aboard Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket. (Both companies were founded by Bezos.) New Glenn's maiden flight could be conducted this year, although it might slip into 2024.

Ariane 6's maiden launch has been delayed until the fourth quarter due to development delays. There are only two more Ariane 5 launches planned before the rocket is retired.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has scheduled the inaugural flight of its H3 booster for Feb. 12. The rocket will replace the H-IIA launch vehicle that is being retired, and the H-IIB that was already retired.

The Big Three

Here we will take a look at smaller launch vehicles being developed by American, Chinese and Russian companies. These three nations conducted 93 percent of all orbital launch attempts last year.

American, Chinese and Russian Launch Vehicle Maiden Flights, 2023

ABL Space is preparing to launch its RS1 rocket from Pacific Spaceport Complex – Alaska later this month after multiple unsuccessful attempts at the end of last year. The launch window runs from Jan. 9-13.

Relativity Space's Terran One is built using additive manufacturing (3D printing). Other launch providers have developed parts using 3D printing, but not an entire booster.

Russia's Irtysh rocket, also known as Soyuz 5, is being developed to replace several boosters. Russia's invasion of Ukraine ended cooperation between the two nations on the Zenit family of launchers. (Zenit's first stage is built in Ukraine.) Irtysh will also fill a gap left when Russia decided to scrap plans for the Proton Medium and Angara A3 boosters.

Europe

There is a lot of activity in Europe these days as companies develop new launch vehicles and spaceports are built in the United Kingdom, Sweden and Norway to support them.

European Launch Vehicle Maiden Flights, 2023

European governments have embraced "New Space" by providing new launch facilities. Projects include:

The German Aerospace Center is funding the launch of satellites aboard Rocket Factory Augsburg and Isar Aerospace rockets. European governments are also funding research into reusable launch vehicles.

India, Japan & Asia Pacific Launchers

New launch vehicles are being developed in Japan, India, Australia and the Asia-Pacific region.

Launch Vehicle Maiden Flights, 2023

Epsilon S will be an upgraded version of the Epsilon solid-fuel booster that Japan uses to launch smaller payloads. Epsilon's first stage is a modified version of the SRB-A3 motor used by the H-IIA rocket that is being retired once the H3 booster is operational. The Epsilon S first stage will be a modified version of the SRB-3 strap-on motor developed for the H3 booster. Epsilon S will also have a newly designed third stage.

How Many is Enough?

It will be interesting to see how many of these launch vehicles actually fly this year. Some will succeed. Others will fail — an outcome that is not unusual for maiden launches.

The question hanging over all of these ventures is how many launch vehicles will the market support. There are probably too many rockets chasing too few satellites. And there is competition for established launch providers.

On Tuesday, SpaceX launched its sixth Transporter rideshare mission with 114 satellites aboard. The company has launched 550 payloads on Transporter missions since January 2021. These missions have been great for satellite operators, but have made matters much more difficult for companies developing small launch vehicles. SpaceX is not the only company offering rideshare and secondary payload opportunities on large rockets.

The world is entering a launch vehicle bubble. And all bubbles pop, eventually. When they do, business failures and consolidations are the order of the day.

Related Stories

And because the Starship System is such a drastically low-cost LEO access vehicle, the place for the next bubble is in tugs which disperse small sats from its enormous payload across multiple orbital planes.

The Starship is inexpensive enough in concept I fully expect this to be the decade something very like packet service to LEO begins.

lol you have no idea what cost Starship will fly at none or if it will work

Several very good estimates have been made which you have no factual basis to doubt. Presuming all program costs amortized through first 100 payload launches, under $50mn per. Afterwards, quite possibly as low as $2mn per, it depends on how low they can make the overhead and per launch crew costs, and how closely they approach refuel to re-fly.

Several very good estimates have been made which you have no factual basis to doubt. "

oh come on. what a joke this fan boy stuff

it is not possible to make estimates because no one has a clue what the operational cost are. you cannot predict anything about how much servicing the vehicle needs, what the cost to do that are,

YOU CANNOT EVEN PREDICT IT WILL WORK.

they fire off 14 engines and three or so non firing engines are fodded. it wont even make it to orbit if that happens on that

you have no clue what the development cost are.

estimate means n approximate calculation or judgment of the value, number, quantity, or extent of something.

you cannot even predict when it is going to launch lol

its a great movie…I think the satellite is Discover ? 2 I think …

the line "dont worry about the temps, we are going to crush anyway" or something like that

Hudson had several good lines. needed some hot women 🙂

the biggest problem that they have is that the testing program has collapsed…and what they are seeing in teh ground ops is scary

The Spruce Goose 2 might be appropo or not but I am betting it is

I greatly enjoy your alternate reality, Robert – you should write a novel.

they are all opinions. mine generally just turn out to be more correct than yours. or most Musk fan boys. you still think Musk is going to start a colony on Mars 🙂

Your track record has been pretty terrible so far, and you have a long pile of unbacked assumptions whose foundation is pure tribalism – plus, I’m not a Musk fanboy. I like SpaceX, I don't care much about him. It's much too soon to say whether Musk will start a colony on Mars or not – and if you were as smart as you think you are, you’d know I have very little interest in Mars colonies. This is why I don't take your opinions very seriously. 😉

Your track record has been pretty terrible so far:

such as?

Just open up your profile and scroll down; you’ll find an example in nearly every comment. There's too many for me to want to list them.

ok so you cannot post one…sigh move on

Sure: all of your predictions that SpaceX is going to switch to expending Starships instead of reusing them. There's no sign that's their actual plan, it's just something you want to be true.

Only if he retains the services of a good copy editor. Sadly, by the time it saw publication it would certainly have been rendered embarrassingly outdated by events.

"YOU CANNOT EVEN PREDICT IT WILL WORK." <–

That is honestly a silly thing for you to claim. The upper we’ve already seen work. The first stage is far more simple and has a far more simple task, and it is one almost identical to what the F9 booster does now. The only plausible reason there was any FOD damage is that they were not firing all engines, and in the end they’ll either get a concrete mix that works or put down a steel plate flooded by rainbirds and have done.

"you have no clue what the development cost are." <– Yes, we do, we can see what they are buying.

"you cannot even predict when it is going to launch lol" <– Most likely within a week of getting a license finally.

the upper stage has not flown. a subscale model of it has in a very restrictive flight realm. the rest is equally wrong

"the upper stage has not flown. a subscale model "

Multiple test articles of the upper stage have flown to prove out the descent, approach and landing dynamics.

That's a very unusual test approach, most rockets don't see a test flight of their upper stage until the full stack flies, so a lot of super-fans think it's the same as a finished upper stage flying.

Either way, it was significant in proving out what was needed and a massive risk reduction for the upper stage.

Your claim that those were subscale models a d not full size test articles doesn't seem to match any available information about them. Do you have a source for that claim, or can we chalk it up with the flat earthers who claim the Apollo vehicles were models shot on a soundstage?

nothing about them was full scale. the number off engines was/were different, I dont think that they ever flew with Rapture 2's they never flew the hard parts of the flight profile and none of them was completely successful

Nevertheless, the Raptor 2s are extensively being tested and their far more simple plumbing means failures on the landing flip less likely.

"and none of them was completely successful" <– Nonsense, most test firings of the Raptor 2 have been successful for the last handful of months.

and yet they are still seeing them tear apart

On a test stand, where little is risked. They learn an iteration did not work, or an unseen flaw is never near a stage. So what?

They successively approach a goal of two good engines a day.

That's because a few of the Raptor tests are deliberate envelope-expansion efforts with modified engines and not just qualification testing of the current production configuration. SpaceX is making enough Raptors that it doesn't need to devote absolutely every one of them to a Starship or a Super Heavy.

sure

"nothing about them was full scale…"

What percentage of actual size do you believe these supposedly subscale models were?

"the number of engines was/were different…"

The number of sea-level engines – the engines engines used for descent and landing – was the same on the test articles used for descent and landing tests. They didn't have vacuum engines as they weren't testing anything in a vacuum.

But what does that have to do with the scale of the test vehicles? How closely its features represent the final design is fidelity, not scale.

and you should add the testing regime was very limited. but thanks for noting some of the major differences…and lets be fair the testing regime was not that successful…

Sure, they were test articles for testing the highest risk portion of the flight envelope needed for reuse – just like the shuttle Enterprise which had no engines or RCS, yet was useful for testing the aerodynamics of approach and landing because it was full-scale.

What I keep asking about, and you keep redirecting from (scale to fidelity) is your claim that the starahip landing test articles were subscale, rather than full sized. Again, what evidence do you have of this?

The design and software were revised and iterated through multiple test/redesign cycles until success was achieved. That's exactly how a testing regime *should* work when using interative design.

I’m always baffled by people who slam SpaceX for ‘not doing enough testing,’ and then when pressed, slam them for what appears to be doing too much testing. Criticizing SpaceX and looking smart is the goal, not having anything useful to offer.

Starship prototypes 8, 9, 10, 11 and 15 were all full-sized. Each had only the three central sea-level Raptors installed, but all flew and S15 landed intact.

Your assumptions that SH is simpler than SS is wrong. The simple fact that it has 5X more engines means that 5X more hardware has work on SH than on SH just from a propulsion POV. Also, your claim "The upper we’ve already seen work.". We have? How many of those landings resulted in a completely intact vehicle that flew again? Out of how many flights? Has it flown supersonic? Has it passed thru max Q? Has it gone hypersonic and survived reentry conditions? Is it really tested? Have we really seen it work?

"Your assumptions that SH is simpler than SS is wrong." <– It is not, because it needs no tiles, it's return profile is deliberately quite similar to what SpaceX has good experience with RE the F9 booster and the fact the engines are so extensively hot fired before launch means the supposed "complexity" of a larger number of engines is retired before a launch is attempted. It also has simplified grid fins, and no need for landing legs — it is more simple.

"How many of those landings resulted in a completely intact vehicle that flew again?" <– 1 with the proviso the idea it can not be evaluated to be reflyable is baseless, and only 1 is required to then know you have a correct procedure. With subsequent flights you begin to flesh out the risk "bathtub" chart, and how to have an optimally correct procedure. The tiles already had passed hypersonic tunnel testing, and there is precious little reason to think the fix for the tile loss issue will make it fail in hypersonic flight.

Hummm, your ideas are flawed at the fundamental level. Sorry, pretty much everything you wrote there was flat out wrong. We can agree to disagree and let events speak for themselves.

"Hummm, your ideas are flawed at the fundamental level." <– Not so you can show how. Your views I believe are founded in nothing more than pathological skepticism.

You know what they’re founded on? Doubting Musk's flight dates since the start of the program. And you know what I’ve been? Correct.

No, you have been wrong about overall failure. You will continue to be so.

You hit some trees, and always miss the forest.

The case of programmatic failure has yet to be determined. Right now, SS/SH is not ready to even attempt flight. You understand that flying is when the real issues will come to the fore … right?

"The case of programmatic failure has yet to be determined." <– It has yet to be envisioned seriously but by pathological skeptics.

It has flown.

those musings are without any positive value very blue sky and highly unlikely

The concern trolling that SpaceX can manage 27 engines on Falcon Heavy without incident, but 30 on SuperHeavy will prove a bridge too far, has always impressed me.

Maybe because Raptors are still spraying parts on test stands? Maybe because the Merlin line was much more developed and had thousands of hours of integrated run time within the program by the time the first Falcon Heavy flew? Maybe because the MEOP of the raptors are the highest MEOP of any rocket engine in history and the design is not settled down yet? Maybe because in past flights inflight malfunctions happened right in front of the camera?

"Maybe because Raptors are still spraying parts on test stands?"

Please see my reply to Oler below for why that is no rational cause for dismay.

very different vehicles

maybe because nothing is the same on either rocket

Indeed, it is grounds for giggling at those silly enough to credit it.

Andrew. Space policy today has become a Rorschach test of if you think/hope that space and humans are the same as the lasst 60 years or they are different.

SpaceX is prime among them

having said that there are three reasons that any reasonable person would be concerned about what lays ahead

1. Musk cannot set a launch date. I dont know how many times he has done this "maybe this month but more likely two months from now" and the time passes and you see little change much less a laucnh

2. the problems they are having so far are ground based and really all point to an immaturity in the design team and really no safety management system

3. the hardest problems, the flight problems lay ahead.

Starship is one of the most innovative rocket designs in history and it is not surprising that it is having snags…however it is surprising some of them that they are having

I have been predicting a launch in March 23 for sometime. its possible that they wont do it. now that musk is saying it

Yes the internet has fostered a crazy politic where people are seeking ‘purity of spirit’ in taking one stance or another. Their reactions to hardships of reality remind me of the German's search the elusive perfect aryan back during WW2, meanwhile everything was collapsing around them caused by their madness.

Musk has done some pretty clever things and one of them is weaponize space rhetoric…the notion that starship is going to make space travel for people "very cheap" and start the startrek is strong with the every day astronauts 🙂

Musk did do that, but I think it goes deeper. The government both built up space travel as the next frontier, and at the same time beat all the programs into mediocrity for all kinds of reasons. Space touches the American soul and you’re going to get outrageous expectations and resulting disappointments. We’re literally talking about going to heaven here. 🙂 I think a lot of the Musk camp think they’re just out of reach in reaching the new proverbial frontier where the government will no longer be able to stop them from being their inner superman. Nevermind the fact that the government is not getting in their way at all. When in reality what Musk is really doing is advancing progress much faster than the establishment did. That said the frontier opening is still a long way off. Musk is for some the nation made of a man. That's a popular definition of nationality. The people who think of a nation as institutional and cultural values are naturally repulsed by the great man model, and most great men. Our arguing amongst ourselves is natural, both models have their time in the sun. The institutionalists built the conditions for Musk with our plodding steady pace and tendency to let difficulty get in the way of pushing forward. Musk's downfall is right in front of us. He's not a nation of one, rather his success is made possible by the people around him who keep his malfunctions in check and amplify his best attributes. As we see with Twitter, when he acts alone he goes off the rails and his interaction with the general population is a disaster. Musk needs to constrain himself to the geek squad, for now he doesn't know how to lead and manage or work with other groups of people.

Ah the Turner thesis

and wagons ho

I think the current love of Elon is wrapped up in one part the turner thesis and another the doctrine you mention of the nation made of a man…but in the end its all babble

Musk has been to me an intriguing sole. I think his development of Falcon and FH was impressive but really what he reinvented is Thor or Titan (depending on hos you want to count) with first stage reusability

First stage reusability comes through 1) payload compromises and 2) the technology got to the point where it was possible to recover the stage

Now what he is doing is trying to force technology much like Saturn and then claim it is going to be an operational product.

will he do it? I use to think so, said so in several op eds…but in the end what has become a little worrisome to me, is that he is making very big mistakes that are simply because of a disregard of foundational systems of planning and safety

and his mentality is starting to remind me of Professor Daystrom from Trek the original and the M5. 🙂

I doubt he makes generational change….and I think we are decades from having the technology to make space a place where humans are affordable…but of course we will see RGO

What Elon and SpaceX did was make a most excellent EELV, and then evolved it even more. They had many big shoulders to stand on. Falcon is not Elon's baby, SS/SH sure are. At some point we’ll see where it leads. Right now, we need to see when it flies. What we have seen him do is beat up his fan base with all these false launch dates. Or perhaps he deliberately foresaw that the likes of you and me would pour ridicule or even just some sound reasoning that they would take as ridicule on the true believers and thus drive them harder into Musk's lap.

This is one of the more hilarious (and egotistical-sounding) comments I’ve seen from you lately.

Given how many Atlas people Space X took from LockMart it's no exaggeration. I knew people on the Delta IV program during the development of Falcon and they reported that Space X vacuumed out Atlas from LM in that time frame. The scuttlebutt in the community was that Space X was going to make a no compromise EELV. Sorry. Elon did not design the Falcon. You may remember that Space X scooped up a lot of the DC-X crew before the announcement that Falcon was going to be evolved to reuse. That was out in the public.

Not what I’m referring to. What I call hilarious and egotistical are your references to Musk's fanbase, launch dates, and sound reasoning.

Yeah you’re right. Space X's launch projections on Starship and the fanboy community's reaction to them are the model of sanity. You got me there.

Yep, the entire community is a hive mind reacting only one way. No one except people like yourself have any nuance, or do anything but feverishly hang onto Musk's every word as if he's the Pope speaking ex cathedra.

And when taken to task a lot of the fanboy community reacts just as you say they don't. A lot.

Do please keep putting words in my mouth, you’re very convincing. It's definitive proof of your dispassionate mien and unparalleled intellect.

Those "people from the Delta IV program" should get their dates straight. Atlas wasn't LM's anymore by the time work began in earnest on Falcon 9. ULA took both Atlas and Delta over in 2006. That was the year SpaceX made its first, failed, launch of Falcon 1. Falcon 5 and Falcon 9 were mere talking points at that time. So if SpaceX "vacuumed out" ULA – which would have had to be the case if ex-Boeing-ites knew where departing ex-LockMart-ers were going – these events must have taken place when:

1) SpaceX had money and a stock valuation that would allow it to actually poach some bodies, and:

2) SpaceX had a need to get F9 up and flying ASAP.

Neither condition was satisfied until late 2008 after the 4th – and first successful – flight of Falcon 1 and NASA's CRS contract award.

Given that F9's own first flight took place barely 18 months after this, I’m dubious that any bodies picked up from ULA would have been of much consequence in the development of F9. Almost every design feature of F9 runs counter to comparable features of Atlas V and Delta IV. There is essentially zero correspondence between F9 and ULA's two legacies.

When one considers that Blue Origin was also hiring heavily during this same interval, I wonder if the departing ex-LockMart-ers weren't, perhaps, pulling the legs of their ex-Boeing-ite-about-to-be-ex-co-workers when it came to the matter of where they were actually going. Tory Bruno, after all, said in a speech in late 2014, when commenting on the reasons he chose Blue Origin as a candidate to supply engines for what would become Vulcan, that "all the familiar faces" he saw on a tour of the Blue Origin factory in Kent, WA was a key plus factor.

It's also well-known that Blue hired many people who worked on the DC-X.

"Given how many Atlas people Space X took from LockMart" <– How many was that, and on what timeframe?

10s of upper level engineering around 2008.

That both does not seem to be terribly many, and, they did not at SpaceX produce 1950's concept hardware they and their colleagues had been producing at OldSpace for 70 years. It seems to me the difference was the goals, environment, and leadership provided by Musk — who is in fact an engineer making hardware decisions for SpaceX products at a very high level.

I don't disagree with your assessment of Musk's role. However he was not endowed by nature with the wherewith all and experience to make the exact decisions on what was achievable and what was not and what to add to Falcon and what not to and when. He was a part of it, but had a very experienced team of people who were sitting on decades of experience. Almost nothing on Falcon was new. It was all done before at that scale, and in those performance parameters. That's not the case with SS/SH. It's all new, it's all Terra incognito from an engineering POV. Musk is not a technical innovator, even with Tesla he purchased his way into Tesla after much of what made up 21st cen EV's was taken to a pretty mature level. Musk knows how to exploit modern finance and knows how to inspire geeks and get them to do a lot of free work.

"However he was not endowed by nature with the wherewith all and experience to make the exact decisions on what was achievable and what was not and what to add to Falcon and what not to and when." <– To the limited degree true, so what? Kelly still gets credit for the Blackbird and the Skunkworks after all.

"Almost nothing on Falcon was new." <– A lie really, certainly a delusion at least on your part. They did all their own math, and cut all their own metal. You may as well say the Saturn was nothing more than a scaled up Atlas. They didn't just think about densified propellants, they made them work. The F9 was one thing from the get go never done before, a booster designed successfully for low cost and reusability.

Nothing about SS/SH is new but what they have already done with the upper stage. Even landing so precisely the chopsticks can catch a booster or upper is what they already do now with the F9 series every single landing lately.

"Musk is not a technical innovator, even with Tesla he purchased his way into Tesla after much of what made up 21st cen EV's was taken to a pretty mature level." <– More delusions at best from you. Tesla didn't have its industry leading battery management tech until after Musk insisted on it, and some EV makers still haven't cottoned on to the necessity of it — and unlike Tesla their batteries don't last a half million miles while staying above 80% of original charge capacity. Their switched reluctance motors are also far ahead of what anyone else is doing, as is their massive injection casting machines making lighter car bodies for far less cost than anyone else can — it is why their overall prices are low for their performance while their per car profit is still high. Their newly introduced carbon motor sleeves are bleeding edge, as is their research into simplifying battery chemistry.

Musk pays his workers what he says he will, and he gets nothing free from them — at SpaceX they are paid in part by having an opportunity to do something that will still matter and be remembered in a thousand years. Not too many buggy whip makers are remembered now, are they?

You would begin to have credibility Andrew, if you stuck to what you knew anything real about.

Musk is not Kelly. Kelly had years of design work on the shop floor before he went into management. Musk is businessman, not a technician. To his credit he has a firm grasp of the broad technical issues of spaceflight and understands the base principles at the equation level and uses that understanding in concert with his business practice. That combination is exceedingly rare and exceptional in the commanding heights of the economy.

Nevertheless, Musk is in Kelly's sort of position and doing as well at it as Kelly ever did. Musk is actually a polymath technician running several businesses.

I’m sorry, Musk does not, nor has he ever done a real vibrational modes study at the subsystem level on a launch vehicle. He hasn't done the likes of doing fluids and gas flow analysis on a centrifugal impeller. Musk is not an engineer. He understands the principle concepts and the limits of what can be done and is in touch with the engineers who do the kind of work that I mention but he does not do the work. If you don't do the work, you’re not an engineer. Kelley did that kind of work, at that level. It's simply a matter what you have time for. I’m sorry, nobody can do engineering work at that level of detail and also manage the manufacturing, the finance, allocation of resources, run a car company, run a solar company, have 10 kids with 5 different wives, and fly internationally 3 days out of 7 on average. You’re delusional if you think anyone can do that. Musk has people do these things for him. He delegates. He delegates well. But what he's really doing is not engineering, it's management.

"I’m sorry, Musk does not, nor has he ever done a real vibrational modes study at the subsystem level on a launch vehicle." <– So what? Many people who are engineers even in aerospace have not. Musk is an engineer, because what he does is engineering — for that matter industrial engineering is itself a thing.

"Kelley did that kind of work, at that level." <– At one point. Then later, he was doing the engineering that Musk does. Kelly was not an engineer because he did that earlier work, but because he was still doing engineering.

You are simply delusional if you think only low level engineers are engineers, still more so if you think only ones doing vibrational mode analysis are engineers, you are the more delusional.

For all that the has been known to do the things you said just them, he has also been known to sleep at his factories even on the factory floor when in the throes of trying to solve an engineering problem.

Of course, for all that is true, you are the sort that claims, "The flame trench issue has the Musk hallmark on it. His desire to sidestep issues and assume they’ll solve themselves is his style."

And no doubt when he participates personally and does 18hr days to work a problem, you’ll call him micromanaging and still you won't admit he is an engineer.

That's because you are a pathological skeptic.

I think you misunderstand how engineers move through the various stages of of technical analysis. Making decisions off the cuff based on experience or even off the analysis of other engineers does not mean you’re doing engineering. Engineering is the process of analysis and modeling of a system before it's built then choosing a design point based on a process of trade offs. Musk is a manager who can fold the results of the analysis and trade studies into his management process. Almost every engineer in management conducted that analysis and those trade studies for a decade or two before they rose into management. Musk purchased his way into his position. I’m sure you can understand the difference.

"I think you misunderstand how engineers move through the various stages of of technical analysis." <– Oh I do, I frequently am doing that. Making engineering decisions is doing engineering. Like what Kelly did when he decided against standard practice to try a thrust augmentation cooling duct in the P-51 — and it was also a gut check about whether he thought they could produce the design — an engineering decision.

Musk does carry out the duties of a manger, and he makes engineering decisions. He has at that if I recall written code as except for the Boring Company at one time or another for all his companies — that is referred to as software engineering.

Engineering is not only doing math, it is developing the judgement about what math is worth doing.

And let's see, he started quite a few companies and engineered their success. Tesla he invested in, and by demonstrating a superior vision of what was possible and desirable to engineer, he forced out the original management — is that what you call "buying a position" ?

I understand you have a serious case of pathological skepticism.

You make your engineering decisions based on your past experience. Musk never had that. He's dependent on experts who had that deep background.

Pathological doubter. … What a term. what I have is a set of open eyes to events over rhetoric or religious hope and conviction. The simple fact is you fanboys buy anything Elon says and then amplify it as if it will happen, then pile on people who speak the truth of events as they play out. You are behaving in just the way people like Nate said fanboys don't. You’re my best argument against him that your community is irrational. I understand you have a deep seated emotional desire to see Musk's dreams come true, but don't pile on people who simply bring up the reality of events as they happen. What you have to face is the fact that for the past year your rabid rantings that SS/SH is about to upset the launchspace (which musk already dominates BTW) and enable the new human millennium have just been plain wrong. Worse yet, people like you have been blathering a endless stream of BS about this program since it started in 2017. I think you need to reassess your own pathology.

So when Tom Mueller says, "Not true [about Elon not being in charge of engine development], I am an advisor now. Elon and the Propulsion department are leading development of the SpaceX engines, particularly Raptor." and he has also talked about how fast and thorough a study Musk is, you discount it. Sure.

Musk made one set of predictions which assumed a carbon fiber Mars rocket. Every prediction relating to that was ditched when they went to stainless steel — they restarted with a blank slate for about everything but the engine.

"What you have to face is the fact that for the past year your rabid rantings that SS/SH is about to upset the launchspace (which musk already dominates BTW) and enable the new human millennium have just been plain wrong." <– More nonsense from you, they have not even been allowed to fly a full stack yet. That is a decision by government to delay them, no more no less. If they had launched when they first wanted to, they would have begun their preferred hardware rich iterative development cycle, no more, no less — and would likely have an operational system by now. See, unlike you I don't discount Elon's saying the main goal of the first launch (at that time) was to get it far enough away from the pad to not damage the pad. They have spent the intervening time doing what testing they can to retire risk to the extent they can without launching and have made apparent (it's right out where you can see it) substantial progress RE the tiles, structure of the pad, the drastic uprating and simplification of the Raptor (you complaining any fail in remote testing demonstrates the degree to which you understand nothing of this — they make a change, they learn it does not work that's good manufacturing makes a mistake and it doesn't happen on a vehicle's static test that's good).

You really don't understand anything of this. You don't understand how I have refuted your every claimed specific point, which refutation you over obviously elide and you circle back to vapid atmospherics.

That's more than a little on the nose.

Yes, you have pathological skepticism.

Oh that's rich … .The Government stopped them from full up testing . Hilarious. Elon even admitted they’re not ready and that the government was not the reason for the delays of 2022. You have a reference frame all your own. I think you’d call it inertial, but from the outside your radius of gyration positively nuts.

"Elon even admitted they’re not ready and that the government was not the reason for the delays of 2022." <– Said long after such a test would have been run. You ignore timing because it refutes you. Had they run the test then it may well have failed to get far enough away from the pad . . . but they would have begun their iterative development cycle then, not 18 months later, and they would almost without doubt have an operational vehicle by now — they could build a system a month at this time, I believe, that's a lot of iteration.

My reference frame is physical reality including past history, yours is whatever is going on with SpaceX is to be downplayed and put in the most negative light possible, including your being silly to do it.

Yup, living in your own world there dude. I’m off to make a real world dinner I can eat. Ta!

I’m surprised you can stand your own cooking, since you are so uselessly negative all the time.

Broccoli and garbanzo beans curry:OnionGarlicCurry powderPaprikaGarbanzo beansBroccoli crownsCoconut milkPlain yogurt.Cilantro.Olive oil.

Steam broccoli and cook the beans separately per your fav method. Saute the onions and some garlic in olive oil until onions are clear. Sprinkle curry powder and paprika, stirring until powder and oil make a rue. Add coconut milk and stir until uniform. Add a few teaspoons of yogurt. When sauce comes to a simmer add the broccoli and beans and allow the beans and crowns to begin to become soft. Add red chili paste if you like, then chop cilantro and sprinkle on top when served.

Quite tasty.

No, you are about the only occupant of your particular bubble chamber.

https://spacenews.com/space…

You are behaving in just the way people like Nate said fanboys don't.

Still putting words in my mouth, eh?

P 51 was a product of North American Aviation. Kelly was Lockheed.

Apparently that is correct. Quite the brain fart on my part.

Now if only Tubbiolo could perceive and and admit their error.

"They had many big shoulders to stand on." — None of whom ever had the perspicacity to envision how cheap expending fuel was, relative to expending hardware, such that undertook dropping the cost of LEO access by a factor of 20. In fact, that vital realization took place fostered within SpaceX and critically not assuming SSTO.

"where the government will no longer be able to stop them from being their inner superman." <– More like grubbing around on their own terms.

"for now he doesn't know how to lead and manage or work with other groups of people." <– Reality is, he's been doing that and is still doing it now.

Musk was beaten to the punch by decades – the fantasy that he is somehow responsible is revisionism. Spaceflight isn't a sports team, nor is it a religion, and it shouldn't be either.

There are many bases upon which to estimate Starship operational mission costs. That you choose to simply disbelieve or remain deliberately ignorant of same is on you. The same is true of the Falcons for which you continue to assert obvious economic falsehoods.

I certainly can predict Starship will work – for quite a sheaf of different detailed definitions of "work." I can do so on a much firmer factual basis than your baseless blanket disbelief in such a possibility.

Being off with launch predictions is pretty common. As a Boeing employee I should think that would be obvious.

Musk has now come around to my launch date of March 23 which makes me think June is more likely…but so far I am holding on to March

there are no solid basis or bases to predict Starship cost on because the thing is so experimental. and if Falcon launches were so great we would see that in a variety of measures…but we dont

I dont work in the rocket business. But SLS launch dates while slipped did so for stated reasons. and you could estimate when it would aactually launch as I did 🙂 happy new year

The XB-52 was as "experimental" in its day as Starship is now. But I doubt Boeing's competitors found it nearly so difficult to estimate its costs as you seem to find doing the same for Starship.

What "variety of measures" of the Falcons would those be? If, as you baselessly assert, SpaceX is actually making no money or even losing money on each Falcon launch, how is it that the company is still in business after doing twice as many break-even or money-losing launches in 2022 as in 2021?

SS/SH only looks marginally closer to flight than it did at this point last year when everyone said, including myself, that it would likely fly. We were all wrong. Since the system is still early in its development stage we all need to admit that we don't know if it will fly this year at all or not.

The failure to launch last year, as was also true for the failure to launch in 2021, was entirely due to serial fumbles with the orbital launch ground support equipment. GSE is still the critical path item. A solution now seems reasonably close. A considerable part of said solution seems to be just armoring everything like a tank.

Both the Starship and Super Heavy vehicles have undergone two substantial design upgrades each during the past year. So have the Raptor engines that power both.

I don't know when the GSE will be flight-ready. But, as soon as it is, I expect progress to be rapid even if the initial launch fails to meet all objectives.

You always estimate ‘rapid progress’ and you’re always wrong. You’ve established this pattern and you won't admit when you were wrong. It's okay to be wrong. I was. I thought SS/SH would fly last year. Again as I tried to argue with you last year the GSE equipment reflects the flight equipment. So assuming your argument that it's the GSE is correct, it still reflects the state of the flight equipment. But that in itself is a fiction reflected in the appearance of new hardware on the SH boosters as new iterations come out. The real truth on the ground that we can see right in front of our face are the issues we see in plain sight with engine development and engine operations. Just face it, SH was not ready to fly in ’22, and those issues are still an issue.

St Elon is now at March 2023 I am rethinking my time line 🙂

Funny in Nov ’21, I was thinking March ’22. I’ve given up even guessing. we keep seeing more hardware added to SH, and as you note, with no flame trench/launch pond the launch pad won't be reusable or worse.

Actually, we see more hardware removed from SH. Current SH grid fins are lighter, Raptor 2s are lighter than Raptor 1s and the entire hydraulic system for TVC has been replaced by an electric actuator system that is several tonnes lighter. There is less stuff sticking out in the breeze too.

I always estimate rapid progress once flight testing resumes. When the flight hardware can actually fly, progress is rapid. That was certainly the case, for example, with figuring out the Starship landing flip.

But, to fly, one must have a suitable place to fly from. Thereby hangs the tale.

Most of the last two years have been taken up with serial demonstrations that the orbital launch infrastructure isn't yet up to the job. Had the GSE been up to snuff in 2021, B4 could have flown with S20 perched atop. Ditto B7 and S24 in 2022. But the GSE still spews spalled concrete when a static fire is done and this sometimes prangs an engine or two in the process. The problem is not with the engines, but the GSE.

I hope Elon is right that the fixes currently underway are enough to get the GSE in a fit state to handle a full-bore static fire soon. But I simply don't know if that will be the case. Past experience suggests we may have a cycle or two more of test-break-fix to go before the needed static tests are runnable without more "freindly fire" damage incurred.

All we can do is spectate. We’re not players in this game. Events will bare all in time.

Both the Starship and Super Heavy vehicles have undergone two substantial design upgrades each during the past year. So have the Raptor engines that power both.

with no flight testing

why would flight operations go faster than ground operations?

"Both Starship and Super Heavy vehicles have undergone two substantial design upgrades… with no flight testing"

Predicting that the test flight will be delayed due to lack of test flights is a bold move. I salute you, Mr. Oler.

You can't do a test flight until you do a test flight.

Crucially, you can't do a test flight until you’ve also done a static fire without pranging the launch mount. That has been the problem to-date and when it will end, I have no real idea.

I feel certain they are low-balling fixing that problem until they know they will get a launch license when they ask for it.

Overloading the clamps to verify stress/strain margins seems like, "Well we can't launch, we may as well do that.", activity.

Because they have in the past. The landing flip maneuver was nailed in far less time than it has taken to get the orbital GSE to a fit state so that flight can resume.

ilure to launch last year, as was also true for the failure to launch in 2021, was entirely due to serial fumbles with the orbital launch ground support equipment. GSE is still the critical path item

for this year…when they start flying there will be more issues the way these things are going

SpaceX has proven very quick at fixing "issues" once its vehicles, including Starship, are actually flying. Functional GSE is, unfortunately, squarely on the critical path to actual flight. How long functional GSE will take to get, I have no clue.

"SS/SH only looks marginally closer to flight than it did at this point last year when everyone said, including myself, that it would likely fly." <– If someone is a pathological skeptic and paying no attention, sure.

It seems the Raptor 1s have been replaced by a now quite mature Raptor 2, the tile loss problem has been solved, and an incipient fatigue/overload failure issue with some stringers found and fixed.

As they have been denied a launch license, instead of spending time fixing what they found to break, they have testing ever more extensively and fixing what does or seems it might break.

What this means is that unlike the original first test flight goal of getting far enough away from the pad no GSE is damaged before failure; instead, the first flight has increasing odds of making it all the way to a soft water touchdown and the booster being recovered on the chopsticks — and if it fails that, instead of a multitude of failures to be iteratively discovered and solved, there will be a few.

If events don't prove your ‘analysis’ out, will you be willing to admit you were wrong?

Sure.

But since it still true the only announced minimum goal of the first full test flight is to get far enough away from the pad no GSE is damaged . . .

It seems the Raptor 1s have been replaced by a now quite mature Raptor 2,

it has no flight time

And manifold hours of testing.

It appears that Blue Origin is already in the race with it's announcement it is developing the "Blue Ring" tug for launch on the New Glenn.

Yes. The Lord of the Rings jokes are already being made. The Blue Origin pipeline continues to fill but nothing ever seems to emerge.

if Starship does not fly in 23 then the program will face severe issues…including serious issues about its ability to be a lunar lander

I reserve the ability to change and revise my remarks…but

the issues that they are having on the ground should and I think does scare them. these issues are some which should have been predictable…and they bespeak either no real safety management analysis or leadership or both…or a careless care free association with reality

a blind man could have seen that they would have problems with no flame trench and the efforts that they are doing to mitigate these are farcical

finally I would say this. projects fail that are not adequately tested…and SpaceX has done little or no testing on the actual design of the booster/second stage and now they have an entire slew of them sitting around

JWST cost 10 billion plus because that is likely the cheapest it could have been done with the risk reduction that they needed. the ground problems point to a lot of flight problems…they just have not tested enough

The flame trench issue has the Musk hallmark on it. His desire to sidestep issues and assume they’ll solve themselves is his style. We see it with the firing of the janitorial staff at Twitter HQ. He just assumed everyone else would clean the bathroom after they used it.

and I suspect that there are a lot of flame trenches in the vehicle design. he just doesnt seem to have the patience to carry out a program this innovative

Yeah he went from the National Launch System work that NASA did as a basis for Falcon to The crazy super Saturn V vehicles drempt up in the 70's and 80's as a basis for SS/SH. He's trying to solve a PDE with a made up forcing function driving a unknown load. SpaceX is the right organization to launch and learn. But they’ll have to. When to fly is a judgement call dependent on your own expectations and those of the regulator. SS/SH got difficult this year. That's okay, people just need to throttle their expectations accordingly.

I remember the COMET concept:https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…

Now, wasn't there an article that told of Bill Gates wanting to bring back the Saturn V for Teledesic or something?

This was before his marriage–let alone divorce.

The Saturn V-B concept had a slide-out engine block similar to Atlas. I really wish that had been built:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/…

-but with M-1s.

The pad is too close to everything.

Say what you will about SLS–but those SRBs will get it off the coast where there is less of a threat to GSE.

I love SLS because it is near Stage-and-a-half to orbit…and I want a wet workshop out of some cores.

if one blows up on the pad it takes nearly the entire complex with it. and a wet workshop would be wonderful…a fun model

publiusr, why desire wet workshops, if you can get more volume for much less money another way?

St. Elon has now said that a March 2023 date is likely …yikes I should revise my timeline 🙂

More specifically, he has now said that a launch attempt in January a possibility, and an attempt in Mark is real likely.

I’m not going to try and hold by breath until the debut launch of the SS/SH system – which he also says has a low probability of being fully successful through to sof-landing at sea.

The good news out of it all is that NASA is watching the timelines needed for Artemis III, and per Bill Nelson, Starhip/SuperHeavy is still on track.

nothing about starship is on track because there is not a track to be on that musk is still playing the "possible but likely" game is illustrative of that. he says stuff like this all the time. Bill Nelson is simply lying. he does that a lot. Congress and others are worried Musk cannot pull this off.

March "real likely" its like "I really love this" . I’ve thought march was a "real" date for sometime. Musk saying that bothers me as he usually is wrong. but lets see. if it fails, well its a couple of years wasted. he has not lowered any flight risk by testing. and that will be an expensive bang…but its his money 🙂

Save us St. Elon

If it fails, it's a couple years wasted? SpaceX isn't Boeing, lol.

and a lot of money as well as effort and it took American space policy down a bad path as did Shuttle

SpaceX has more boosters and upper stages in the pipeline – the Shuttle had none. It was always an experimental vehicle because it had to satisfy so many political considerations. Starship does not. They are not comparable except for some rhetoric, and unlike NASA, SpaceX has proven they can hit high launch rates and sustain them – and lower costs, though I’m aware you deny that last. The first orbital launch failing is not fatal, any more than all the crashed F9 first stages were back when SpaceX was testing booster reentry. Further, American space policy? The people who write that still, in the main, pretend Starship doesn't exist, and Falcon Heavy only barely exists. If you mean Lunar Starship, blame Congress for providing inadequate funding (as they’d rather fund NASA to poorly compete with the private sector), and blame the other firms for having mediocre, overpriced entries. On top of all this, we haven't yet mentioned all the other rockets being built by various companies, as well as the growing number of satellites, tugs, lunar landers, and space stations under development. So no, while government policy has been generally terrible because it's been vendor- and power-driven rather than productivity-driven for decades now, the US space sector as a whole is surging.

Your irrationality regarding Elon Musk (you pay far more attention to him than I do, incidentally) makes your prognostications on SpaceX come off as being driven by what amounts to team rivalry, and little more.

"bad path"? Nonsense, they will just fix it and continue. Probably in a few months.

And the competitive market is not the government agency. Vulcan, the next Antares, and New Glen get a turn at bat if they will get their butts out of the dugout.

Funny how so many of these new rockets that are supposed to fly the first time this year, were supposed to fly for the first time last year! Groundhog Day.

You must be logged in to post a comment.