SpaceX Launches

Starship and Its Super Heavy Boosters

By Matt Woods

In a momentous event that has blown the minds of space enthusiasts around the world, SpaceX has achieved a major milestone with the launch of its Starship spacecraft. While not completely successful, this achievement marks another significant step in the company’s ambitious vision to revolutionize space travel and lay the foundation for interplanetary colonisation.

The historic launch took place on Thursday the 20th of April in the morning at SpaceX’s Starbase, in Boca Chica, Texas. Spectators and space enthusiasts gathered in anticipation as the massive stainless-steel Starship spacecraft, standing at an impressive 120 meters tall, was fuelled and prepared for its inaugural launch. The plan for the launch had been to send Starship on one near-complete revolution of the Earth, ending with a splashdown in the Pacific, a couple of hundred kilometres north of Hawaii. There was no expectation that both Starship and the Super Heavy Booster would be recovered this time, but the long-term plan is to land both the spacecraft and Booster, refuel them and launch again - over and over.

As the countdown hit zero, Starship, and its Super Heavy Booster, took a full 6 seconds to lift off the launch pad. Starship majestically soared through the Texan morning sky for a few exhilarating minutes, but the rocket failed to get high enough for Starship to separate from the Super Heavy Booster as planned, and the huge rocket began to tumble, requiring SpaceX to send the commands for Starship to self-destruct, which happened high above the Gulf of Mexico four minutes into the flight.

While the launch of Starship surpassed Elon Musk’s hope of it not blowing up on the pad. It was concerning to see how much destruction the launch pad had suffered. That destruction was caused by the fifteen million odd pounds of pressure produced by the thirty-three raptor engines attached to the Super Heavy Booster. SpaceX has been using a launch pad at Starbase that has a limited water deluge system and no flame trench-deflector.

This is due to the launch pad being built with special heat resistant concrete and being right next to the coast. SpaceX is wanting to reduce the amount of time it takes to prepare the launch pads between launches and was hoping that modern day construction techniques and materials could help them. A flame trench-deflector system is used to deflect the flames away from the rocket to protect it from the heat and energy generated by its engines. The water deluge system also protects the rocket by suppressing the sounds that are created by those engines as well. That way the rocket won’t destroy itself from the incredible sound produced by those same engines which is being reflected off the launch pad.

It was an issue that was discovered during the static test fire of the Super Heavy Booster back in February. SpaceX has said they have been working on a solution that could mitigate this issue four months ago. The solution would involve a massive double layer water cooled steel plate that would cover the launch pad area. It would have kept the launch pad area cool enough during the launch, however it would not have been ready in time and SpaceX thought it was better to get the test launch out of the way before installing that water cooled steel plate.

As the launch pad disintegrated, chunks of concrete were sent out at incredible speeds puncturing key facilities at Starbase. Those chunks were seen reaching heights of around a hundred and fifty metres and reaching distances of over five hundred metres with concrete landing in the Gulf of Mexico.

The dust cloud for the launch started raining down ten kilometres away, ten minutes after launch. Concrete was seen to take out three of the Super Heavy Booster’s engines at the start of the launch, which then caused the destruction of several other engines as the launch progressed. There is also amazing footage of concrete as if fired from a shotgun destroying a photographer’s car and camera gear that was outside the exclusion zone. The camera gear did cost more than the car.

It won’t be so much of a concern for when SpaceX eventually starts launching Starship at Kennedy Space Centre, as the historical launch pad 39A made famous by the Apollo and Shuttle launches, has an installed flame trench-deflector and an extremely powerful water deluge system. It is something that really needs to be sorted out fast at Boca Chica, as Starbase is a spaceport, production, and development facility for Starship, and the testing of Starship is being done from there. That launch pad is eventually going to deal with having to put up with a rocket that’s producing forces equivalent to having two Saturn V rockets strapped together again and again at intervals of days in some cases.

The other major concern that has worried the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was the efficiency of the flight termination system (FTS). The system is intended to break apart the vehicle tanks within seconds during the flight should something go wrong. However, during that maiden launch, this system only punched holes in the tanks and it took forty seconds for Starship to explode.

SpaceX plans to re-certify the FTS system before the next launch, and they have performed a test of that system on a booster test tank at its Massey test facility done the road from Boca Chica. The aftermath of the test does show the complete destruction of the tank on the activation of the FTS which was the desired result, but it’s unclear yet if SpaceX will have to sacrifice further Super Heavy Boosters to more vehicle destruction tests or whether the data from that test will be enough to continue the recertification process through computer modelling.

Elon and SpaceX have said they are looking to perform another test launch in the next couple of months, but they were only granted one license for that launch by the FAA and as of June 2023, the FAA is still overseeing SpaceX’s investigation of the April 20th launch and explosion.

There is real pressure being placed on SpaceX and the FFA, by officials, environmentalists, Musk haters, and the locals of Boca Chica to do a very long and thorough investigation.

It did take an extremely long time to get that first licence to launch and it could be that it won’t launch until at least 2024, which is very sad as SpaceX’s rapid prototyping philosophy has seen us as a species make huge breakthroughs in rocket technology, and like many industry disruptors before them, they have being able to show us that we can do things that we never thought possible.

Plus, who doesn’t like watching a few rockets experience a rapid unscheduled disassembly.

There will be further speed bumps ahead for SpaceX, they just need to continue to work the problems as they come up and implement the solutions to fix those problems.

The combination of Starship and the Super Heavy Booster not only represents the most powerful launch vehicle ever developed, but it signifies a new era in space exploration. With the capacity to carrying substantial payloads or carry up to 100 people, it will allow us to perform manned missions to destinations such as the Moon, Mars, and beyond, while doing more science than ever.

With the world watching and eagerly awaiting the next stages of the Starship program, the future of space exploration has never looked more promising.