Recently, on the 29th, SpaceX hosted a presentation on Starship and its role in future missions to Mars. Fortunately, it included quite a bit of new information, both on design upgrades for Super Heavy and Starship, but also future launch goals, Mars plans, and even renders.
We also got more insight on the schedules the company is trying to hit with future Starship catch attempts and general launch progress.
Vehicle Changes
The first half of the presentation primarily went over things the company had accomplished so far. They then began highlighting some of the future plans and changes the Starship program can expect to see. Starting with upper stage reuse, they provided renders of a ship returning to the launch site and being caught. Elon was quoted saying, “So that’s what we hope to demonstrate later this year. Maybe as soon as two to three months from now” he said.
In order for a catch attempt to take place, Starship would need to reach orbit and then circle the globe before reentering the atmosphere and heading back to the launch site. While the recent launches of Starship V2 haven’t been the most promising, SpaceX has showcased accurate upper-stage landing burns on previous test flights. Even still, 2 to 3 months is definitely ambitious.
From here, he shifted to the Raptor 3 engine. Looking at images of the engine, what stands out the most is the lack of complex plumbing. As far as how this was possible he mentioned, “We had to simplify so many parts of the design, incorporate secondary fluid circuits, and electronics in the structure of the engine itself, so everything is contained and protected. It is a marvel of engineering frankly” he said.
He went on to highlight, “Raptor 3 is designed to require no base heat shield, saving a lot of mass on the bottom, and actually improving reliability. So if there is, for example, a small fuel leak from the Raptor engine, it will simply leak into the existing flaming plasma, and not really matter, whereas a fuel leak when the engines are contained in a box is a very scary thing. Raptor 3 might take a few kicks at the can, but it’s a massive increase in payload capability, in engine efficiency, and in reliability. So this is really a revolutionary engine” he said.
During this, they showcased a video of a Raptor 3 hot firing, noting that by now, more than 300 engine tests, accumulating more than 16,000 seconds of run time, have been completed.
We then got updates on the next generation of Starship. This included a number of changes, such as only three grid fins, no booster engine heat shield, an increase in size, and a more permanent hot stage ring. Starting with the hot stage ring, it’s important to point out that the current design, which expends the ring has always been a temporary solution as the goal is to make the entire vehicle reusable.
With this in mind, for future generations, the hot stage ring is comprised of struts that are permanently attached to the booster. Besides views of this in renders, during the presentation in the background, you could clearly see an example of this on a real top section of a Super Heavy booster. The new design, besides being permanently attached, looks a lot lighter and is far more open. This is meant to allow the exhaust from the upper stages’ Raptor engines to vent while the two vehicles are still attached.
In addition, looking at the renders, just under the new ring, you can see that the booster will only have three grid fins rather than 4. The new design is asymmetric with one grid fin removed, likely as it was deemed unnecessary, and its removal helped save weight. Again, looking at the booster section in the background, you can see one hole where a grid fin would go, but to the left, there’s nothing, implying the other two grid fin holes are on the right and opposite side.
Moving to the bottom of the booster, future generations will no longer have a heat shield around the engines. This is because the Raptor 3 engines will be able to withstand the heat thanks to electronics and various plumbing being moved within the actual structure of the engine. The big upside of this is a significant reduction in weight. As we’ve seen on Starship flights in the past, when the booster is returning to the launch site there is always some serious reentry heating occurring between all of the engines. It seems that SpaceX is confident that Raptor 3 will be able to handle the stress of that mission milestone just fine.
It’s clear the company is making a big push toward Starship V3. Elon was quoted saying, “Starhsip V3 is the version that achieves all the key elements. Generally, with any new technology, it takes 3 major iterations to have it really work well. With Raptor 3 and Starship, and Booster, it should be able to achieve all of the things which I just mentioned, which is a rapidly reusable reliable rocket, with orbital refilling. Which we are aiming to launch for the first time at the end of this year,” he said. With all the upgrades to Starship V3, a launch as soon as late this year would be a big deal for the program.
We also got renders of a future Starship upper stage variant with 9 engines rather than 6. This would include 3 more vacuum Raptor engines installed between the existing 3.
Another topic was proepllant transfer. In a new render, it showed more accurately how exactly two ships would transfer propellant. He pointed out, “The two Starships would get together, one Starship would transfer fuel and oxygen. Most of the mass is oxygen, it’s almost 80% oxygen that gets transferred, a little over 20% fuel. This is an important technology, which we should hopefully demonstrate next year,” he said.
At this point in the presentation, the focus changed to Mars. The next Mars opportunity is at the end of next year in about 18 months. In regard to this Musk said, “We’ll try to make that opportunity, if we get lucky. I think we probably have a 50/50 chance right now because we have to figure out orbital refueling, in order to have enough capability to go to Mars. But if we achieve orbital refilling in time, then we will launch the first uncrewed Starship to Mars at the end of next year”, he said.
Once they start launching, they want to increase the cadence of launches by a lot. This starts with 5 landers in 2026, going up to 20, 100, and then 500. They have even been looking at possible base locations. He was quoted saying, “The lead candidate right now is the Arvadia region. Mars has a lot of real estate, but when you combine all the factors, and say you can’t be too close to the poles, we need to be near ice for water, and can’t be too mountainous, it narrows down to a smaller region.”
One of the big challenges SpaceX is currently working on has to do with the heat shield and specifically surviving the Martian atmosphere on entry. He said, “No one has ever developed a truly reusable orbital heat shield, it’s extremely difficult to do so. Even the Shuttle’s heat shield required several months of refurbishment, basically fixing broken tiles, testing each tile, because it’s an extremely hard problem. This will be something that we will be working on for a few years I think, to keep honing in on the heat shield,” he said.
This applies at least partially to Earth reentry as well. Over the past few Starship launches teams at SpaceX have been hoping to gather data on the performance of a bunch of different heat shield experiments. Just a few days ago on Flight 9, there were several experiments focused on enabling Starship’s upper stage to return to the launch site. For example, a significant number of tiles were removed from the upper stage to stress-test vulnerable areas across the vehicle during reentry. Multiple metallic tile options, including one with active cooling, were also being tested for alternative materials for protecting Starship during reentry.
Since Flight 9, we haven’t heard too much from the company regarding what happened. In an official statement they released after the launch, they’re quoted saying, “A subsequent attitude control error resulted in bypassing the Raptor relight and prevented Starship from getting into the intended position for reentry. Starship then went through an automated safing process to vent the remaining pressure to place the vehicle in the safest condition for reentry. Contact with Starship was lost approximately 46 minutes into the flight, with all debris expected to fall within the planned hazard area in the Indian Ocean.”
They finished by saying, “Starship’s ninth flight test marked a major milestone for reuse with the first flight-proven Super Heavy booster launching from Starbase, and once more returned Starship to space. Data review is underway, and new improvements will be implemented as work begins to prepare the next Starship and Super Heavy vehicles for flight. Developmental testing by definition is unpredictable, but every lesson learned marks progress toward Starship’s goal of enabling life to become multiplanetary” they said.
Despite the early loss of both stages, the company is obviously still looking ahead and eager to progress toward the next flight and future variants of Starship.
Conclusion
Recently, SpaceX and Elon gave a presentation about new upgrades coming to Starship and future plans for Mars. Some of the most notable info had to do with the new hot stage ring, a reduction to 3 grid fins, Raptor 3 progress, and the removal of Super Heavy’s heat shield.