Sunday afternoon Elon Musk spoke to his Twitter Subscribers about tomorrow’s inaugural test flight of the fully integrated Starship system, tomorrow morning. He shared his expectations for the launch, his concerns, and talked about the Starship program as a whole.
The Twitter Space was open to Subscribers only and featured a few journalists as speakers to ask questions. These included Chris Bergin from NASA Spaceflight, Ellie in Space, Zack Golden, Joey Roulet, and myself.
Tomorrow’s Odds and Concerns
The biggest takeaway, and understandably the most asked question, was about the odds of Starship actually launching tomorrow. So far, SpaceX has only officially said that wind shear is a slight concern, but otherwise all systems are go. However, Elon stated that there is a good chance for a delay if something off-nominal arises in the countdown, all the way up to T-0.
SpaceX teams want to be careful with this launch in part due to the fear of destruction to Stage 0 if an anomaly were to occur close to the ground. When I asked about Elon’s biggest concerns, he stated that “my list is a mile long, but my biggest concern is not blowing up the pad”.
When asked by Chris Bergin what is considered a success, Elon stated that “anything that doesn’t blow up the pad is a win”. While SpaceX does have high goals of reentering Ship 24 near Hawaii, everything past tower clear and up to reentry are just bonus points.
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Tomorrow’s launch may not be successful, and the next one, most likely Booster 9 and Ship 26, might be in May. In this context, I believe Elon means successful enough that Stage 0 survives.
The highly anticipated April 17th launch will “probably be a scrub” – Elon Musk
Future of Starship Program
In terms of catching the booster versus the ship, catching the ship will be significantly more challenging due to its reentry angle over populated land, “which will come in like a meteor,” said Elon. The booster, on the other hand, will only fly over water.
For Starship from Florida, SpaceX must have redundancy to launch crew from SLC-40 before it can launch from LC-39 since there is a risk of an anomaly. The company recently built a similar launch tower from the historic Florida launch pad and is looking to build more just north of it.
In terms of cost, Elon speculates that the cost of a Starship launch will be less than Falcon 1. For example, $1-2 million per launch, if everything pans out as expected.
Elon Musk also mentioned that it will be “quite a few years” before Starship is rapidly reusable. However, this is definitely a step in the right direction.
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