Starship (Rocket)

**Starship** is the first fully reusable orbital launch system. It is designed, developed, manufactured and operated by SpaceX. It is directly based off the Falcon family of rockets, and indirect successor to the Space Transportation System rocket, which had very similar main goals in the beginning as Starship but failed to achieve them.

With the stacking of Ship 20 (S20) and Booster 4 (B4), Starship became the tallest rocket ever, beating the height of the Saturn V, the record holder for 50 years.

The term "Starship" is used to refer to the entire system as a whole, as well as just the second stage, which can cause a fair amount of confusion.

## Stages

### Super Heavy Booster (Stage 1)

Super Heavy is in development by SpaceX and is the first stage of the Starship rocket. It gets the Starship spacecraft far enough away from the earth it's own engines can continue the ascent. It is completely reusable and will land vertically like the Falcon 9 using grid fins. It will have 29-32 Raptor engines on the bottom.

### Starship (Stage 2)

The second stage of the rocket is the SpaceX Starship, a fully reusable spacecraft capable of traveling to Mars with refueling. It has 3 Raptor engines and 3 Raptor Vacuum engines.

## Development and Testing

### Starhopper

    *Starhopper* is a prototype which doubled as a test for the Raptor engine as well as Starship. It made a 150-meter hop before retiring. Starhopper had a nosecone but no flaps and the nose cone was blown off by a wind gust and not replaced. Starhopper remains on the Boca Chica launch and landing pad and has some how survived many failed pressure tests, crash landings and other Rapid Unscheduled Disassembles of it's descendants.

### Early Pressure Tests

Mk1 was used in September 2019 official unveiling in September 2019. It was destroyed during a tank pressure testing. The forward LOX tank exploded sending a piece comically flying through the air, however no one was hurt. Given the unofficial name *Starpopper* as a pun on *Starhopper* after the incident. Mk2 is the only KSC Test Article. The idea was to create friendly competition between the two sites (Mk1 in Boca Chica and Mk2 in Florida) to develop it faster, but in was abandoned in favor of the new Boca Chica article Mk3 aka SN1. Mk2 is currently still at KSC, further use is unlikely.

SN1-SN4 were mainly used for pressure testing and were essentially nothing more than pressure tanks with explosive chemicals inside. On February 28th, 2020 SN1 (Mk3) failed a pressure test and was destroyed. Sometimes called "Bopper" or "Baby Starpopper". SN2 passed cryo and pressure tests, but SN3 failed when the LOX tank lost pressure and collapsed. SN4 passed the cryo test and was then intentionally destroyed in a massive explosion to test the pressure limits. Nobody was hurt and *Starhoppe*r wasn't damaged.

### Low Altitude Hops

Until SN5, Starhopper was the only article to have flown. On August 4th, 2020 the SN5 article made a 150-meter hop from the Boca Chica facility and successfully landed next to the launchpad, similar to *Starhopper*'s flight. One month later the SN6 starship made a 150 meter hop similar to SN5's, only Musk stated it was much faster and smoother.

### Higher Altitude Hops

    SN8 was the first article to be fully stacked with a nose cone, wings and flaps besides Mk1, which didn't have an engine. It was also the first to be fitted with three Raptor engines, Starhopper, SN5 and SN6 both had only one Raptor.

    SN8 made a 12.5km hop on December 9th, 2020. It made the first "belly flop" maneuver (shown to the left) to slow done aerodynamically. It has been called "Starflopper" on the internet after the *Starhopper* prototype and Mk1 "Starpopper", plus the nature of the "belly flop" maneuver. This maneuver will be used by full production Starships for the same reason and to use their stainless steel hull as a heat shield. Right before landing it swung around using RCS setting up to use its 3 raptor engines to propulsively land. However, due to loss of pressure in the LOX tank, SN8 came in too fast and exploded on impact. *Starhopper* was, again, somehow unharmed.
SN9 was built identical to SN8 to preform a similar flight. The platform it was standing on in the VAB broke, resulting in SN9 falling over and leaning on the wall of the building. Only minor damage to the winglets was sustained. SN9 launched and performed the flip maneuver as well, but a little too late due to an engine failure and slammed into the ground in a spectacular explosion. No one was hurt.

    SN10 launched as soon as FAA approval was received. It performed the flip maneuver and successfully landed on the pad. However, the thrust was low despite being given a higher thrust limit so the landing was a bit hard, which resulted in a fire starting under the ship, and SN10 was destroyed several minutes after it's milestone flight due to the fire igniting the fuel and sending the entire starship into the air. The loss in thrust was caused by helium from the header tank, which was a solution to SN8's problem but was not able to be tested on SN9 due to it's Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly (RUD).

SN11 made a similar flight but was destroyed on landing due to foggy conditions. Starhopper remains near the test stand and has survived mostly intact, however it's operational capacity is unknown, as in past explosions shrapnel has ripped through water tanks, and as Starhopper has been mistaken for a water tower on multiple occasions it is possibly it has been punctured.

On May 5th, 2021, SN15 successfully performed the flip maneuver and was able to land softly enough that the legs did not collapse and no fuel leakage or explosions followed. This was the first Starship prototype to make the belly flop maneuver and landing and live to tell the tale for more then 10 minutes. It lit two engines for landing during It's launch happened to coincide with the 60th Anniversary of Alan Shepard's Mercury flight which made him the first American in space.

### Upgrades

In January 2021, SN7.2 tested a 25% thinner fuel tank. It created a lot of smoke, but the test was a success. SN15 also had many upgrades including reinforced hull and fuel tanks and avionics upgrades.

### Orbital Flight Test

*Main Article: Starship Orbital Test Flight*

    The next step in Starship's development was to demonstrate it's ability to get to orbit with an Orbital Flight Test. SN15 was originally going to be the first Starship to fly on a Super Heavy, but after repeated failures of the High Altitude hop landing tests, SN15 would instead try to complete this task. SN20, now called Ship 20 would be used in the first orbital rocket. It was the first one to be outfitted with a full belly of heatshield tiles, which were tested in small clumps of increasing size on previous Starships.

Booster 4 and Ship 20 (SN20) were over 90% complete by the end of July 2020 and on August 6th they were stacked on the Orbital Launch Table (OLT) for the first time. However, this was just a fit check and they were removed to finish placing the heatshields and other adjustments. Booster 4 was sent back to the Highbay. Ship 20 had it's remaining thermal protection system (TPS, a.k.a. heatshield) tiles installed and some were replaced. They were marked with colored tape if they had an issue, however the exact color scheme is unknown. If the tile was good, "OK" was written on it in chalk. Ship 20 was returned to the launch site and placed on Suborbital Pad B, where it performed a cyro pressure test on the header tank, during which several tiles flew off due to a pressure vent. The pad was not clear, however no one seems to have been hurt. This brings attention to the already mounting concerns about the Starship heat tile system, which while the tiles them selves are very similar to that of the Space Shuttle, the method in which they are attached to the Starship's hull is very different.

### Future Testing

    S21 and B5 are in planning stages for the subsequent orbital flight test. Ship 21 is already seeing a noticeable design change before Ship 20 has even flown. The forward flaps will be smaller, further towards the nose cone of the ship and slightly forward. This was stated as due to the flap's previous placement would create too much drag in the airstream and act as a permanent airbrake and cause the craft to want to pitch upward during reentry. Twitter user EricXspace created a render showing this new design, which Elon Musk sated was fairly similar to the planned design. On August 30th, 2021, Elon Musk stated the Booster 5 would hopefully be the first attempt at catching the booster with the tower at Starbase.

## List of SpaceX Starship spacecraft

This list can be found on the page List of SpaceX Starships.

## List of Super Heavy Boosters

A list of Super Heavy boosters. If this list gets too long, it may need to be moved to it's own page.

Note: SpaceX has changed the nomenclature for Super Heavy several times.

Therefore, I am very confused regarding the early Super Heavy's prior to Booster 4, how many and which ones are they? I have tried to make this list as accurate as possible, but the info here on them may be mixed up a bit, I apologize.

## Gallery

An early render of Super Heavy, notice the landing legs/fins.