I’ve been wondering for a while now when the next test flight of SpaceX’s Starship would take place. The last one, test flight 11, was nearly 7 months ago in mid-October. Now it looks like a date is finally coming together and it seems to be shaping up for next week.
Initially, it seemed the launch date was going to be May 12th, one week from today, but I’m now seeing multiple indications that it will actually be May 15th, which is next Friday. Either way, this is just over three years since the first launch of Starship in April 2023.
Three years ago, a SpaceX rocket that has become the centerpiece of billionaire Elon Musk’s vision of sending humans to the moon and Mars got off the ground on its maiden voyage.
And then, minutes later, it blew up.
To mark that landmark anniversary, SpaceX recently shared a video looking back at three years of Starship flight tests while also looking ahead to what may be the unrivaled spacecraft’s most important mission to date.
If you haven’t seen the mini-movie Space X put out last month it’s worth a watch. I’ll include it below. Meanwhile, flight text 12 is going to be a pretty big deal because it will be the first flight of version 3 of Starship which is the one that could demonstrate ship-to-ship propellant transfer.
If all goes to plan, SpaceX’s next prototype of Starship, known as Version 3, could be the model to reach orbit and also refuel its upper stage midflight. The complex process requires two Starships equipped with docking adapters to meet in orbit to transfer hundreds of tons of super-cooled propellant.
“Once you unlock that capability, the whole solar system is on your doorstep,” Charlie Cox, director of Starship’s engineering, said in the recent video.
That’s why it’s no surprise that SpaceX has big hopes that Version 3, also known as V3, will become the iteration of Starship to travel to distant locations like the moon and Mars.
The other big change in this version of Starship are the engines. The ship is now using SpaceX’s Raptor 3 engines which means the ship can lift a lot more payload to orbit than the previous version.
Each Raptor 3 engine produces roughly 280 tons of thrust, and with all 33 firing simultaneously from the super heavy booster, this generates approximately 9,240 tons of combined thrust, more than any rocket in history. For context, that’s enough thrust to lift the entire Empire State Building, and then some. V3 stands 408 feet tall and can carry over 100 tons to low Earth orbit in a fully reusable configuration. The V2 generation topped out at around 35 tons.
All of this matters because Elon Musk and NASA have plans to return to the moon. The more tonnage the ship can lift into orbit, the more possible it becomes to create a permanent moon base.
With the apparent suspension of the Lunar Gateway station and the shift towards establishing a presence on the lunar surface instead of lunar orbit, a working and reliable HLS is absolutely paramount for the future of Artemis. SpaceX will need to demonstrate that its Starship-derived HLS is up to the job—especially now that the company faces mounting pressure from Blue Origin’s competing Blue Moon lander, which NASA selected to provide a secondary, redundant path to the lunar surface.
It also needs to demonstrate to the broader market that Starship can deliver on SpaceX’s broader ambitions to build a new low Earth Orbit (LEO) economy where launch becomes common, fast, and (comparatively) cheap.
SpaceX also has an important IPO coming up soon, so it will want this launch to be a success if at all possible. We’ll all find out next week. Finally, here’s the video commemorating the first three years of this program.
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