Elon Musk is ready to give it another go, with a SpaceX post surfacing on X yesterday, announcing a potential launch date for the third Starship test flight. The company’s Starship and super-heavy booster combo is now expected to launch at 7:30AM CDT on March 14th from SpaceX’s Starbase, in Boca Chica, Texas IF regulatory approval is obtained in time.
The announcement has sent rocket watchers, photographers, and journalists, many of whom work in Florida, scurrying to pack their bags and find a way to South Texas right in the middle of Spring Break. With most of the hotels in the area on nearby Padre Island, a major Spring Break destination, hospitality services in the area will likely be overwhelmed.
The huge rocket, a key player in NASA’s ambitious Artemis program will attempt an orbital flight with a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean according to SpaceX.
This test flight, the third of a Starship, will build on lessons learned from the first two attempts, both of which ended in a RUD, or “Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly” following various flight hardware and software failures. The “new improved model” is expected to feature improvements in the mechanism for “hot staging” and valve design among other things, both of which contributed to the demise of previous efforts. The company’s goals for this flight are:
- Nominal first-stage performance, followed by a controlled descent of the Super Heavy booster into the Gulf of Mexico
- Starship separation from the first stage using “hot staging,” meaning engine ignition while the first stage is still firing its engines
- Starship reaching an orbital velocity and engine shutdown
- Early-stage testing of in-space refueling technology inside the propellant tanks of Starship
- Controlled splashdown of Starship in the Indian Ocean.
An important technology demonstration on this test flight relates to Starship’s ability to transfer propellants in space, which ultimately will allow Starship to become an “orbital gas station” as well as a myriad of other cargo, interplanetary crew transportation, and lander uses in the booming space flight industry.
The Starship is the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, with 16.7 million pounds of thrust, twice that of NASA’s Space Launch System. The rocket stands a whopping 394 feet tall, eclipsing the height of the previous record holder, the Apollo/Saturn V by 31 feet.
