Will 2025 be the year of Starship? SpaceX's megarocket is growing up.

[Admin]

SpaceX could make serious strides with its Starship vehicle in 2025, perhaps launching 25 test flights of the fully reusable megarocket.

Will 2025 be the year of Starship? SpaceX's megarocket is growing up. : Read more

 

[Philly]

SpaceX has done some rather amazing. 134 Falcon 9 launches in 2024. That also means they produced/manfactured 134 2nd stages for the F9 rocket. Or one 2nd stage every 2.7 days a rather amazing production feat. Yes they had a few issues but considering how many flights it is still remarkable.

Full re-usability only makes sense with high flight rates. If you only fly a few times over a few years, it kind of isn't worth it. The 2nd stage might be the most expensive part of a F9 to fly right now considering how many times they are flying their 1st stages. I never thought they would fly this often.

 

[Torbjorn Larsson]

The next Starship launch has been placed on SpaceX's website, though the date is still to be announced there.

Some details bearing on the article is that they are re-flying an engine from the caught 5th flight and that they will attempt to release 10 dummy Starlinks before descent. (Dummy Starlinks, since they will accompany the craft into the Indian Ocean.)

So, while they develop the Starship return capabilities (improved catch mechanism, which was what failed before ditching the last booster, and improved heat shield) they seem set to start orbiting the new, larger Starlinks. As soon as they get orbit approval for the new Starship V2* they will now start testing, of course.

*If it is capable of launching over 100 mt without also having the Booster V2 in the stack I don't know. It seems that booster awaits either a new engine type or the next, higher launch tower - or both. The Booster V2+Starship V3 stack will in any case likely need the 2nd launch tower, relegating the 1st to return catches.