What SpaceX Starship Will Look Like When Hot Staging

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UPDATE: There is an image of an Ariane Rocket with hotstaging.

Here are images of Russian rockets with hot staging.

Tony Bela of Infographic News has put together images of what the SpaceX Super Heavy Starship will look like while hot staging.

Elon Musk described the planned use of hot staging for Starship launch. Hot staging is a technique that has been used for decades by the Soviets and russians. This is where you ignite the engines on one stage while still attached to its lower stage. This can potentially enable 10% more payload to reach orbit because of no pause in thrusting during launch.

M_tijn also had a rendering of SpaceX hot staging.

There have been other renderings of what the new vents will look like on the Starship and booster to adjust for hot staging. Rendering below by (Toney S) @TDSN19.

7 thoughts on “What SpaceX Starship Will Look Like When Hot Staging”

  1. In addition to its payload benefits, hot staging offers a crucial safety advantage. By igniting the engines on one stage while it remains attached to the lower stage, Starship is constantly prepared to provide a secure environment for astronauts, whether on the launch pad or during flight. This safety feature ensures that at any given moment, Starship is capable of carrying astronauts to safety without any delays.

    • Yeah, good catch. The hot staging allows Starship to act as its own escape capsule, at any time during launch, and without any cooperation from the booster.

      Just trigger it and go.

      This change probably was motivated after watching the almost successful launch, regardless of its many partial failures, but that could not be because the booster + Starship ensemble could not complete the sequence taking them to separation.

      Had it had hot staging support, Starship might have been able to reach orbit on its own, despite some wobble.

    • Most likely with a blast shield.

      Given it will be receiving the blast for some milliseconds tops, it won´t have to be very though either. Starship will get get away quickly and the blast becomes rapidly no longer a concern.

      But the second stage will need to have venting windows, to allow the exhaust to well, vent. Hence the renderings with openings.

      I wonder if they will have to go the N1 route and make that a truss section. Openings reduce a cylinder’s structural integrity by a lot, so maybe a fully open section would make more sense.

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