Fraser Cain, Marcus House and Scott Manley reviewed the fourth orbital flight of SpaceX Starship and discussed the future of Starship.
The Starship launch was a huge success but there is still much more to be done.
SpaceX is adding another ablative heat shield layer underneath the tiles and the heat shield tiles will be made thicker with twice the heat resistance. The heat shield tiles do not need to be made twice as thick for twice the heat resistance. It will likely be adding about 20-30% of the thickness.
SpaceX Starship being able to successfully go to orbit means Starship will already be useful as an expendable super heavy rocket.
If the new heat shield modifications work and the booster catch works then SpaceX will have a super heavy rocket that is as reusable as the current Falcon 9.
SpaceX will then need to work on determining how long it will take to repair and prepare the booster and Starship for reflight.
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Meanwhile, other companies are still playing catch-up:
“The engine, which is designed to produce more than 100,000 lb. of thrust, will power the first stage of Stoke’s reusable Nova medium-lift launch vehicle. Similar to the Raptor engine developed by SpaceX for the Super Heavy booster and Starship vehicles, the Stoke FFSC is powered by liquid oxygen (LOx) and liquefied natural gas, in this case a commercially available form of methane.”
See:
https://aviationweek.com/aerospace/commercial-space/stoke-space-fires-initial-first-stage-rocket-engine
The big question is when SpaceX will be going to install a flame trench on the OLM? The highly visible and massive shock waves reflecting off that flat surface is partly to blame for the tiles coming off, IMHO.
The other big problem is the fact that the super rocket expends most of it’s fuel reaching orbit. A problem with two stage rockets that is not currently being addressed! I would believe that an intermediary stage as used by the Saturn-5 would provide enough propellant to get to the moon, land and get back, possibly with the additional aid of ion propulsion …. (provided with extra energy from solar cells?) No inflight refueling required! 😉
This is highly primitive propulsion technology being used, however, the current setup will fulfill SpaceX’s immediate goal of putting 100 tons of Starlink satellites in orbit per launch. A very useful short term achievement, allowing the eventual retirement of the Falcon series of rockets. 🙂