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Houston, you have a SpaceX problem. 13 test flights in, Starship still hasn't successfully shown orbital payload delivery. Maybe it's a flawed design that never will? (abcnews.com)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/futurology@futurology.today
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SpaceX is preparing for Starship's 13th test flight. Starship is still experiencing issues during ascent and has yet to successfully launch anything from orbit. This test flight will only be sub-orbital.

Is Starship's design flawed? Is it too heavy to achieve its goals? Rocket development is notoriously time-consuming, but SpaceX promised it had cracked that code.

NASA selected SpaceX's Starship Human Landing System (HLS) to transport astronauts from lunar orbit down to the Moon and back. Starship had a tremendous set of goals to achieve before taking on the Moon. Including mastering space-based & lunar refuelling & becoming a crew-capable craft that can land on the Moon, refuel there, and take off again with people on board.

Does any of this have any chance of happening soon if Starship is more fundamentally flawed and cannot reliably reach orbit with cargo?

SpaceX's 1st Starship test flight since going public is set to launch

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[–] 4 points 3 months ago

Right now they're trying to get the best shield good enough, that and make engines that keep working and don't explode

Also they are making larger changes each flight, intruding new problems as they fix others

The upcoming flight test is expected to perform a stage 2 engine relight to prove it can deorbit itself, it wasn't able to prove that last test flight as stage 1 didn't deliver enough energy so stage 2 spent too much propellant and didn't have enough spare for the relight

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