Booster 19 full static fire

5/13/26:

Schedule slips to 19th! Arghhh!

5/7/26:

Homing in on the next flight test. Maybe they'll 'light the candle' on the 15th.

Another explosion at Starbase

Angry Astronaut breaks down the latest mishap at Starbase. He likes to compare SLS with Starship. He admits that Starship has amazing tech, but focuses on all the growing pains for the new system.

But there are some disquieting things that keep happening with their system. You have to wonder if there's a major catastrophe around the corner with this thing.

Marcus House weekly video post (Starship 12 launch date)

Yours truly would love to be there at Starbase to see that sucker launch. But there's a problem... Maybe more than just one problem.

Faster than light speed

Maybe even ludicrous speed. Don't know about plaid.

SpaceX's Starship getting close to launch time

Problems with SpaceX's Raptor 3 engine?

It's been several months now since the last launch. Also, this is a brand new rocket on a brand new launch pad.

An "expensive hole in the ground" is a worrisome prospect. Hopefully, SpaceX has tested this thing six ways to Sunday, and back again.

Is this real, or just somebody's imagination?

Here's another video from AlphTech. (Ooops! Not the same folks.) The idea is the same as the one I suggested awhile back. The one I based my suggestion upon was the Saturn V model. The Saturn V model was 100% expendable. It shed mass as it went along. The first two stages did the major part of getting to lower Earth orbit. The third stage, which was called the S-IVB, finished the orbital lift, and did the trans-lunar injection burn that sent about 100k lbs of what was left towards lunar orbit.

Each part of the mission sheds mass, and thus reduces the amount of fuel needed to complete each part of the mission. By the time the lunar module set itself down on the lunar surface, there was just 1 more module left to finish the ascent back to lunar orbit. The lunar module itself was discarded, leaving only the command module to power itself back to Earth, and re-entry.

The Starship model is very fuel inefficient. That's why it needs all that refueling. With a powerful rocket, they still cannot achieve what the Saturn V did, even though the Starship system is over twice as powerful.

SpaceX has a problem on its hands. It is trying to do something the hard way. The easy way is to downsize the ship, and that is what AlphaTech is showing with this video. It isn't a radical idea. It is essentially how it was done over 50 years ago.

This tried and true method would deliver a super Apollo mission. It would carry more cargo, but it would still use the same Apollo-era methodology. Why change methodologies into something super complex like SpaceX is attempting? SpaceX needs to change their approach, but how does AlphaTech know that SpaceX is actually considering this change of methods?

Starship's Raptor 4 engines

A little too long of a video, and loses focus a bit. If it is about the engine, then stay on topic. Anyway, worth watching, but maybe not all the way through. I didn't.

Blue Origin reflies used booster, nails landing. Main mission fails, however.

 

The comparisons beg for attention...

However, the New Glenn rocket isn't as impressive as Starship's Booster. By the same token, Starship has yet to put anything in orbit yet. The landing of a big booster downrange like this is something that SpaceX MIGHT consider. But I wouldn't be the ranch on it.

Some of these news items could become far more significant going forward

Mars news that was overshadowed by the Artemis mission:

Don't agree with Tyson on the Mars question

We will be going to Mars via SpaceX. But getting back will be very difficult, if not impossible. It has already been stated by Elon Musk that it will be a one way trip.

The first colonists will be sacrificing themselves, in other words.

By the time the colony becomes self contained and sufficient, it will become possible for round trips.

Angry Astronaut: "What happens if something goes very wrong with Artemis 2?

When I write something about Artemis, I have a problem with not using Roman numerals. Maybe we need a design review and spend a few billion to answer that question. SLS was an amazing boondoggle. But some folks still like it.

You cannot design all the risk away. How much risk is acceptable? If all risks had to be taken out of any endeavor, nothing would have ever been achieved. We'd all be living in caves. Maybe not caves, either. Because wild animals liked to live in caves too!

Off world data centers --- it's a trap!

 She knocks a big hole in the notion of off-world data centers.

Scientist says we'll never get humans to Mars

 It certainly seems to be a challenge. Don't count Elon Musk out, though...

Video taken down?! Why do you suppose that they did that???

Shorter Starship?

1/28/26:

 

Author: Space Zone

Description:

       “Starship is too tall—there’s no way it can land on the Moon!” That’s        something you hear a lot from critics of the Starship program.

There's a few familiar things about this video. Is it the same? Maybe not, but a side-by-side comparison can be made from this post. I'll embed the most recent below:



Now for the original.

10/24/25:

 

A shorter Starship may not be a SpaceX idea. All the same, I like the idea. I even speculated on such a proposition myself.

 

So here's a video that discusses it, but with a lot of added filler at the beginning. I skipped that, and got to the point.

 

 

 

 

Are they the same? Quick update: Nope, not the same. But there's one very similar element---the shorter mini-Starship.

X-15 rocket plane

12/13/25:

  A consideration to the subject of being "worth it" to do this, would be in how much energy could be expected to be recovered from this? A calculation from the Nuclear Rocket pegged the energy to thrust ratio at about 1 Mw per 50 lb of thrust. Hence, if 10 Mw could be recovered, then 500 lb of thrust could potentially be produced.

  So that question must be answered before you could answer the question as to whether or not it would be "worth it". You'd also have to consider the additional weight added to the vehicle, because if you add more weight than thrust, it wouldn't be worth it at ground level, but maybe at high velocities and altitudes. It all depends.

  For example, the Space Shuttle did not achieve orbit with the hydrogen tank and main engines. It achieved only 98% orbit velocity. Then the tank was dropped into the Indian Ocean, and the OMS thrusters took the Shuttle the rest of the way. The Shuttle massed out maybe 150 tons,but those OMS thrusters did not generate that kind of thrust.

  The point being that you wouldn't need a great amount of thrust, but you would still need enough in order to make it all worthwhile. What would that be? Looking at energy potential recovery as one consideration, there are others. Among these is weight added through this additional capability, and complexity in terms of reliability and so forth.

12/12/25:

  The link references the x-15 rocket plane of the late 50's early 60's. It could be a way to use the energy of the atmosphere as a recycled energy that could add thrust, and increase ISP, or so I speculate.

  This may be a cockeyed idea, so it goes here on the speculation blog.

  The idea is from the study of nuclear thermal engines, and Parkin's doctoral thesis, written about here many years ago. If you heat up something, and then use that heat to expand a gas, such as hydrogen; you can achieve some pretty high ISP. Or so the thinking goes here.

  At hypersonic velocities, as you travel through the atmosphere, there is a tremendous amount of heat generated. So, what if there was a way to harvest some of that, as well as some of the atmospheric oxygen, so as to lessen the amount of fuel that is needed to reach high velocities?

  Fuel can be used to cool the surfaces down so that the vehicle doesn't burn up. If that fuel were also to be used as an afterburner with oxygen gathered from the atmosphere at high velocities, would it be worth it in terms of complexities and so forth?

  Indeed, would it even be feasible to exploit that? If temperatures on the skin of a vehicle get hot enough, it can in principle, work the same as a nuclear thermal engine, or on an aeroshell that Parkin's envisioned.

  The reaction mass would be hydrogen, which is the preferred reaction mass in a nuclear thermal engine. After the massive expansion from cryogenic temperatures to a much hotter temperature, plus the added effect of burning the hydrogen, perhaps on could get an extra boost, and thereby increasing performance.

  Anyway, it is an idea.

Does SpaceX know how they're going to land on the moon?

 

With so little said about the details of how they're going to fulfill the mission requirements, it seems like the scene in a Dirty Harry movie, thusly:

One could legitimately ask if SpaceX really knows what they're doing here. Of course SpaceX knows rockets, but they've never done this kind of thing before, which is something that they've got to master before they can be successful.

Why not copy what worked before? What worked before was basically the solution for the tyranny of the rocket equation. NASA's solution was shed mass as you go along. The Saturn V's first two stages did the heavy work of getting to the edge of space, then the IVB third stage finished off the orbit phase, and served as the translunar injection phase. After its job was complete, the mass was discarded, as were the first two stages of the Saturn V. At this point, there is about 100k lbs that has to finish the mission. That's just 50 tons.

No need for complex operations like refueling in space. The last part required only a relatively small amount of thrust and fuel. Even that obeyed the same strategy. The lunar module had two sub-modules. The lander part got the lunar module on the surface, and the ascent module got the astronauts back to the command module. Let's say the lunar module massed out at 16 tons. That left 34 tons to get back to Earth. To get from the lunar surface required only 10k lbs or 5 tons total mass. These are approximate numbers, but that's not the point. The point is that in landing such a large spacecraft on the lunar surface requires a very complex set of maneuvers.

Refueling may work, but the shedding of mass has been proven to work. So SpaceX is basically re-inventing the wheel here. With the heavy lift capability of the superheavy, it should be well within its capabilities of landing a spacecraft on the moon. Just not the Starship. If Musk insists on the Starship, then he is incurring far more mission risk on something that hasn't been proven in action before. Just sayin'.

Continuation of the Aldrin Cycler series of posts

8/28/25:

Not too much more to say on this, but I'm still playing around with the numbers.  You may be able to transport a much smaller number of people, and with great protection.  How many people?  I'm thinking at least 3k per trip. 

How do you get 1 million on Mars, then?  You'd have to find another way.  It will likely take longer than 20 years.  I think that is pretty much baked into the cake.

If you do it Elon Musk's way, you're going to get a lot of dead people.  That's why I ran this thought experiment.  There's no protection on the Starship.  No artificial gravity.  Those folks are going to be in rough shape when they get there.  That's assuming that they make it.

8/26/25, 10:10 AM:

Began on the other blog, but should've been here. Just one thing to mention is that denser materials give better radiation protection, but there doesn't appear to be much literature available about HOW much better. Generally speaking, lead is preferred. But lead doesn't have the structural strength you'd like, and it is toxic. That's all for now.

3:30 PM:

I haven't run the numbers, but lead might need less mass in order to shield half the energy of gamma rays as opposed to iron.

This gave me an idea.  It turns out that you can synthesize gold, which would be a better shield than lead.  If the same pattern held, then less gold mass would be needed than lead, as less lead mass is needed than iron.

If you synthesized the gold, you could plate it on the outside of the iron, which would be needed for structural strength.  The synthesized gold would be radioactive, though.  What form of radioactivity would need to be determined.  For example, does it emit, alpha, beta, or gamma radiation?  That would be important in terms of shielding.  Gold may decay to normal gold eventually, and could be harvested.

At the moment, this is just an idea.

Potentially revolutionary propulsion system.

 

Seems like I've heard about this design before somewhere. Once you acquire enough speed, the sky is the limit. Imagine a single stage to orbit aircraft that can take off from a runway. It would be air breathing, which could remove the need to carry oxygen. Oxygen could represent the lion's share of the mass needed to get to orbit.

Venus Aerospace Completes Historic U.S. Hypersonic Engine Flight Test https://t.co/ev3zNEcllQ --- Uses a rotating detonation ramjet engine concept. It is claimed to be scalable. Goal is to produce aircraft that can sustain Mach 4. Doesn't require rocket engine boosts.

— BootsandOil (@BootsandO6892) May 20, 2025

JP Aerospace tests their home-made submarine

 

The video below was published just prior to a test of the sub...

... and afterwards a post on the blog about it. Not many details, but those may be forthcoming.

Floating to orbit on Mars?

JP discusses a tandem airship. However, there's a better idea with his airship to orbit concept employed on Mars. However, there's nothing wrong with idea of using the tandem airship to launch a rocket with Mars samples to a waiting spacecraft for a return to Earth.

 

But there won't be any takers, unfortunately. There's nobody who would fund this, in my opinion.