Successful Starship SN5 hop test

Another Starlink launch, and the top deck of Starship's interior

SpaceX and Starship

Starship SN5 has successfully flown!

Notice how Starship moves slightly to the side and tilts a little as it begins to rise. This is done to allow the Raptor to push against the rocket’s mass center-line as projected from the engine’s position, which isn’t at the physical center.

Next, as Starship emerges from the dust, we can begin to see the wonderfully blue plume from the Raptor engine, along with the mach diamonds. The contrast against the yellow plume of Falcon 9’s Merlin engines is interesting.

In addition to its vertical and sideways movement, Starship is also rotating slightly. We can see attitude control thrusters firing sideways at both the top and the bottom of the rocket.

As it continues to move, the Raptor’s thrust angle moves a bit from side-to-side, showing how the thrust is steerable.

SpaceX achieved their target altitude of 150 meters. Then SN5 begins its descent. As the engine throws up more dust, the video cuts to a view inside the lower skirt, showing the Raptor. We can see a yellow flame on an upper part of the engine. SpaceX hasn’t explained it yet. My guess is debris from the launch, but it could be hydraulic fluid or something else entirely.

As the descent continues, we see the short landing legs flop over and deploy. Then an exterior view, followed by even more dust as it gets close to the ground. Finally, landing! Success!

Others have called this a hop. To me, it’s a flight. 150m may not sound very high, but it is. So, so, so many things have to work just right for a flight like this to be possible. Attitude control software and hardware, varying Raptor thrust, steering the nozzle, deploying the legs, and so on. To say that it’s just “technically impressive” is a huge understatement.

The following diagram (courtesy bocachicagal, NSF & RGV Aerial Photography) shows the various sections of Starship SN8:

SN5 only had the lower sections with the fuel and LOX tanks. The purple section above the fuel tanks, also shown in the upper left, is where passengers, crew and cargo will eventually go, and it wasn’t present on SN5. SN5 was about 30m tall; the whole thing will be 50m — without Super Heavy.

SpaceX also successfully launched another 57 Starlink satellites on a Falcon 9, along with the BlackSky Global 7 and 8 ride-shares, into a circular orbit at 53.0° inclination and 550 km altitude. The ride-shares needed to be deployed in a circular orbit, so Falcon 9’s second stage had to fire a second time to circularize. That’s not normally needed for Starlink, since they can use their onboard engines to do that.

The Falcon 9’s first stage landed successfully. However, both halves of the fairing were not captured this time.

Getting There

The next level up in my model of Starship’s interior is Deck G, which is also the top deck:

Deck G has some open space between one edge and the large viewing window on the ship. This will allow passengers to see the view from the entire window at the same time. In zero-G, you will also be able to float up-and-down through that area.

As with several of the lower decks, the floor tiles will allow attachment of tables and walls, to partition the area as desired. There could be video monitors in this area, and perhaps a large table for people to socialize around.

Above Deck G is the tip of the ship’s nosecone, which will contain a header tank with fuel needed during landing, along with some batteries, attitude control thrusters, and flap / fin controllers. It should be accessible to the crew, in the unlikely event that some type of in-flight service is required.

Living There

Here’s another image of Mars, taken from the Curiosity rover:

In case you haven’t already seen it, you might also enjoy this wonderful video, which shows a number of images from the Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity rovers, in 4K resolution. Be sure to watch it at maximum resolution if you can. It gives a better sense of what it would look like to actually be on Mars than anything else I’ve seen. Awesome.