SpaceX successfully launched its Starship vehicle on Friday and appeared to demonstrate important and credible steps toward fulfilling the massive rocket\u2019s immense promise. As soon as the vehicle\u2019s next flight, Starship could go orbital, begin delivering satellites into space, and potentially return to the launch site to be \u2018caught\u2019 by the tower.<\/p>\n
All of this is impressive engineering on a gigantic scale. But despite the marked progress with the 13th test flight of Starship, one key issue\u2014probably the<\/em> key issue when it comes to Starship\u2019s future\u2014remains unresolved.<\/p>\n This concerns Starship\u2019s heat shield, the roughly 18,000 ceramic tiles that protect the vehicle\u2019s underbelly during its fiery return through Earth\u2019s atmosphere. And some experts say SpaceX\u2019s current approach may not get Starship to its ultimate goal of flying frequently, at low cost.<\/p>\n \u201cStarship\u2019s current thermal protection system is a dead-end for all missions that require full and rapid reusability,\u201d Dan Rasky, a former NASA engineer who studied heat shield materials for nearly four decades at NASA Ames Research Center, told Ars. Rasky is credible: He co-invented PICA, the material used for Crew Dragon\u2019s heat shield.<\/p>\n NASA confronted this same issue half a century ago during development of the Space Shuttle, which used thousands of lightweight ceramic tiles to insulate the vehicle\u2019s aluminum structure. Although the tiles worked fairly well, the US space agency was never able to crack the code on \u201crapid\u201d reuse. Each tile required post-flight inspections, so reuse of Space Shuttle orbiters remained expensive and time-consuming.<\/p>\n SpaceX has some advantages over the shuttle. Starship\u2019s steel structure is far more tolerant of heating, capable of withstanding temperatures up to 800\u00b0 Celsius where there are tile failures. So some burn-through is probably acceptable.<\/p>\n ,<\/p>\n However, according to a new analysis by Rasky and two other space industry officials, former NASA astronaut Charles Camarda and the head of the NASA transition team for the Trump-Vance White House, Charles Miller, significant challenges remain for rapidly reusing Starship.<\/p>\n Following Flight 13 last week, the experts noted that only a few of Starship\u2019s ceramic tiles were lost during the flight, obviously a good thing. And the heat shield protected Starship during the reentry process such that it made a controlled descent and landing.<\/p>\n However in SpaceX\u2019s drone footage of the landed Starship in the Indian Ocean, there were notable white streaks across the heat shield. All of these appeared to originate at boundaries between tiles, suggesting hot gas may have penetrated these boundaries. There were also indications of cracked tiles and broken edges.<\/p>\nA dead end?<\/h2>\n
A need for rapid reuse<\/h2>\n