This is not investment advice. The author has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Wccftech.com has a disclosure and ethics policy.
SpaceX's chief Elon Musk has shared his predictions for the upcoming test flight of the Starship rocket in Texas. SpaceX is due to conduct Starship Flight 5 soon, and according to Musk, the test could take place late next month or in early September, depending on the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) approval. For Flight 5, SpaceX has upped the stakes by quite a bit as it will try to catch the 232 feet tall Super Heavy booster with the launch tower's catch arms. These arms are responsible for stacking the second stage Starship on the booster during pre launch preparations, and Musk believes that there is a 50% chance that a tower catch will be successful.
SpaceX Can Fly Starship Flight 5 In Late August Or Early September, Says Musk
Musk shared the latest details for Starship Flight 5 during a video conference earlier today. He started off by sharing that the test flight could take place in "two or three weeks" depending on the FAA license, which could arrive at the "end of August" as early as possible and could also go to early September. Commenting on what he would consider a success for this test, Musk outlined that SpaceX "would like to catch the mecha. . the. . booster in the mechazilla arms." This sounds "kind of insane" due to the booster's size, he added, but he believes it's "got a decent chance of working" that could take a couple of tries before functioning well.
The other objective for SpaceX is to test its heat shield for the second stage Starship. Its fourth test flight was the first time that this ship made a soft landing on the water despite its flap catching fire. As part of its fixes before Flight 5, SpaceX upgraded all of the ship's tiles, and landing precision will be another objective since the Flight 4 ship missed its target spot due to the flap damage.
Ensuring that the heat shield works and protects the ship is crucial not only for the test but also for safety. Musk shared that on the fourth flight, SpaceX "lost a lot heat shield tiles," which makes landing quite tough due to the risk of the ship either breaking up during reentry or landing in the wrong location. If either of these were to happen, "there's some possibility of debris hitting, um, you know, damaging property or. . or people," he warned.
Due to these complexities, SpaceX aims for "at least three successful landings of the ship" before it tries to bring the ship back to the launch site. The heat shield for Flight 5's ship is "substantially upgraded, um, I'd say at least twice as good, well, some cases, like infinitely better,"shared the executive. There's also a "secondary heat shield behind the primary heat shield," revealed Musk, as SpaceX pulls out all the stops to ensure that the ship survives fully intact after re entry during Starship Flight 5.
The new heat shield and the progress made with the Super Heavy booster, which also made its first successful soft splash down during Flight 4, have led Musk to believe that there's "probably a fifty percent chance, ish, of catching the booster." For the ship, the odds of its heat shield remaining intact are "probably, probably, better than fifty percent, maybe sixty, seventy percent chance of the ship heat shield remaining intact on this upcoming flight, assuming nothing else goes wrong."
SpaceX static fired its Flight 5 upper stage Starship as part of preparations earlier this week. This was the first ship static fire at a new flame trench close to the launch pad. The ship is now making its way back to assembly facilities, and future tests could see a full stack wet dress rehearsal, among others.
Slow motion view of Flight 5 Starship’s six Raptor engines during static fire pic.twitter.com/5395Vmq2j4
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 27, 2024
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
