IFT-4 Launch

Starship is the world’s most powerful rocket ever and it is launching for the fourth time tomorrow following the FAA granting permission for launch, with the livestream starting at 12:30 UK time. Nearby roads are beginning to be shut f

or “flight testing”. There is a 120 minute launch window from 7:00am CT (13:00 UK time)

So, why is this launch important?

Starship’s aim is to get people to the moon and Mars whilst being reusable, naturally an important part of these missions would be the landing, therfore this flight, SpaceX will be trialling a mock landing of both Starship and the Falcon-Heavy first stage booster. These are planned to make a ‘soft splashdown’ into the sea (Gulf of Mexico for the Falcon Heavy booster and hee Indian Ocean for Starship) after a land touchdown was considered too dangerous.

Starship is expected to splashdown 1 hour afterlift off whilst the booster is expected to come down at T+7 minutes.

Previous Starship launches have seen multiple failures with IFT-1 having 3 failed engines and spinning out of control, eventually triggering the rocket too self-destruct and IFT-2’s first-stage exploded after it started to go into its landing proceedure. Although the second stage was initially sucessful, the safeguard proceedure kicked in and destructed it when it stopped relaying data. IFT-3 was much more promising, carrying out all proceedures and reaching many milestones such as the propellant transfer but it lost altitude control midflight, causing it to fail its soft landing. This is particularly where SpaceX will want to improve for IFT-4.

It is important to note that although all the failures may sound bad for Elon Musk’s space company, they have a very progressive mindset where they expect failure through their fail-fast, learn-fast strategy. Every mistake is heavily investigated by specialists to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. This is why IFT-4 is expected to fail or go wrong at some stage but it will provide data to improve the design and system for IFT-5

SpaceX have said, “several software and hardware upgrades have been made to increase overall reliability and address lessons learned from Flight 3” and confirmed that IFT-4 will follow a similar trajectory to that of flight 3’s and will not require a de-orbit burn. There is also a planned change in the jettison of Super Heavy’s hot stage after ‘boostback’ (retrograde burn after stage separation) to reduce booster mass in the final stage of the flight.

The starship in question for IFT-4 is S29. with Booster 11 (B11), which have been static fired 3 times together. B11 has 33 engines whilst S29 has 6. The last wet dress rehersal for the S29/B11 stackon 28/05/2024 was successful with a full propellant load (improvement on the last wet dress rehersal with an almost full propellant load)

Around March 29 and April 4 heatsheild tiles were removed from the ship, potentially indicatimg and issue and have since been placed back except 2, which has raised questions. The s29 has been tested since the 26th of September with all tests running sucessfully (Spin Prime was aborted and the results for the Cryogenic Proof on 4/10/23 are unknown - the test was shorter than others potentially indicating an abortion) including the static fire on the 27th of March this year.

Things are definately looking up for Starship with every launch getting more refined and people are starting to get increasingly more excited about the future of reusable spacecraft and interplanetary travel that SpaceX is pulling us into. No matter the result of tommorow’s mission, it iis needless to saw that we are going to gain a lot of experience and knowledge about what needs improved and what has been perfected and although failure is important for the development of space rockets, we are all rooting for a successful launch and flight!