[Fordec]

The thing which is seemingly missing from this is their current largest hurdle emerging from the V2 testing. The heat shields keep failing.

I guess the focus is going to be on getting stuff up, rather than back down. Thus the Starlink and data center plays, not human space exploration.

[oskarkk]

Starship V2 heat shield was good enough to allow the ship to perform a landing on the ocean in one piece, in a precise spot. But a safe landing is not enough, the ship needs to be in a good enough condition to be flown again, with low refurbishment costs. We still don't know what condition Starship is in after landing (they need to actually land it on land first). I wouldn't say the heat shield is failing, it didn't cause any failure of the ship, it protected it successfully to the sea level.

But the heat shield is just not mentioned in this article. They actually made significant changes to it in the new version. They added added new seals between the tiles, improved attachment points, and redesigned the shielding in specific areas.

A big problem with their work on the heat shield is that they lost the ship before reentry multiple times for various reasons. They were making changes to the heat shield on previous versions, but couldn't test them as they were repeatedly losing the ship before the heat shield was actually used.

Also, from their description of the planned launch of Starship V3:

> The Starship upper stage will target multiple in-space and reentry objectives, including the deployment of 22 Starlink simulators, similar in size to next-generation Starlink satellites. The last two satellites deployed will scan Starship’s heat shield and transmit imagery down to operators to test methods of analyzing Starship’s heat shield readiness for return to launch site on future missions. Several tiles on Starship have been painted white to simulate missing tiles and serve as imaging targets in the test.

> For Starship entry, a single heat shield tile has been intentionally removed to measure the aerodynamic load differences on adjacent tiles when there is a tile missing.

https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-12

So they're still working on the heat shield. Things like space data centers may be economical only if Starship is fully reusable, otherwise the idea is dead on arrival.

[mekdoonggi]

From my understanding, they have been intentionally sabotaging the heat shield to test the limits of the ship. They are putting the shield through the ringer to find the extreme boundaries to design around.

If they needed land a payload, they could stuff a dragon capsule in the starship, but the point is building something new.

[db48x]

I think you’re overstating the problem. All of the tests flown so far were deliberately crippled just to see how much they could get away with. They installed fewer tiles than were really needed, leaving gaps in large surfaces and even leaving the hinge areas of the flaps unprotected. The resulting damage was spectacular and terrible for reusability, but the ships still functioned. That actually bodes well for human spaceflight! Losing a tile crippled the Space Shuttle, but the Starship looks to be much more robust.

[Zardoz84]

> Losing a tile crippled the Space Shuttle

Losing a tile on the most damage sensible area of the shuttle.

[fwipsy]

It's okay, Mars doesn't have much atmosphere. We can figure out how to bring them home later.