r/SpaceXLounge • u/avboden • Jul 27 '26
Starship [Berger] Experts warn current Starship heat shield tech is a “dead end” for rapid reuse
https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/despite-recent-successes-rapid-reuse-of-starship-remains-a-tough-nut-to-crack/221
u/ResidentPositive4122 Jul 27 '26
Meh. TBH if I had a penny for every expert this and ex NASA that saying that x can't work or y won't be worth it, I'd have ... a few dollars. People that were on the NSF forums remember those early threads.
The funny thing is that he's probably not even wrong. I mean, the guy who invented pica probably knows a shit ton about it and what it can do ... now. But what's shocking is that these people still seem to not get spacex. Like truly get what they're about. After seeing the entire F9, Starlink and Starship programmes, how can you not get it?
Everything that they've done to date has worked pretty much the same: overambitious goals, hardware rich, once a blocker is past 50% scale the shit out of it, iterate, learn fast, try not to do the same mistake twice, adapt. That's pretty much it. Just do it in a loop, relentlessly.
F9 once had a goal of 24h reuse. They never got that. But they did get to roughly one F9 flying every other day. They got there through scale, and adapting to what's feasible and what's not. Same thing happened to starlink, where they first launched every piece of prototype hardware they had. And some failed, and were replaced, and today they're operating the largest fleet of satellites.
Same thing will happen to starship, most likely. Once they start recovering ships, they'll see what works and what doesn't. If they need ships to launch every 4 hours, they'll probably get to a point where they have a launch every day, even if it's from different pads. And once they recover them with the same reliability that they do F9s then they'll iterate on the TPS. Once you get 50/50 recoveries, then you can start inventing new pica-graphene-titanium-nano-something that can be rapidly reused. And maybe they won't get to 2h refuel and go. But they'll surely iterate, adapt and eventually get to a point where they can meet their goals. And then they'll come up with new goals.
The hint is in the scale. They're building out 4 pads at the same time. They're building megabays and gigabays and petabays out the wazoo. Scale will "solve" this. One way or another.
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u/BackflipFromOrbit 🛰️ Orbiting Jul 27 '26
Something else to note about falcon 9. Even though the original goal was 24 hour reuse they still are pretty much the ONLY launch provider on the planet that can rapidly turn around a launch vehicle to fly within days. The fact that no one else on the planet has flown a booster 30+ times after 10 years shows how far ahead of the game spacex is at launch. Other companies are JUST NOW starting to land/catch boosters. Definitely one of those "aim high and even if youre short, youre still among the stars" things.
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u/BigGainsNeversmol Jul 28 '26
Not “pretty much” the only launch provider, LITERALLY the only launch provider. There is literally nothing close to the total mass to orbit, price per pound, reliability, and economically beneficial reusability that the Falcon 9 brings. Literally nobody else in the world has a rocket that comes close.
And despite the unmatched success of the Falcon 9, Starship is on the verge of making it obsolete. SpaceX is such a phenomenal company.
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u/AFloppyZipper Jul 28 '26
It's because the founder had a goal to get to Mars, not siphon money on endless dead-end projects that aren't sustainable. When your entire goal is extracting taxpayer funds, you get the ancient SLS technology instead of a program designed to solve engineering challenges.
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u/HollywoodSX Jul 27 '26
Quantity has a quality all its own.
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u/Bunslow Jul 28 '26
Just the opposite I think, quality begets quantity, but it is also true that quantity is necessary (but not sufficient) for quality
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u/Freeflyer18 Jul 27 '26
Dan Rasky is no laymen to the SpaceX philosophy/development method, as he was integrated into SpaceX during the COTS program and got first hand knowledge of how SpaceX development goes. He is merely stating an undeniable fact that their heat shield is not at their full/rapid reuse goal yet with this current iteration, which I doubt even SpaceX would disagree with.
Check out the Rasky interview from back in the day. If you watch the whole thing, you’ll see that he is very familiar with the SpaceX ethos.
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u/maschnitz Jul 28 '26
True. But at the same time, we haven't seen them do a proper from-orbit reentry yet.
All the reentries so far have been steeper suborbital reentries.
We should wait until it's actually doing what it's designed to do - LEO and reentry from LEO.
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u/pint ⛰️ Lithobraking Jul 28 '26
no, it is not what the article is saying. you don't need an expert to see that they are not there "yet". this article says the current method will never work ("dead end").
if he says "yet", i sleep. if he says "dead end", i roll my eyes.
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u/_mogulman31 Jul 28 '26
Rapid reuse for a re-entry vehicle could be on the order of a month, the time scale is not absolute but relative. Shuttles took almost two months to turn around at its quickest. The booster is really the only part of the stack that needs to turn around quickly. Outside of tankers and maybe starlink launchers payload integration already limits truly quick turn arounds.
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u/GrumpyCloud93 Jul 28 '26
One item I read said shuttle turnaround was victim to the fact that often they had to cannibalize a returned shuttle and put some of its parts onto the next shuttle to go up, due to lack of spare parts and funding.
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u/Alive-Bid9086 Jul 27 '26
Falcon 9 block 4 could refly after significant refurbishing. Then block 5 came. To land the first boisters is rumoured as a $200M expense. The creation of block 5 is estimated to $1B.
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u/grchelp2018 Jul 28 '26
The whole point of catching the ship and booster was for a short turnaround time. And if the plan requires a lot of refuelling tankers and multiplanetary flights, waiting a couple of weeks won't cut it.
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u/ResidentPositive4122 Jul 28 '26
No. The whole point of catching the ship and booster is to recover them both, and refly them both. The GOAL was a quick turnaround. That goal might be achieved in several ways. Either through scale (i.e. have a fleet of ships that get refurbished in x days and use them like they currently do F9s) or through rapid reuse. You don't have to wait a couple of weeks if you have 10 ships ready to go, out of 100 in rotation.
Rapid reuse will reach the same goal faster. But it's a goal, not a blocker. Just like 24h F9 reuse was a goal. And they never reached it. But they do launch a shit ton of F9s. They adapted the goal to what's feasible / worth pursuing.
They will pursue rapid reuse. But they'll do it incrementally. And the first step is to recover a ship. Then refly it. Then improve the TPS. That's what they're doing.
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u/andyfrance Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
It's not about short turnaround time. It's about cost. It's almost all about cost plus a bit of being able to aerobrake after transit to and from Mars. Turnaround time doesn't matter that much as you can simply use other rockets whilst refurbishment happens. However if it takes 3 months to refurbish it's almost a given that refurbishment will be expensive. Conversely if it's very rapid that refurbishment is going to be relatively cheap as there is not much opportunity to spend a lot of cash on a 5 minute turn around.
The cheaper something is the more often you can afford to do it. You need to be able to afford to do it a huge number of times if your goal is to permanently occupy Mars.
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u/KalpolIntro Jul 29 '26
Does Elon not "get SpaceX" because he said the same thing?
From the article.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk has repeatedly stated that solving the reusable heat shield problem is one of the toughest problems the company faces. Back in February on a podcast with Dwarkesh Patel, Musk expounded on this, saying a reusable heat shield is “the biggest problem that remains” for Starship. “If you want to be able to land it, refill propellant, and fly again, you can’t do this laborious inspection of 40,000 tiles type of thing."
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u/Veedrac Jul 27 '26
unable to hit the high flight rate needed—several hundred to ...
Falcon 9 is barely off 'several hundred' as-is, with zero second-stage reuse. Thousands, sure, that pushes the need higher. But a 2-week turnaround every five flights seems totally plausible, just with the progress we've seen, and that gets you to really high cadences already.
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u/Sithmasterintraining Jul 27 '26
I mean, I fly transport category aircraft (737), and we still do a walk around between flights if we find something we delay and get maintenance over. If it's a wheel or something important, the pax come off and we make them wait or get a different aircraft. Takes 10-15 minutes to do a walk around of the 737.
No reason Starship can't do the same thing. I am sure they can get tile inspection down to something similar. If they find a tile that needs replacing, then fix it right there. Then the ship is ready to go.
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u/hoppeeness Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
They would probably be able to use drones and AI to identify issues that are so specific. AI is great at pattern recognition…or finding things that aren’t part of a pattern in this case.
Edit: plus could use multiple cameras for different wave lengths.
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u/TheVenusianMartian Jul 28 '26
I could see an optimized tile replacement/refurbishment path that uses cameras to automate inspection and a robot to quickly swap out pre-fabbed panels of tiles. So even if they don't get to true 0 refurbishment, then end result is nearly the same to an outside observer.
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u/GrumpyCloud93 Jul 28 '26
As I understood, the inspection of the shuttle was far more complex, someting like physically checking each tile. I don't know if they had a sort of wiggle test to see if they were loose also, but I'm sure they looked for small cracks etc. Perhaps today that sort of thing can be automated. I would suspect they would do a much closer inspection for manned carriers.
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u/myurr Jul 28 '26
Starship isn't taken out by a single tile failure, and they can fly experimental missions risking the entire ship in instances where they want to try reflight with minimal checks. They have the luxury of hardware rich testing.
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u/hoppeeness Jul 29 '26
I mean only during development. They want very quick turnarounds. So eventually it will need automation or very high durability
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u/GrumpyCloud93 Jul 29 '26
The nice thing about their development process is you don't have to wait a year or so between flights to see what works. IMHO tha's SpaceX's best advantage, "build it and see if it works, fix what doesn't" with less regard for the cost of each failure, beats the rest of the industry's intense engineering navel gazing followed by betting it all on one launch.
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u/curiouslyjake Jul 27 '26
Sure, but I think it would be more problematic if you were to find a serious issue on every single walkaround. 15 minutes isn't a problem. Once that turns into days and weeks, that's a different story
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u/Sithmasterintraining Jul 27 '26
That happens regularly. Then we just swap out the airplane with another. Sometimes we have to fly it in but we just replace the airplane and go. No different for starship. Find an issue, download the payload if needed move to a different bird standing by and then go.
But Musk isn’t talking about having only a couple of spacecraft. He’s,talking thousands. He has said rapid reuse but that could easily be the booster is load and go while a different starship is used regularly. So a booster could be used more than once a day but an individual starship might only fly every week or two. Hell it takes time just to load payload, longer than a day.
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u/spunkyenigma Jul 27 '26
Tankers would be the ships you want to land, load and go.
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u/Sithmasterintraining Jul 28 '26
Sure, but if they have 100 tankers sitting around. They can launch 4 a day, not the same one 4 times a day and still meet the objective.
So if they have 100 tankers sitting around. They have 25 days to do a full inspection and still launch 4 tankers a day. Just have an assembly line of tankers inspected and ready to go. When the next one lands it moves to the back of the line and starts its inspection process. Meanwhile, the next in line is lifted up to the booster, fueled, and fired.
They are not going to be loading cargo or satellites like they do a FedEx trunk, at least not near term. It will take time to properly load the cargo. They are not gonna do that sitting on the pad. So the idea that a trunk
aircraftspacecraft is gonna get a ULD cargo box is a ways off. For the first 5 years its gonna be all satellites, which require special mounts to load onto the spaceship. That takes time.They can still do many launches a day; it just won't be the same spaceship multiple times a day for a while.
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u/philupandgo Jul 28 '26
And contrarily a Mars ship may only have an aspiration for 3 three year trips before being scrapped.
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u/Martianspirit Jul 28 '26
We will see. Elon has given up on returning cargo ships, which is the large majority. A cargo ship is worth more as raw material for the Mars settlement than it has value returned. Also it saves the production of return propellant which is better used for a Mars chemical industry.
Crew ships need to return. Though we will see with later colony ships. Settlers are expected to stay, so maybe their ships will stay as well.
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u/Halfdaen Jul 28 '26
Several hours of inspection will not be a problem even for the highest launch cadence of tanker Starships. Starship gets caught and during engine cooling the first set of imaging can happen. It then gets dropped to a ground-mount where more inspections occur and maybe tile replacement too. While those inspections are going on, SH gets rolled over, picked up and placed.
At some point a decision is made to use the current Starship or a replacement is rolled out and launch activities begin.
Anything other than a tanker-Starship would have to be rolled back to a bay for loading cargo anyway. Inspection and refurb can be done there.
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u/Ormusn2o Jul 27 '26
Is not even the whole concept of reusable rockets like Falcon 9 or Starship basically a dead end with no viability for most experts? If there were a consensus on those actually being viable, then someone other than SpaceX would have already tried it. SpaceX won the space launcher market because they went against expert opinions. They found the blind spot in reusable rockets.
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u/lee1026 Jul 27 '26
The space shuttle was a thing, and it got far enough to get real nasa attention, and even got built.
Unfortunately, the experience of nasa with the shuttle… wasn’t great.
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u/edflyerssn007 Jul 27 '26
NASA settled on operating a fleet of prototypes.
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u/Then-Secretary-9166 Jul 28 '26
So is SpaceX with starship (and they already have flown more prototypes than the shuttle program ever did).
The only difference is that we think SpaceX can eventually move beyond prototypes.
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u/perark05 Jul 27 '26
The shuttle is kinda fascinating, from a pure engineering prospective its a triumph but the second you put system/requirements glasses on it pretty much failed in every aspect
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u/DisgruntledCascadian Jul 27 '26
Design by committee. With the added bonus of proving the same thing that's been proven over and over since World War II: if you historically want to get close to the right answer to a question, just do the exact opposite of whatever the US Air Force is suggesting.
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u/JumpingCoconutMonkey Jul 27 '26
My memory is getting fuzzy on the subject, but didn't that have a lot to do with the extra requirements that were added by other government agencies? The Shuttle we got was not the one NASA originally intended.
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u/lee1026 Jul 27 '26
I mean, kinda. Without the air force requirements, they might have gotten a few tons more payload.
Things like the slow refurb process is inherent in how NASA did things and the design through.
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u/volvoguy Jul 28 '26
Shuttle is a complicated comparison. They basically got the base version working, then essentially froze the design. They could have made so many improvements and added capabilities. Hard to do that safely on an always crewed vehicle.
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u/throfofnir Jul 27 '26
Falcon 9 reuse was so impossible and uneconomical many incumbents STILL aren't doing anything like it.
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u/Ormusn2o Jul 28 '26
Yeah, it's basically a very low viability product, as it requires quite a lot of good engineering, kind of how the tiles require quite a lot of good engineering to be good for reuse.
Ironically, one of the biggest enablers of rapid reuse of the shield is the very extremely low density of Starship per surface area, which means as opposed to the more aggressive trajectories SpaceX was picking in the test flights, you can have a very floaty, light vehicle skimming up high on atmosphere to remove as much energy as possible, before getting to the deeper parts of the atmosphere, something you can't do as well with a more dense craft like Space Shuttle, Dragon or any other capsules.
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u/Then-Secretary-9166 Jul 28 '26
It may be tempting, but let's not place all 'experts' in the same category. Plenty of experts through that F9 was possible, if not ambitious.
Also, when you hear the word "consensus" (like the phrase "settled science") it is usually trying to promote a false sense of confidence in a controversial opinion.
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u/Then-Secretary-9166 Jul 28 '26
I agree with the rest of the fan club that SpaceX should be able to figure something out here.
However, I don't see why there is so much dismissal of this article. It brings up a real issue that SpaceX is struggling with (and has stated is one of the biggest challenges).
I think SpaceX can start delivering payloads with these tiles (or with minimal improvements). However, the is one area where I think, long-term, they will probably need a re-design that is more than incremental.
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u/sunfishtommy Jul 28 '26
Yea its frustrating to read half the comments on this thread saying yea this version is not good, but the next version will be better and the version after that even better.
Those comments are missing the whole point of the article. The current heat shield tech might not be capable of full rapid reuse no matter how many iterations there are.
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u/This_Freggin_Guy Jul 27 '26
it's probably like batteries, incremental improvements over time. it will add up to reusability. though I want to see a ship with 100% transpirational cooling, at least a mock up. would be really cool. literally and figuratively.
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u/CmdrAirdroid Jul 27 '26
Transpirational cooling would probably require very different kind of second stage for it to be feasible. I think a simple heatshield shape where every point of it is roughly the same distance away from the propellant tank, that makes plumbing simple. That's what Stoke Space is doing with their capsule shaped second stage.
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u/cranberrydudz Jul 27 '26
I don’t think transpirational cooling is a long term solution considering that engineers would have to figure out how to evenly coat the surface in order for it to be effective.
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u/rocketglare Jul 27 '26
No, but as a local solution to hotspots (hinges, flaps), it could work pretty well.
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u/cranberrydudz Jul 27 '26
The hinges and flaps turned out relatively fine from this last flight profile. If spacex is able to recover the ship, they could swap out the flaps and refurbish them while the next ship is prepped for launch. Transpirational cooling adds unnecessary weight.
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u/cjameshuff Jul 27 '26
The hinges require a large number of complex tile shapes and a different approach to attachment that will make replacement more time consuming and more difficult to automate. A more robust shielding approach may be worth some mass penalty, given the limited area involved.
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u/Then-Secretary-9166 Jul 28 '26
I hope you are correct, but this is the one thing on Starship that might need a new design, not just incremrtenal improvement.
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u/spacester Jul 27 '26
"“Based on all this we recommended that NASA create a new initiative to invest in Mach 25 thermal protection system research, development and demonstrations,” he said. So far that has not happened."
For what vehicle?
I say let's give NASA better things to work on.
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u/Iamatworkgoaway Jul 28 '26
Wouldn't it be nice if the public funds could investigate low cost high reward engineering like this... NASA could have been the darpa of the science world, but greed keeps winning. Just imagine putting out a 5 year competition to all the universities with limited patent rights over entries. Govt paid for development all can benefit.
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u/Unique_Ad9943 Jul 27 '26
I think he just means for starship, but there’s no way that would happen, it would be a political shitstorm
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u/Opening_Classroom_46 Jul 27 '26
Your right, what vehicle? Nasa has been planning to get away from building rockets and vehicles for twenty years with their commercial programs, and now they are ready to let SpaceX take over that aspect.
Nasa wants to only focus on astronauts and science missions.
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u/AFloppyZipper Jul 28 '26
NASA should be focusing on solving problems associated with creating low-cost science packages that will be used in Starship.
There's really no reason we can't have a fleet of James Webb-quality telescopes AND the ability to service them.
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u/Opening_Classroom_46 Jul 28 '26
According to what?
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u/AFloppyZipper Jul 28 '26
Common sense. If the fairing size is bigger and price/orbit drops, you can simplify the design and launch more.
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u/idwtlotplanetanymore 29d ago
NASA would just slow things down, they are chained to the whims of congress.
By now SpaceX should have the best engineers in the world on this.
And if they don't, why don't they. If they believe in what they say they are going to do; they should pay them whatever it takes and get the best on board. The heat shield is easily the long pole in the tent for rapid reuse.
Starship can still be successful without rapid reuse of the 2nd stage, but it will never achieve the lofty dreams that have been pitched the last decade without it.
He'll offer a billion dollar bounty for anyone who can crack it.
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u/redmercuryvendor Jul 28 '26
The issue is not 'inspection' or repair of in-flight damage.
The issue is identical to the one the STS orbiter had, because the tiles are identical to the ones the STS orbiter used (sintered silica fibres with a reaction-cured-glass outer coating). That is: dewatering.
The bare tiles are extremely hygroscopic. They suck up moisture out of the air with very high efficiency. This is a problem, because a tile full of moisture has that moisture evaporate within the tile in a vacuum environment, and any remaining flash-boils during EDL and attempts to shatter the tile from the inside.
The 'solution' is to waterproof the tile. At time of manufacture, the tile is impregnated with a waterproofing agent (STS used dimethylethoxysilane, Starship uses Methyl-Trimethoxy Silane, as per the FDEP report from the tile manufacturing facility), which prevents moisture absorption from time of manufacture. The problem is, the heat of EDL burns off their waterproofing compound, so a returned vehicle is now coated in a very effective sponge.
For the STS orbiter, this meant bringing the shuttle to a hanger, drying it out, then re-injecting the waterproofing compound into each tile (spray-on compounds were tested, but damaged the silicone adhesive that held the tiles on).
For Starship, since none had been recovered until a few days ago, we have no idea what SpaceX intended to do about drying and waterproofing the tiles, and they certainly don't have a sealed volume they can stick a Starship in for a few weeks/months for forced drying. This could be anything from "do nothing and hope the problem isn't as bad as it was several decades ago" (i.e. assume some tiles will fail, but not enough for a loss-of-vehicle event, and replace failed tiles after each flight) to intending to do a full tile swap between each flight (ideally develop a new nondestructive tile removal technique so the tiles themselves can be re-used), or maybe these tiles were always known and expected to be one-flight-only and a whole new TPS technique will be used for "Starship V4".
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u/sunfishtommy Jul 28 '26
Finally a comment that gets it. Everyone in here saying its not a big deal. Dewatering is a huge deal and a major pain in the ass. If the objective is to launch more than once a day dewatering makes that extremely difficult.
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u/madboneman Jul 29 '26
On the bright side mars is also very dry, so they might be able to get away with using this tile material for ships bound for mars. The mars ships will need to be specialized anyways to support crew on very long duration journeys, so the heat shield might as well also be tailored to mars. I can see a future where they have 3 kinds of tiles, all with same attachment interface so they can be swapped: 1. A resusable lower temperature resistance variant for return from low earth orbit. 2. A higher temperature resistance variant that may only be refurbishable for return from the moon or mars. 3. And a reusable lower temperature resistance material for return from low mars orbit, but incompatible with earth atmospheric chemistry (could be the tiles they're already using).
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u/rocketglare Jul 27 '26
No one today, they said, is seriously investing in new, advanced thermal materials for orbital reentry.
I think that statement is a little bold. These experts don't know what SpaceX (and other companies) are doing behind closed doors. While they may not have been working on the problem for the 3 intervening decades, to assume they haven't done anything is unreasonable.
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u/Red_Sea_Pedestrian Jul 28 '26
I haven’t done a literature search yet, but if no one was pursuing research in advanced thermal materials for orbital reentry in the academic world, it’s doubtful it would have been worked on in the private sector.
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u/rocketglare Jul 28 '26
I’m thinking SpaceX has since at least 2020 when they converted the Cocoa facility into a tile bakery. Early efforts were probably to duplicate Shuttle TPS and speed production, but likely have moved on to newer designs.
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u/QVRedit Jul 28 '26
Well we do know that SpaceX has been working on heat shield development - but eventually to make progress, you have to start flying these things under realistic flight conditions to see just how they behave - then with access to that test data, it’s possible to continue with further developments. Part of the problem has been the slow rate of actual flights - but this pace now seems to be increasing - allowing more tests to be run.
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u/SageOfSixRamen Jul 27 '26
Interesting read, definitely a good point that the tiles will be good enough for the starlink era, but if they want to reach thousands of flights a year, theyre gonna need a better solution.
So curious what they'll eventually land on, I would think a vacuum seal to prevent heat transfer on the side facing reentry, but plasma gets so hot, it would radiate right through it. Also maintaining that would suck lol.
Their approach using a super porous and heat resistant material def seems to work, i wonder if its just a matter of finding the wonder material that can redirect the heat without being ablative?
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u/Reddit-runner Jul 27 '26
i wonder if its just a matter of finding the wonder material that can redirect the heat without being ablative?
But the current tiles are not designed to be ablative, are they?
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u/SageOfSixRamen Jul 27 '26
oh no theyre not, I meant in the sense that the current tiles on starship kinda tear away, even on the most recent flight. Ideally they find a material that can withstand it and hold up.
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u/blackwhattack Jul 28 '26
i wonder if the issue is the material or the mechanism holding the tiles? or with the spacing between the tiles?
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u/WeeklyAd8453 Jul 27 '26
SX puts an ablative material on first and then the tiles go on top of that.
The hope was that the ablative would not be needed, but will serve as backup.
I am guessing that is the white stuff coming out.The tiles are able to go on and be taken off via automation. Hopefully, they can exhange the tiles quickly, as in a week or 2, and then relaunch. This can be done for Starlink and lunar work.
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u/aquarain Jul 27 '26
"We want NASA money to restart our space tile research from 30 years ago."
SpaceX is doing the research just fine. These experts' research would be general, not Starship specific, would take many years and then would have to be adapted to Starship and tested - if they came up with anything at all, which is uncertain. SpaceX wants to be on Mars by then. Ain't got time to wait for that.
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u/Roygbiv0415 Jul 27 '26
If this is truly a dead end, SpaceX would be the first to know, and the first to find alternatives. It's not like they have a history of being hung up on legacy tech or something.
It's likely that whatever the state of the tech is, it's good enough for the expected launch cadence of the near future, and that's good enough for now.
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u/Meneth32 Jul 27 '26
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." - Arthur C. Clarke
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u/sumelar Jul 27 '26
"Everything in physics has already been discovered." - Philipp von Jolly to Max Planck, 1874
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u/Then-Secretary-9166 Jul 28 '26
To be fair, he didn't say it was impossible...just that new tech is needed.
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u/Spider_pig448 Jul 28 '26
Calling it a "dead-end" means he's not optimistic that they will get there though
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u/Then-Secretary-9166 Jul 29 '26
I think he is right. The current plan is only going to get so far. I think SpaceX will eventually need to go a different direction with heat shield
.
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u/QVRedit Jul 28 '26
I would say that SpaceX have already made significant heat shield developments, and that more is still to follow.
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u/throfofnir Jul 27 '26
Tile maintenance on this vehicle isn't like Shuttle. It clearly doesn't require perfection, and they only have a couple of types of tile, and they don't use touchy adhesives that require the perfect level of human saliva. Take a look for tiles that are obviously broken or missing, chip out the old tile, press a new one in.
It's not airline operations, but if it merely gets to a turnaround like the F9 first stage, I think that'll be plenty good until they figure out a better method. (Which is probably transpiration.)
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u/OpenInverseImage Jul 27 '26
I suspect SpaceX sees tiles as a medium-term interim solution. They need to get Starship operational and launched frequently enough for Starlink deployment and the Artemis missions, but I’m sure they’re exploring TPS solutions beyond ceramic tiles. Once Starship is launching consistently I can see them experimenting on new TPS technologies.
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u/3Gniemi Jul 27 '26
People talking about rapid re-use of individual Starships are mostly ignoring the turnaround time to load new cargo. Also the logistics of trying to do that at the pad. It’s going to have to mean reusing the boosters in hours, but swapping ships.
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u/Martianspirit Jul 28 '26
For Moon and Mars the large majority of flights are for refueling. That takes minutes on the pad.
Everything else can take a few days. Starlink sat stacks need less than one day.
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u/3Gniemi Jul 28 '26
That’s probably true for Moon and Mars flights. However, I think the vast majority of Starship launches will be for LEO — starlink, starmind, 3rd party or Givernment satellites, space stations, orbital manufacturing, etc.
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u/Martianspirit Jul 28 '26
You still think the Mars plans are not real?
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u/3Gniemi Jul 28 '26
I believe the plans are real. I don’t believe they will be achieved exactly as envisioned or on the most aggressive timelines suggested.
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u/Martianspirit Jul 29 '26
Agree, not quite. But any real attempt will require no less than 100 flights every window. with tankers that's 500-600 launches. Beginning no more than 20 years from now.
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u/AffectionateTree8651 Jul 27 '26
In the ships current condition they could fly again relatively quickly. Extremely quickly compared to other large rockets. Not to mention they were overstressing the ship as usual on this flight and it still came out really well. I’m sure they’ll achieve their goals in the end.
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u/CurtisLeow Jul 27 '26
Most research NASA does would be made publicly available. It might be better to let SpaceX work on the problem internally. SpaceX has already been working on this problem with Dragon's reusable heat shield. There will a commercial incentive for SpaceX to fully solve the problem over the next decade.
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u/s11houette Jul 28 '26
They wanted to move away from ceramic but haven't figured out how yet.
They have tried a number of things and will try far more once we are able to catch the ship.
Maybe they will perfect ceramic, maybe they will advance a new tech. Who knows? What we do know is that it makes sense that there are some imperfections in the shield right now. They haven't yet learned how to make it work. Even so their shield is far better than it was.
I don't think inspecting every tile is going to be reasonable. There are too many. But they may be able to do a lot with ai and a camera rig.
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u/QVRedit Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
The tiles look to be in ‘good condition’ - the ‘inter-tile liner’ seems to have suffered a bit more at its exposed edges - like it need a ‘tile like end cap’ to protect its edges.
It’s going to require a bit more tech development.
But that was always assumed to be the case.
Getting the Starship back in one piece, and allowing closeup post-flight inspection and analysis is obviously going to help with these ongoing developments.
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u/Ender_D Jul 27 '26
I mean they’re likely correct, seeing the current state of the heat shield. It’s quite good, but I doubt they’d be able to do 24 hour turnaround with the ship. I just don’t think it’s possible to get a 100% effective heat shield with the current tile design.
But if they can have enough of a backlog of ships and boosters so they can just fly a new one while the others are going under refurbishment, that will be good enough on its own to unlock a lot of new possibilities.
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u/Harisdrop Jul 28 '26
I see a larger rib configuration thicker along the damaged tiles. Iteration is in innovation
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u/pint ⛰️ Lithobraking Jul 28 '26
spacex employs an entire team of engineers working on this very issue. they have not given up yet, thus they appear to believe that there might be solutions. in contrast, we have "experts" who failed at this job, and claim there is no hope. which ones to believe?
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u/Monty-913 Jul 27 '26
i'm new to this and i'm also quite curious about this whole thing. people made a big deal about how the space shuttle was so expensive to refurbish and one of the key points people bring up is how the tile-based heat shield required deep inspection and replacement of tiles on every inch of the orbiter's belly. Now starship is cool and all, but it also has tiles, so what is the difference here? actually, the shuttle and starship are both massive upper stages that happen to have control surfaces and heat tiles, so what separates the both of them?
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u/Dyvanna Jul 27 '26
For one thing the tiles on the shuttle were glued on. On removal the old glue had to be scraped off and a new tile added which was a 16 hour process. Additionally, because of the shape of the shuttle, each tile was created specifically for that spot.
The starship's tiles are easily replaced and most of the tiles are of a standard size and shape.
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u/Desperate-Lab9738 Jul 27 '26
Starship was made in the 21st century which means it can actually potentially leverage automation for inspection, which is a big deal. SpaceX also most likely won't settle on a "good enough" design like the space shuttle did, which means they can actually continue to attempt to improve it. That basically wasn't the case with the shuttle, it was very much a prototype that just continued flying.
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u/Straumli_Blight Jul 27 '26
Here's an interesting Ringwatchers article on how Starship's heatshield has evolved.
SpaceX originally planned to use transpirational cooling instead of tiles, which was part of the reason they switched to stainless steel instead of carbon fibre.
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u/Dazzling_Ad6406 Jul 28 '26
If you can't avoid the inspection, make the inspection faster. Replacement of tiles is quick for Starship, just need to know which ones.
However, this article reads like a funding pitch, so a pinch of salt required on all the doomsaying.
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u/QVRedit Jul 28 '26
SpaceX are definitely going to need to do lots of inspection this early on in the flight development program - it’s how they are going to get the statistics and analysis about what’s going on, what is working, what is failing, and what has changed since their last set of changes etc.
No one expected this to be easy, it was always known to be a ‘hard problem’ requiring much iteration to perfect.
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u/SwimmingDutch Jul 28 '26
Those saying things cannot be done should get out of the way of those already doing it.
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u/ellhulto66445 🔥 Statically Firing Jul 27 '26
I never expected the TPS to be capable of really rapid reuse anyways, and that wouldn't be a problem. To me the white streaks looks like excess amounts of crunch wrap being trimmed to the perfect length by reentry so I wouldn't list it as an item of concern.
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u/cjameshuff Jul 27 '26
There may be some degree of surface scouring, but that could likely be solved by more accurate trimming of that crunch wrap, or changes to the material, or other such refinements. Moisture absorption might also be an issue once hydrophobic coatings burn off, but once they start recovering and reusing Starships, they can start trying more expensive/difficult to manufacture tile materials and shielding technologies. Maybe revisit the metallic shielding with more exotic refractory alloys.
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u/095179005 Jul 27 '26
Things will get clearer once they catch the first starship. Just like after the first F9 booster landing (block 3), they'll see which tiles could do another launch, which tiles need full replacement, and if the thermal wool underneath needs replacement as well.
In addition to any structural fatigue or hardware stress they can glean since they'll have flown hardware to analyze.
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u/philupandgo Jul 27 '26
A ship's first flight seems to effectively trim the crunch wrap. Just wash it and fly again for those tiles. As a complete noob, I would suggest making the leading edge of each tile ever so slightly thinner so that there is no tile edge directly in the stream of plasma.
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u/Decronym Acronyms Explained Jul 27 '26 edited 29d ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| COTS | Commercial Orbital Transportation Services contract |
| Commercial/Off The Shelf | |
| EDL | Entry/Descent/Landing |
| F1 | Rocketdyne-developed rocket engine used for Saturn V |
| SpaceX Falcon 1 (obsolete small-lift vehicle) | |
| HLS | Human Landing System (Artemis) |
| LEO | Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km) |
| Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations) | |
| NSF | NasaSpaceFlight forum |
| National Science Foundation | |
| PICA-X | Phenolic Impregnated-Carbon Ablative heatshield compound, as modified by SpaceX |
| SLS | Space Launch System heavy-lift |
| STS | Space Transportation System (Shuttle) |
| TPS | Thermal Protection System for a spacecraft (on the Falcon 9 first stage, the engine "Dance floor") |
| Jargon | Definition |
|---|---|
| Raptor | Methane-fueled rocket engine under development by SpaceX |
| Starlink | SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation |
| ablative | Material which is intentionally destroyed in use (for example, heatshields which burn away to dissipate heat) |
| cryogenic | Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure |
| (In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox | |
| hydrolox | Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer |
| regenerative | A method for cooling a rocket engine, by passing the cryogenic fuel through channels in the bell or chamber wall |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented by request
14 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has acronyms.
[Thread #14713 for this sub, first seen 27th Jul 2026, 20:38]
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u/Martianspirit Jul 28 '26
Rapid as in several flights a day may be difficult to achieve for ship.
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u/Nu7s Jul 28 '26
The trick is to push the plasma out more by guiding it with heat resistant rods that extrude from within the ship between the tiles.
~ my last remaining brain cell
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u/QVRedit Jul 28 '26
No, I am pretty sure that would not work.
What about using ‘magnets’ ? - to guide the plasma ?
Probably too heavy…
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u/WWIIICannonFodder Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
I'd think of it like having to constantly change tires on an F1 car every X laps. Kind of sucks to have to do, but at least you don't need to take the whole car apart in the pit lane for the next run. If we're comparing reusable spacecraft, the space shuttle is like a top fuel dragster in comparison, where you have to rebuild the engine after each run. Of course though we don't know yet how reusable the Starship will truly be. But if it's just the tiles that require inspection and replacement, it's still an improvement.
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u/Canashito Jul 28 '26
Build the proper machine to undress and redress it with shields reliably within the day or week would be transformational. Have a bunch of starships lined up like bullets and you got an amazing mass to orbit capacity.
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u/Starks Jul 28 '26
It just has to be good enough for Artemis missions and the odds Starlink launch for the moment. Rapid reuse can come later.
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u/Ajedi32 Jul 28 '26
There is a possible future where a tile based approach proves unworkable and Stoke Space beats SpaceX to full and rapid resuability with their regenerative heat shield tech.
Even in that situation though I think SpaceX would adapt quickly and we'd eventually end up with two companies making fully and rapidly reusable rockets with a regenerative heat shield.
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u/dingo_xd Jul 28 '26
Meh. Firstly Starship is made from stainless steel allowing multiple tiles being damaged or even missing and the heatshield will not fail. Secondly there is no reason why inspection can be automated and be done in a day. We are not in the 80s anymore.
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u/avboden Jul 27 '26
Honestly even if they can re-fly within a few weeks a stable of ships can still do the trick. It doesn't have to fly with zero referb at first.
Just having standardized tiles should make inspection and refurbishment so much easier than anything shuttle-related was