With the successful conclusion of the Artemis II mission, all eyes are now turning towards SpaceX and their long-in-development Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy booster.
The company is quickly becoming one of the most important government contractors in the United States; even aside from its crucial role of its Falcon rockets for satellite, spacecraft and astronaut launch, its Starlink satellite network is becoming vital for travellers, passengers, and military personnel around the world.
It’s become enough of a fixture that several of Elon Musk’s other companies, xAI and the X.com social network, were placed under SpaceX’s banner, and its upcoming IPO could become one of the most lucrative in history.
But much of it hinges on Starship.
Starship’s critical role
Finishing Starship is absolutely vital to the future of SpaceX. Not only because it will be able to carry the larger and more capable V3 satellites that the Starlink network needs to deal with growing demand, but because Starship is going to be the foundation of SpaceX’s Human Landing System (HLS), which is likely to be used on future Artemis missions to the lunar surface.
With the apparent suspension of the Lunar Gateway station and the shift towards establishing a presence on the lunar surface instead of lunar orbit, a working and reliable HLS is absolutely paramount for the future of Artemis. SpaceX will need to demonstrate that its Starship-derived HLS is up to the job—especially now that the company faces mounting pressure from Blue Origin’s competing Blue Moon lander, which NASA selected to provide a secondary, redundant path to the lunar surface.
It also needs to demonstrate to the broader market that Starship can deliver on SpaceX’s broader ambitions to build a new low Earth Orbit (LEO) economy where launch becomes common, fast, and (comparatively) cheap.
Getting Starship into orbit reliably is paramount, but it is now seen as very much behind schedule, with critics pointing to the frequent and spectacular “rapid unscheduled disassembly” (RUD) events that have happened during many (if not most) Starship tests.
SpaceX learns from all these tests, RUD or not, and this process of constant iteration is part of SpaceX’s strategy. But this may still become disruptive to an IPO that’s already up against the prominent IPOs of AI giants OpenAI and Anthropic.
“Test Like You Fly”
Nevertheless, SpaceX is continuing to move on, and has slowly revealed their V3 Starship and Heavy Booster, which will be the model they’re testing going forward.
At the same time, SpaceX is attempting to recenter the discourse on the Starship, with the release of their new series on videos on Starship, how it’s produced and tested, and what new things the V3 rockets and boosters are bringing to the table.
Their first video, “Test Like You Fly”, was released last Friday, and is available on both SpaceX’s website and (now) on YouTube. It’s a glossy, high-production affair about the development and testing of Starship, with plenty of arresting visuals of the Starship rockets and the people building and testing them. It also highlights SpaceX’s approach to space: their successes and failures, and some of the changes that they made to the V3 Starship.
At least initially, the Starship program and the previous tests are presented in the best possible light. The tests are largely presented with a strong focus on the successes, instead of the RUD events or mishaps, and one could be forgiven for assuming that SpaceX was going to gloss over the challenges and focus on the successes.
Partway through, however, the tone shifted, as the video began to focus on the challenges and setbacks in their approach. They showed arresting drone footage of Super Heavy Booster 18’s failed cryoproof test last November, where an unspecified anomaly involving the nitrogen system caused the rocket to dramatically RUD in a billowing (though non-explosive) cloud of metal and ice.
They then showed a successful cryoproofing test of Booster 19, and moved on to footage of various hot-fire tests of different configurations of the Booster’s Raptor rockets. Yet, there too, they were willing to show the setbacks; each of the tests had to be cut short due to sensors tripping in and around the diverter.
The video didn’t say what the issue was; some online speculation has pointed to potential issues with the diverter’s deluge system. “I think every test is always a success…but [this was] definitely a bittersweet day” said Jenna Low, Sr. Manager of Starship Operations, after one of the testing aborts. The data is useful, but the situation is still disappointing.
“Test Like You Fly” also showed footage of the dramatic explosion of Starship 36 in June last year, along with photos and video of the extensive damage done to SpaceX’s Massey Test Site. The damage done was well known, but this video was the first time that viewers can see how truly catastrophic the explosion really was for the test site, and why it took so long to repair Massey’s and make it ready for launch.
Nevertheless, the repairs are done, and the site is once again operational. The video closed with footage of the fully-successful, full-duration test of Starship’s Raptor engines on April 14th, presenting Massey’s with somewhat of a redemption arc, before saying “On to Test 12”.
Version 3 changes
Aside from the testing, the video also provides some new information on exactly how this new Version 3 of Starship is different, and why they feel confident that it will be the version that reaches orbit and (perhaps) moves to production.
The best-known change is to the Starship’s enormous Raptor engines. Like many companies in the space sector, including Canada’s own Reaction Dynamics, the Raptor V3 is largely 3D-printed. That has given them the opportunity to remove a lot of the external plumbing and integrate it into the engine itself, allowing for the addition of regenerative cooling channels and for extensive simplification of the engine.
The simplification has allowed SpaceX to dramatically reduce the weight of the Raptor and increase its thrust efficiency, as well as making the engine look visibly (and surprisingly) simple from the outside. The changes have even allowed for them to remove the Raptors’ heat shield, further reducing the weight.
Jacob McKenzie, VP Raptor, said that “it’s fewer parts, so it’s cheaper [and] faster to build, which allows us to make a lighter and more reliable vehicle”. “The goal”, McKenzie said, “is to get it to behave similarly to the engines on commercial airplanes”.
As to the Starship and Super Heavy, they’ve also had a number of improvements. Charlie Cox, Director of Starship Engineering, said that it was a “clean sheet design”, based on understanding the lessons of the previous versions and resolving snags and shortcomings that had been revealed in previous testing. Part of that includes new shielding tile geometry and new processes for adding the tiles, as well as integrating the propellant transfer hardware that will allow custom Starships to serve as orbital fuel depots for future missions, including Artemis.
The refinements also mean that the V3 Starship is lighter and simpler than its predecessors, much like the Raptors.
The Booster is also somewhat taller; part of that appears to be due to changes to the hot staging ring that connects the Starship to the Booster, but it also appears to be due to a lengthened propellant section that allows for the Booster to have more propellant, including a larger liquid oxygen header tank. That increase in propellant, along with changes to the V3 vehicles’ structure, has also dramatically increased the payload of the V3 Starship from 35 metric tons to 100 metric tons, with a potentially higher payload for missions that use an expendable Starship.
Upcoming Starship tests
“Test Like You Fly” ended with a title card saying: “Next Up: Flight 12”. Flight 12 and Flight 13 might be coming comparatively soon. Flight 12 will apparently be suborbital, like previous Starship tests, but Flight 13 is likely to be their first serious attempt to put a V3 Starship into a sustained orbit to test complex operations like in-space refueling. It may also be the first time that the Starship upper stage returns to be caught by SpaceX’s famous “chopsticks”—matching the historic booster catch achieved back in 2024—though that will probably have to wait until Flight 14.
The issues revealed in the video may delay things—particularly if they involve the complex water deluge system—but it’s likely that the test will happen in the coming weeks, with Flight 13 happening not too long after that.
The aborts shown in the video appear to have done some damage to the engines, however, which may also affect the schedule. The video revealed that the abort of the 10-engine test did enough damage to the Raptors during the emergency shutdown that SpaceX engineers had to scavenge Raptors from Booster 20 to add to Booster 19.
Even if the full 33-Raptor test and shutdown didn’t do any damage to the Raptors on Booster 19, delaying Flight 12, there may not yet be enough available Raptors for Booster 20 and Flight 13. That will likely cause delays.
Still, with production of the new engines and V3 vehicles ramping up, the delay may not be as long as one would expect. Assuming they resolve the issues that cropped up during the live fire test, both of the Starship tests may happen sometime in Q2 of 2026, though it’s possible that Flight 13 will slip into Q3.