Elon Musk teases a reusable Starship rocket with disposable parts.

Musk said that the company could eventually develop an expendable version of its rocket. It is extremely ambitious. Starship is a beast even before considering the concepts of rapid reusability and orbital propellant refilling that are central to the full system. 

 

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The rocket is 120 meters tall and can produce up to 7590 tons of thrust at sea level. It is larger, taller, heavier, and more powerful than any other launch vehicle. The Super Heavy booster is powered by 33 Raptor 2 engines, which is more than any other rocket. The marginal cost of each launch will be reduced to just a few million dollars once the Starship reuse takes hours, according to the CEO. 

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Starship’s orbital upper stage is roughly the size (and far heavier and more powerful than) as an entire two-stage Falcon 9 rocket. (BocaChicaGal/Richard Angle)

 

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The difference between the two rockets is that the Falcon 9 uses simpler Merlin 1D engines, while the 39 Raptors use more complex ones. Even then, Musk reported in mid-2020 that the marginal cost of a Falcon 9 launch was $15 million, which is impressively low but still a vivid demonstration of just how far Starship has to go. It is a major challenge to make sure that the spaceship can reach its destination. After the fact, recovering Super Heavy and Starship may be even more difficult because the rocket can't be consistently in the air. 

 

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While SpaceX is closer than ever, it has still never attempted an orbital Starship launch or reused a Starship. (SpaceX)

 

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Until it can consistently recover ships and boosters from orbital launches, it won't be able to reuse Starship. Even if the early prototypes are recovered, there is no guarantee that they will be reuseable. The upper stage of the Starship may or may not be custom-built for expendable missions. It would likely take Starship, remove everything extraneous, and reduce its mass as much as possible. 

 

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Musk has said before that he would like to see a lightened version of Starship with no heat shield or fins/legs for expendable, interplanetary launches. The Starbase factory is already building multiple intentionally-expendable Starships. No thermal protection, no heat shield tiles, and no flaps make the ships impossible to recover or reuse. More likely than not, they will be used to test other important Starship technologies. 

 

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The Starship variants required for SpaceX’s NASA Moon landing contracts.

 

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The depot ship variant that will be used to return NASA astronauts to the Moon will not be able to return to Earth. The first few Moon landers may be expendable and only used for one landing. With S26's stacking now underway, we are getting ever closer to seeing this bare Starship, which is either fully expendable or can only be used once in a while. We can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, even though we aren't done with these bare Ships yet. 

 

 

The NASA moon landing contracts require single-use Starships. The next most capable expendable rocket could cost up to 2 billion dollars per launch. The company is considering all of the capabilities its new launch system will offer, and Starship's expendable capabilities are significant. The International Space Station is made up of pieces from dozens of launches. 

 

Two expendable Starships could be used to launch more usable mass to LEO.

 

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