SpaceX's Starship: First Orbital Flight Test to Happen in May 2022 After Company’s Success with New Raptor Engines

Aside from successfully glide-testing and landing numerous Starship prototypes, SpaceX has also rolled out the first Super Heavy boosters.

As indicated in an Inverse report, the space company also test-fired the new Raptor Vacuum engines and assembled the Mechazilla launch tower at Texas-based Boca Chica.

SpaceX has also unveiled the first-ever fully-furbished orbital test vehicle SN20 stacked with a first stage booster on its launch pad for the first time.

Given the prodigious rate of progress, few people were astonished when company CEO Elon Musk announced that the first orbital flight test could happen as soon as January 2022.

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(Photo: JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)
Elon Musk's SpaceX has reassembled the world's tallest rocket ahead of a highly anticipated update on the company's Starship program in South Texas.

SpaceX's Advantage

Regrettably, the date had to be pushed back to an environmental evaluation and the standard bureaucratic rigmarole. Nonetheless, the company executive announced via Twitter that in light of the success of SpaceX with the new Raptor engines, he could be prepared to carry out the long-awaited orbital test flight next month.

The Twitter post was posted on March 21, 2022, in response to a story by CNBC space reporter Michael Sheetz. The media practitioner cited a recent Quilty Analytics report that showed how the decision of Russia to cut ties with the international space industry as a response to sanctions would impact the United States sector.

SpaceX default plan was ~65% of global launch mass to orbit this year. Incremental demand might take that to ~70%, so not a major change. Those numbers don’t count Starship.

Rough math is ~16 tons * 50 launches = 800 tons. Rest of world is <400 tons (mostly China).
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 21, 2022

This report specified that SpaceX would be the "clear winner" in the absence of Russian launch services which means more business would be coming their way.

Sheetz also said this is exemplified the recent announcement that Starlink competitor OneWeb had terminated its launch agreement with Roscosmos and inked a deal with SpaceX.

Dependent on 29 Raptor Engines

It's proper to equip a single Super Heavy booster, which depends on 29 Raptor engines optimized for sea-level, and a single Starship, which relies on three sea-level optimized and three vacuum-optimized engines.

With an additional couple of weeks to integrate the Raptor engines into spacecraft, added Musk, and the whole system needs to be ready to fly by next month, at the earliest. However, knowing the tendency of Musk to offer optimistic timetables, the flight may happen sometime this summer.

As stated on the flight plan filed with the FAA in May last year, the orbital test flight will see the fully-stacked Starship and Super Heavy launch together and separate 170 seconds into flight.

Part of NASA's Artemis Program

The booster will then carry out a partial return and make a soft splashdown approximately 32 kilometers offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. The Starship will then attain an altitude of 200 kilometers above sea level before performing a targeted soft splashdown about 100 kilometers off the coast of the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

If such a test flight goes as planned, SpaceX will be prepared to embark on its initial commercial flights, including a lunar flyby scheduled for 2023.

As part of the Artemis Program of NASA, the Starship was also selected to land astronauts on the Moon for the first time since the Apollo period. This will be the Artemis III mission, which is presently slated for occurrence sometime in 2025.

Beyond that, Super Heavy and Starship launch systems are integral to the long-term goal of SpaceX of making regular trips to Mars and the Moon, and establishing a permanent presence of humans there.

A related report about Starship is shown on SpaceX's YouTube video below: