As SpaceX prepares for the second flight test of the Starship-Super Heavy launch system, founder, CEO and Chief Technology Officer Elon Musk is looking ahead to future versions of the superheavy, rapidly reusable launcher with three times the lift capacity of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) and Apollo-era Saturn V Moon rockets.

Following a short-lived debut flight on April 20, an upgraded Starship-Super Heavy vehicle is being prepared for launch from Boca Chica Beach, Texas, on a second integrated flight test, with the goal of reaching orbit.

During a 45-min. discussion at the annual International Astronautical Congress in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Oct. 5, Musk did not discuss a launch date. SpaceX is awaiting an FCC license for the flight.  

Starship’s first operational missions, which could begin in about a year,  will be to deploy upgraded SpaceX Starlink broadband satellites into low Earth orbits. “There’s a good chance we start deploying Starlink V3 satellites roughly a year from now,” said Musk, who attended the discussion virtually.

SpaceX would use those Starlink missions to refine techniques and technologies needed to safely reenter and land the Starship upper stage. “It’s fine to start launching satellites even before we solve for ship reusability. That is the hardest part of the equation,” Musk said.

SpaceX has been regularly reusing Falcon 9 first stages—the upper stages on the Falcon 9 are not recovered—with the fleet leaders reaching 17 flights.

In addition to a reusable Starship second stage, SpaceX aims to operate a fleet that can be relaunched in days or hours, rather than weeks or months. “To have a truly profound revolution in mass to orbit, you have to have the four R’s: rapid, reusable, reliable rockets.”

With about 16 million lb. of thrust at liftoff, the current Starship-Super Heavy design already has twice the lift capacity of SLS and the Saturn V. “With future engine upgrades, we’ll take that to about 22 million lb. thrust,” Musk said.

Among the upgrades incorporated for the upcoming second Starship-Super Heavy flight test is a new stage-separation system known as hot-staging. “We’re trying to move to a passive stage-sep system where you don’t have pushers, essentially, to try to eliminate parts. There’s no interstage, like Falcon 9 has,” Musk said.

Instead, the upper-stage engines would light while the first-stage engines are still partially firing. “In hot-staging, we throttle down and shut down most of the booster engines, then we light the Starship engines. It’s one of the most efficient ways to do stage separation,” Musk said.

“The Russians make extensive use of hot-staging, but this is the first time we’re doing it,” he added. “I’d say that’s the riskiest part of the flight.”