The 12th flight of the Starship

On May 22, 2026, flight number 12 of the Starship was launched, it was the beginning of the new era of the V3, where, among other things, the new Raptor 3 engine was tested, also a new take-off platform at Star Base Texas, larger fuel tanks and overall the rocket became taller, reaching 124.4 m high. It is the tallest rocket built to date in human history.

The flight was suborbital, it did not make a complete orbit of the Earth, it lasted approximately one hour and 6 minutes. SpaceX described it as a general success, especially considering that it is the first flight of this version of Starship, the V3, among the things that went well is the takeoff described as perfect with the 33 Raptor engines on and running at full volume, in fact, during takeoff something quite curious could be seen, something that you can see in the video and that shows us the enormous power that is at stake with these new engines.

What you are seeing are the shock waves caused by the energy of the Raptor 3 engines, which caused very strong pressure waves that propagated through the air and were visible because they compressed the humid air quickly. They caused clouds or visible distortions to form in the atmosphere, like the waves that form when a stone is thrown into a pond. This is not the first time they have been seen. They are spectacular phenomena, but typical of very powerful rockets, although on this occasion they are seen so clearly because the Starship V3 is currently the most powerful rocket in the world in terms of thrust at takeoff.

It clearly surpasses NASA's SLS, which was the rocket that sent the Orion ship into space bound for the moon, a curiosity that helps us understand the power levels that are being used. What would happen if a fully fueled Starship exploded? What would be the power of its explosion? There is an old quote that says that a rocket is basically a controlled explosion directed downwards to generate thrust, if everything goes wrong and the rocket explodes, that is, all the propellant or fuel in a Starship V3 mixes and burns perfectly and instantly, releasing all its energy. How much energy would it be?

The calculations say that it would be an energy equivalent to that of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, approximately 15 kilotons of TNT, however, that perfect catastrophe never occurs, in a realistic explosion, what would really happen in an accident would be that only part of the propellant mixes efficiently and explodes, so the energy released would be between 1.5 to 5 kilotons of TNT, which is not bad either, which would place the explosion between the level of one kiloton of power of the minibombs nuclear weapons or suitcase bombs that were developed in the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and ranged from 1 to 2 kilotons up to the level of a typical tactical nuclear warhead of between 2 to 5 kilotons.

The difference between a nuclear bomb and a Starship explosion is that the Starship explosion would not produce radioactivity, it would be a huge, very powerful conventional chemical explosion, yes, but without radioactive contamination. Continuing with what has been said and what has been seen, it is also worth highlighting the proper functioning of the new launch platform with a bidirectional flame deflector during takeoff, in order to divide the rocket flare and ensure that the energy of the engines is not concentrated in a single point, since this can destroy the launch platform, as happened in the first test of the Starship.

After launch, once the rocket performed its function, the spacecraft separated from the rocket cleanly and reached the intended trajectory despite losing a raptor engine. Another operation that went well was the deployment in space of 20 Starling V3 simulators plus two modified satellites that took photos of the heat shield. The reentry was rated as very good. In fact, the heat shield held up very well and stress tests were done on the flaps.

The ship performed an engine ignition and a splashdown in the Indian Ocean, landing standing on the two engines before overturning and exploding as planned. Elon Musk and SpaceX describe the test as a great step forward for the V3, but not everything went well, the main failure was in the rocket, the super heavy, it lost several engines during the ascent and return and this must have affected a soft splashdown in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Some planned tests were also not carried out, for example, the engine restart test was not carried out in the space that it was planned to do.

Most of the comments I have seen these days highlight that, for the first flight of a new version, V3, it was a relative success and that a lot of valuable data was obtained. The criticisms or negative aspects were in the rocket, the failure of the engines and the hard or violent splashdown or in other words, a splashdown that was not planned to be like that. And since the Starship in its lunar lander version is an essential piece of the Artemis program, there are many comments about the delays, the slowness of the development of the ship and the fear that China will get ahead of itself and reach the Moon earlier this century.

Thank you for visiting my blog. If you like posts about #science, #planet, #politics, #rights #crypto, #traveling and discovering secrets and beauties of the #universe, feel free to Follow me as these are the topics I write about the most. Have a wonderful day and stay on this great platform :) :)

! The truth will set us free and science is the one that is closest to the truth!

---