SpaceX Starship design history
Before settling on the 2018 Starship design, SpaceX successively presented a number of reusable super-heavy lift vehicle proposals.
[3] Later in 2012, Elon Musk first publicly announced plans to develop a rocket surpassing the capabilities of the existing Falcon 9.
[9] In December 2018, the structural material was changed from carbon composites[10][8] to stainless steel,[11][12] marking the transition from early design concepts of the Starship.
[25] In October 2012, the company made the first public articulation of plans to develop a fully reusable rocket system with substantially greater capabilities than SpaceX's existing Falcon 9.
[31] SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell gave a potential payload range between 150–200 tons to low Earth orbit for the planned rocket.
[35] Additionally, Elon Musk provided more details about the space mission architecture, launch vehicle, spacecraft, and Raptor engines.
[38] At the event, Musk announced SpaceX was developing a new rocket using Raptor engines called the Interplanetary Transport System.
[39] The concept, especially the technological feats required to make such a system possible and the funds needed, garnered substantial skepticism.
[43] In July 2017, Musk indicated that the architecture design had evolved since 2016 in order to support commercial transport via Earth-orbit and cislunar launches.
[32] Musk foresaw the first two cargo missions to Mars as early as 2022,[50] with the goal to "confirm water resources and identify hazards" while deploying "power, mining, and life support infrastructure" for future flights.
]"[9] By early 2018, the first carbon composite prototype ship was under construction, and SpaceX had begun building a new production facility at the Port of Los Angeles, California.
[54] In March, SpaceX announced that it would manufacture its launch vehicle and spaceship at a new facility on Seaside Drive at the port.
[50][60] The upper stage, known as Big Falcon Ship (BFS), included a small delta wing at the rear end with split flaps for pitch and roll control.
[50] In December 2018, the structural material was changed from carbon composites[42][41] to stainless steel,[11][12] marking the transition from early design concepts of the Starship.
[11][13][14] Musk cited numerous reasons for the design change; low cost and ease of manufacture, increased strength of stainless steel at cryogenic temperatures, as well as its ability to withstand high heat.
[15][13] The high temperature at which 300-series steel transitions to plastic deformation would eliminate the need for a heat shield on Starship's leeward side, while the much hotter windward side would be cooled by allowing fuel or water to bleed through micropores in a double-wall stainless steel skin, removing heat by evaporation.
The liquid-cooled windward side was changed in 2019 to use reusable heat shield tiles similar to those of the Space Shuttle.
[16][17][62][63] In September 2019, Musk held an event about Starship development during which he further detailed the lower-stage booster, the upper-stage's method of controlling its descent, the heat shield, orbital refueling capacity, and potential destinations besides Mars.
[65] In 2017 SpaceX president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell stated that point-to-point travel with passengers could become cost competitive with conventional business class flights.
[66] John Logsdon, an academic on space policy and history, said that the idea of transporting passengers in this manner was "extremely unrealistic", as the craft would switch between weightlessness to 5 g of acceleration.
