Starship’s New Flight Plan: SpaceX’s Push toward Orbital Reusability

By Ananya Chopra,

The Lawrenceville School, NJ

As the most powerful launch vehicle ever built, Starship represents a vision for a reusable and scalable space transport system that will transform the spaceflight industry. Its design for full reusability, massive payloads, and deep-space missions has the potential to transform the future of human space exploration, satellite logistics, and commercial access to orbit. 

Unlike traditional rockets, which discard the upper stages after launch, Starship is built around a two-stage, fully reusable architecture. The Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage, or “Ship,” are both intended to be recovered and flown again. This is a significant difference compared to rockets like Falcon 9, which currently only reuse the first stage. Since reusability is closely linked to quicker turnarounds, SpaceX aims to reduce refurbishment time and conduct multiple launches, possibly several per day, in the future. Starship will rely on orbital refueling, where tanker Starships will refuel the primary vehicle in low Earth orbit (LEO), thereby increasing the payload capacity to destinations such as the Moon and Mars.  

The environmental case for Starship is strong. A life-cycle assessment by the ORACLE (Open-source Rocket and Constellation Lifecycle Emissions) repository shows that reusable vehicles, such as Starship and Falcon 9, can reduce production emissions by ~95.4% compared to other non-reusable alternatives (Kukreja et al., 2025). The launch process, which includes propellant burning and manufacturing, accounts for most of the greenhouse gas emissions of satellite constellations, contributing ~72.6% of the life-cycle emissions. However, even with reusability, they are a non-trivial source of emissions, but this scales with the number of reuses. The more times a vehicle flies, the lower the marginal environmental cost per mission. 

From a commercial standpoint, if SpaceX can keep refurbishment costs low, each additional flight spreads out the initial manufacturing investment, reducing the marginal cost per launch (Clark). This would make large-scale operations and high-frequency missions economically viable. Starship is so large, even with some propellant reserved for recovery, it can still deliver massive payloads relative to other rockets, making it attractive for large satellites, space station modules, or bulk cargo. Its unmatched payload capacity of 100+ tons to LEO offers cost and scale advantages for deploying mega constellations, constructing orbital infrastructure, and transporting lunar cargo. This reduced cost-per-kilogram could enable new business models, such as in-space manufacturing, orbital fuel depots, and more robust satellite systems (Clark, 2025). 

Despite recent progress, SpaceX and Starship will still need to overcome several challenges before achieving their goal of full reusability. Thermal protection is one of the most critical aspects, with SpaceX referring to the reusable heat shield as the “single biggest engineering challenge” for this project (Clark, 2025). To survive orbital reentry, the Starship would require a robust thermal protection system; however, past flights have experienced heat leaks and unexpected tile ablation (Clark). Reliable engine reignition remains a persistent issue, with tests frequently encountering failure in relighting and maintaining control during descent (GlobalData Technology, 2025). However, the Raptor engines must be able to re-ignite multiple times under varying conditions of vacuum, high altitude, and near-landing, and throttle precisely for descent and landing (GlobalData Technology, 2025). SpaceX plans to use “Mechazilla,” a mechanism with giant tower arms to catch the booster, thereby avoiding the need for heavy landing gear and extra fuel. However, full catches are unproven, and their backup, splashdowns, would cause significant wear and corrosion. The economic model is based on minimal downtime between flights, which means that materials must be able to survive repeated thermal and mechanical stress, and ground systems must be robust enough to support high-cadence operations. 

On August 26th, 2025, Flight 10 marked a significant success for the Starship. Starship launched from Starbase, reached orbit, separated cleanly from the Super Heavy booster, deployed mock Starlink satellites, and reentered successfully, splashing down in the Indian Ocean (Roulette, 2025). Although neither of the stages was fully recovered, this was the first demonstration of orbital payload delivery and safe reentry for the upper stage (Roulette, 2025). A static-fire test of Booster 14, a previously flown component of the Super Heavy, was conducted, marking a key milestone toward reusing flight-proven hardware (Berger 2025). 

Starship’s size and affordability mean that bulk deployments of larger, more sophisticated satellites would become more common. This is also instrumental to SpaceX’s plans for developing and deploying Starlink V3 satellites (Foust, 2025). The Starship’s orbital refueling and bulk cargo capability make it suited for delivering payloads to the Moon or Mars, aligning with SpaceX’s goal of Mars colonization. It also makes bulk cargo delivery more viable, and it makes it more cost-effective to send larger building blocks rather than smaller pieces. 

Blue Origin’s New Glenn and NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) are alternate visions of the future of spaceflight. New Glenn is a partially reusable two-stage rocket, with the first stage designed to land vertically, and a reusable upper stage in development under Project Jarvis  (Wall, 2024). Although similar in its use of methane-based engines (BE-4), its payload (~45 tons to LEO) is less than half that of Starship (Wall, 2024). NASA’s SLS is fully expendable, extremely costly, and government-funded. While designed for deep space, its lack of reusability and high per-launch costs make it a less flexible option for commercial use. Starship, by contrast, is built for scale, reusability, and high-frequency missions, and it therefore represents a more radical and ambitious goal, better aligned with a growing commercial space economy. 

Starship is making real progress toward its goal of full orbital reusability. While there are several challenges, once full recovery and rapid reuse are proven, Starship could transform how people operate in space by enabling lunar bases, Mars missions, and an industrial orbital economy. 

References

Berger, E. (2025, April 4). Rocket Report: Next Starship flight to reuse booster; FAA clears New Glenn. Ars Technica. https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/04/rocket-report-next-starship-flight-to-reuse-booster-faa-clears-new-glenn/

Clark, S. (2025, September 10). SpaceX Targets 2026 to Test Orbital Flight for Next-Gen Starship Vehicle. WIRED. https://www.wired.com/story/spacex-targets-an-orbital-starship-flight-with-a-next-gen-vehicle-in-2026/

Foust, J. (2025, January 4). SpaceX to test vehicle upgrades and payload deployment on next Starship flight. SpaceNews. https://spacenews.com/spacex-to-test-vehicle-upgrades-and-payload-deployment-on-next-starship-flight/

GlobalData Technology. (2025, July 9). Starship IFT-9: a shift in space travel. Verdict. https://www.verdict.co.uk/starship-reusable-components-testing/

Kukreja, R., Oughton, E. J., & Linares, R. (2025). Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions Poised to Rocket: Modeling the Environmental Impact of LEO Satellite Constellations. ArXiv.org. https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.15291

Roulette, J. (2025, August 27). SpaceX’s Starship passes development rut, deploys first mock satellites. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/spacexs-starship-passes-development-rut-deploys-first-mock-satellites-2025-08-26/

Wall, M. (2024, December 19). New Glenn: Blue Origin’s Reusable Rocket. Space.com. https://www.space.com/40455-new-glenn-rocket.html