Elon Musk’s Mars rocket gets radical fin redesign to prevent flight failures

These fins are said to be among the largest aerodynamic control surfaces ever built for a rocket.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has redesigned some parts of its colossal Mars-bound Starship to improve its stability and control.

The most notable change is the removal of a landing fin from the Super Heavy booster, which will now use three redesigned grid fins that are 50% larger and stronger to improve vehicle control during descent.

The announcement was made on Wednesday via a post on X, where SpaceX shared images revealing the complex, honeycomb-like surface of the new grid fins.

The first grid fin for the next generation Super Heavy booster. The redesigned grid fins are 50% larger and higher strength, moving from four fins to three for vehicle control while enabling the booster to descend at higher angles of attack. pic.twitter.com/Nc6bavBHD8

Interestingly, these fins are said to be among the largest aerodynamic control surfaces ever built for a rocket.

Weighing in on the redesign, SpaceX CEO Musk shared the company’s announcement on X, adding a characteristically concise comment: “Best part is no part.”

To control the rocket’s position and flight path during descent and re-entry, grid fins manipulate the air passing through them.

With their larger surface area and increased strength, the new grid fins will give the booster greater maneuverability to descend at a steeper, more controlled angle during the landing phase.

These redesigned parts will align with the launch tower’s catch arms, which are designed to grab the descending booster out of the air.

SpaceX has added a new catch point to the booster and mounted the fins lower to align well with the tower’s arms. This change allows the tower to catch the returning rocket directly, eliminating the need for a landing pad.

Reportedly, the lower position of the fins also protects them from the intense heat of the rocket’s engines.

Moreover, the social media post mentioned that the fins’ internal parts, like the shaft, are now inside the booster’s main fuel tank for better protection.

The path to Mars hasn’t been smooth for SpaceX and its ambitious Starship program.

The redesign comes after the most recent failed test flight for the fully integrated rocket in May.

After the test flight, the Super Heavy booster failed to return to its launchpad and crashed into the Gulf of Mexico instead.

The main ship, meanwhile, continued its flight over the Indian Ocean before it too exploded.

In another incident in June, the rocket’s upper stage exploded while on a test stand during preparations for SpaceX’s tenth Starship flight.

The company is gearing up for its 10th orbital flight test, a critical demonstration of the new design.

Reportedly, the next Starship launch attempt could occur as early as Saturday, August 16, with a launch window between 6:30 am and 8:30 pm local time.

It is based on maritime hazard warnings from the US, which cover the waterways and sea areas around SpaceX’s Starbase facility in southern Texas.

“Navigation hazards from rocket launching activity may include, free-falling debris and/or descending vehicles or vehicle components, under various means of control,” the advisory noted, as the Independent reported.

Musk indicated in an X post earlier this month that SpaceX was aiming to launch Starship in mid-August.

The billionaire has set an ambitious goal to send the world’s largest rocket, with Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus on board, to Mars by the end of 2026.

Given the recent failures and NASA’s budget cuts, the plan may be subject to further delays.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mrigakshi Dixit Mrigakshi is a science journalist who enjoys writing about space exploration, biology, and technological innovations. Her work has been featured in well-known publications including Nature India, Supercluster, The Weather Channel and Astronomy magazine. If you have pitches in mind, please do not hesitate to email her.

and I believe the soil is toxic
—

You are thinking of perchlorates which have an up side, a very positive up side.

Excerpt:
However, a team of scientists determined that these perchlorates could actually prove to be extremely beneficial. There’s a type of bacteria on our own planet, the enzymes of which eat perchlorates.

If you introduce the bacteria or just their enzymes to a sample of Martian regolith, they would eat the perchlorates and produce oxygen as a byproduct.

They even put out a proof of concept design for an emergency life support system where you take a few kilograms of Martian regalith, put the enzymes into a bag, mix it together, and you would have an emergency oxygen supply for several hours out of this supposedly poisonous material.

So, there are a variety of different things about Mars that we thought were true, thought would be serious barriers to colonization, and yet they aren’t.

We were SO WRONG about Mars! Especially about life!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm0fu-5o91k

And the F1 engines never failed in flight. And all of the F1 engines that were ever used were dumped in the Atlantic, and were not as efficient as these Raptor engines are, by a long shot.

Up until perhaps fifteen years ago there was still an undercurrent of support to restart the F1 production. If there had been a plan for its use, annnnnnd there hadn’t been resistance to continued pork-barreling the US space program by a certain Senator, that might have come about.

OTOH, the SRBs on the Shuttle put out 2.5 million lb each, so three of those would more or less replace the Saturn V, and would be reusable (as reusable as the Shuttle components were in reality).

But as we’ve seen with the supposed SLS, just adding a section to the Shuttle’s SRBs, reusing parts (they’ve been flown before), and basically doing something that someone somewhere should remember how to do, they’ve come up short, and the SLS can’t get off the ground without them, any more than the Shuttle had been.

Oh, and the plan is, they won’t be recovered, regardless of how the whole thing goes in all other ways.

Meanwhile SpaceX did perhaps a bit too good a job with the Falcon 9, having made reusability a nice routine, having made engines that work right and are a tough act to follow, and having passed the 500 launches mark not long ago.

There’s some scuttlebutt about major improvements to the Falcon Heavy core booster design. In the past, those have been pretty poor in the recovery phase of flight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocketdyne_F-1

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2025/08/b1091-heavy-core-falcon-9-clothing/

According to Grok.

Terraforming Venus to make it habitable for humans would involve transforming its extreme environment: a surface temperature of about 465°C (867°F), atmospheric pressure 92 times Earth’s, a thick CO2 atmosphere causing a runaway greenhouse effect, sulfuric acid clouds, no liquid water, slow retrograde rotation (a sidereal day longer than its year), and lack of a protective magnetic field. This is a hypothetical, multi-century or millennia-long process requiring advanced technology far beyond current capabilities. Based on proposals from scientists like Carl Sagan, Paul Birch, and Geoffrey Landis, here are the key steps, ordered from easiest (least technologically demanding, resource-intensive, or logically prerequisite) to hardest (most complex, energy-intensive, or dependent on prior steps). Note that “easiest” is relative—all are enormously challenging—and some steps could overlap or vary by method.

1. Deploy solar shades or reflectors to block sunlight and initiate cooling (Easiest: Requires orbital construction but uses existing space tech principles).

Place massive solar sails, shades, or mirrors at the Sun-Venus L1 Lagrange point (about 1 million km from Venus) to reduce incoming solar radiation by up to 90%, countering the greenhouse effect and dropping temperatures over decades to centuries. This could involve thousands of smaller shades assembled robotically. Alternatives include reflective balloons or carbon nanotube sheets in the upper atmosphere. Feasible with self-replicating robotics; shades could double as solar power collectors. Without this, other steps are impossible due to heat.

2. Build floating habitats in the upper atmosphere for staging and initial colonization.

Construct aerostat cities or platforms at ~50-60 km altitude, where pressure is ~1 atm and temperatures are 0-50°C. Breathable air (nitrogen-oxygen mix) acts as a lifting gas, supporting human outposts that could process the atmosphere gradually. Earth-like conditions at this level make it a “low-hanging fruit” for habitation; serves as a base for deploying microbes or chemicals below.

3. Reduce or convert the dense CO2 atmosphere through chemical or biological means.

Introduce genetically engineered bacteria (e.g., acid- and heat-resistant photosynthetic microbes) from floating platforms to convert CO2 into organic compounds via photosynthesis. Alternatively, bombard the atmosphere with hydrogen (imported from gas giants like Jupiter) to trigger the Bosch reaction, producing water and graphite. Add iron aerosols to catalyze reactions. | Lowers pressure from ~92 atm; bacteria method is bio-tech focused, while hydrogen bombardment requires mass importation (~4×10^20 kg of hydrogen).

4. Freeze out and sequester excess CO2 to further cool and thin the atmosphere.

With sunlight blocked, temperatures drop below CO2’s critical point (~31°C), causing it to liquefy into oceans, then freeze into dry ice (-57°C) over 100-200 years. Cover frozen CO2 with insulators or refrigerate it to prevent re-sublimation; mine local calcium/magnesium to form carbonates for permanent storage. Use mass drivers or impactors to eject some atmosphere into space. Reduces greenhouse gases; requires ongoing maintenance but builds on cooling step.

5. Import and distribute water to create oceans and hydrological cycles.

Redirect ice-rich asteroids, comets, or moons (e.g., Saturn’s Hyperion or Enceladus) via gravitational slingshots and controlled impacts to deliver water (needing ~30-50 million km³, about 10% of Earth’s ocean volume). Water could also form as a byproduct of hydrogen-CO2 reactions. Venus has minimal native water; this enables life but involves mega-scale orbital mechanics and potential seismic risks.

6. Produce breathable oxygen and introduce ecosystems. Seed the atmosphere and surface with photosynthetic plants or algae to convert remaining CO2 and water into oxygen, aiming for ~21% O2 levels. Start in controlled domes or from floating cities, gradually expanding to open air. Dependent on water and lower temperatures; bio-engineering ensures acid resistance.

7. Adjust the day-night cycle to support life (Harder: Involves massive orbital infrastructure). Use orbital mirrors (solettas) in polar orbits or at L1 to simulate a 24-hour cycle, reflecting sunlight selectively. Venus’s natural 116.8-Earth-day solar day could be tolerated with thick clouds, but mirrors provide flexibility. Slow rotation isn’t fatal per some models, but optimization aids agriculture; avoids riskier spin-up methods.

8. Generate an artificial magnetic field for radiation protection (Hardest: Requires unprecedented energy and materials). Deploy superconducting rings or orbital magnets around Venus to create a magnetosphere, shielding against solar wind and cosmic rays that strip atmosphere and cause health risks. Venus lacks a dynamo like Earth’s; this is the most speculative and energy-demanding step, potentially needing fusion power.

These steps could take 100-1,000 years, with total energy needs rivaling civilizations’ outputs. Partial terraforming (e.g., cloud cities) might be more practical than full surface habitability. Venus’s proximity to Earth (closer than Mars) is an advantage, but its hostility makes it harder overall than Mars. Proposals evolve with tech; for instance, recent ideas emphasize nanotechnology for self-replicating shades.

Venus has an altitude 50km ish where the pressure is earth like and so is the temperature. Humans could build a floating bubble city and even go outside in chemsuits and SCBA like tanks the pressure temp is so close to earth its the toxic CO2 and sulfuric acid that needs to be shielded against. Buckminster fuller did the calculations that a 1000 meter wide spheres filled with air at that altitude would not only be a lifting gas the volume of said sphere of air is so large its lifting capacity is 700,000 tonnes you don’t even need carbon fiber, steel triangular supports in typical Buckminster dome config but spherical with double layer plastic envelope and hanging tension lines from the top done leaves hundreds of thousands of tonnes worth of a lift for habitat and floor space to grow things put a solid deck at the equator hung from above and use that for open spaces hang your habitat buildings below it in the shade and you have 500 meters worth of vertical space down there to hang all kinds of hab shapes. Back then they though they would need vast flat spaces to grow food that’s not the case now with artificial photosynthesis you can grow food in tanks via acetate made form CO2 and water. You need to bring water and nitrogen to Venus it has CO2 in excess. Your flat deck can be 1sq meter solar panels each one making 40 times the mass of food vs a square meter of crops grown. Acetate can also be feed to yeast or bacteria to make protein and lipids and carbs aka food. Venus is actually a much better target for human habitats if we cab master building and transporting kilometer sized collapsible structures or floating robotic assembly’s blimps that make a sphere from the top down using a balloon under it gradually filling it as the dome cross to sphere around its. Once fully spherical the ballon formes the inner wall and you attach an exterior one to the outside of the triangular support structure. Once both are in place you enter from the top and start hanging things downward until your deck is formed that’s your hard deck to build up and down from then on.

The idea that Mars had its atmosphere stripped by the solar wind is based on the idea that Mars had one in the first place. There’s probably no reason to think that the magnetosphere has any bearing on it at all.

That said, even if it did, and we introduced a 78 percent N 22 percent O atmosphere, presumably using blobs of frozen gases from the outer solar system, the solar wind would still require millions of years to get rid of it, leaving plenty of leeway for artificial replenishment.

Regarding Venus, it has a very slow and retrograde axial rotation. If that probably could be mitigated by a carefully planned large impact (assuming the planet has a lumpy distribution of density, as Earth does https://freerepublic.com/tag/potsdamgravitypotato/index?tab=articles ), perhaps using a huge chunk of ice, sufficient to cover the surface with water to a depth of tens of miles, changing the direction of rotation while changing the location of its axis.

After some long period of time, the planet would be cooled sufficiently to seed its ocean with aquatic plant life from Earth. Probably need GMO extremophiles to clean up the atmospheric residues first. A couple of thousand years should do it. :^)

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