Posted on 08/15/2025 7:01:50 AM PDT by Red Badger
These fins are said to be among the largest aerodynamic control surfaces ever built for a rocket.
Grid fin for the next generation Super Heavy booster. SpaceX/X
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
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 13, 2025
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.”
Reports cite the development in the wake of recent test flight failures.
Improving descent and catch
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.
The new fins are also being integrated into the booster’s recovery system.
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.
VIDEO AT LINK.............
Previous failed attempts
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.
SpaceX typically keeps launch dates under wraps until closer to the 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.
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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.
Anywhere we can, we should. Even if only out of curiosities sake.
Musk:
Slight chance of Starship flight to Mars crewed by Optimus in Nov/Dec next year. A lot needs to go right fort hat.
More likely, first flight without humans in ~3.5 years, next flight ~5.5 years with humans
Mars city self-sustaining in 20-30 years
I think that’s Starsship v 1’
Starship v2 has redesigned flaps.
I’m not rocket surgeon, but I have to imagine redundancy is part of it.
A B52 has eight engines. Statistically, I supposed that a loss of an engine or two is greater there than on a two or four engine plane. The result of an engine loss on a B52 would be the so-called “dreaded seven engine approach.”
Pictured is artist concept of Starship v3 not yet built, but Starbase is working to get everything built for v3 after Ship 36 failure, which failure enabled them to get started right away.
Sidebar — apparently the B52 is finally getting a new engine, cleaner and easier to maintain. I’ve heard the current engines described as “pigs” by someone who had been in the service and had maintained them.
There’s no way to colonize Mercury, but human missions to and from the ‘dark side’ could be done. Not sure of the utility of it. Plant-the-flag is always a good reason though.
The first robotic Mars mission by SpaceX will be the first there and back by anyone. The ship will (one would hope) have its engines come back to life on schedule for a propulsive landing on Earth as early as 2028.
Sidebar, Buzz Aldrin’s idea:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_cycler
The density at that altitude is 1 bar like earth so you have a very large amount of mass above you just like the earth’s surface atmosphere mass. How many meteorites make it all the way through earth full pressure stop. Micro meteorites are not making it to the earth’s surface. Even a hand sized full meteorite that makes it to earth’s surface is only going to punch a hand sized holes in your envelope given the sheer volume of the sphere it would take months to effect the buoyancy plenty of time to send a robot up the outside and plug the small hole. Or up the inside and plug both sides.
Crazy thing is lifting mass doesn’t scale linearly a 2km sphere can support 6 million tonnes of mass. Double the radius and you get more than six times the lift while the exoskeleton doesn’t weight six times as much. Nitrogen mass is going to be a limiting factor since its only 3.5% of.Venus atmosphere you will need some serious cryo distillation capacities to fill such a sphere. Water is limiting its only 20 ppm in the atmosphere pretty much going to be importing every drop but the asteroid belt has plenty and its much lower delta V from even that far vs the moon or worse earth’s deep.gravity well. Even Mars surface is less delta V than Earth’s surface to Venus just barely depends on where the planet’s are in orbit alignment but still less. Imagine that it takes less energy to mine water from Mars and deliver it to Venus than launch it from Earth.
Still Venus has two of three critical gasses, and you can make O2 from CO2. There is detectable PH3 in the atmosphere so phosphorus must be present either as apatite in flood basalts or some other igneous rocks.
The six critical life elements are carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur. Venus has carbon,nitrogen,oxygen , sulfur in the atmosphere in huge amounts. Lacking is hydrogen and P hydrogen will need to be brought in as water and closely conserved in a closed cycle system. Phosphorus could be robotic retrieval from the surface via rock mining with the kind of lifting capacity you could lower a 50km carbon fiber or nanotube cable with a dredge like apparatus to pull up surface rocks if they are basalts they would have apatite and P in them.
Venus starts to look more like a nice place at 50km once you realise you have not only meteorite protection but also cosmic rays that thick atmosphere is good shielding even without a internal magnetic field. Venus has a induced magnetosphere that also offers protection. Water is the real limiting factor at 20ppm you are not mining it from the atmo.
I have heart many stupid ideas. Living on Mars takes the cake.
Using the mass from a very large number of asteroids, basically clearing the inner Solar System of debris, and processing out the valuable stuff, would be worthwhile.
The tailings could be processed into a mineral foam and piled up in an orbital spot between Earth and Venus, or perhaps better yet between Earth and Mars.
The desired shape would probably be like this magnetic toy:
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/UW0AAOSw5b1hrQba/s-l500.jpg
Water is about 1/4 the density of rocks. A volume of water about four times that of the Earth would then be introduced. The proposed axial core would help keep this water planet in a pretty good oblate spheroid shape.
Mineral foam “frisbees”, miles across, would float, as a sort of artificial pumice, and be dropped to the ocean surface, and of course the 78/22 atmospheric blend introduced, along with Earth species. The floating islands would provide habitat, and quite a lot of it.
Mercury.... well... if we ever run low on iron, silicates, pyroxene, or olivine... There is a region along the terminus between day/night that should be relatively balmy temp wise.
Considering those are the most prevalent materials in the solar system, unlikely.
Solar observatory? Break it down and use it as part of the Orbital (Iain M Banks) or a Ringworld (Niven)? Not nearly enough mass for a Ringworld... but enough for an O if the rest of the technological/engineering challenges can be met...
In out lifetimes? Best bet is an outpost on the Moon, Mars, and possibly some mining in the Belt.
I dont pay taxes.
Sorry.
Fortunately the sun has at least a few billion years worth of hydrogen left before it starts its full on helium burn and it’s expansion to red giant phase. Current estimate is 500 million years it have increased luminosity but not size enough to make Earth no longer habitable. Given that long of a timeframe even closer in Venus will have hundreds of millions of years before the 50km cloud deck heats up to temps too high for humans to tolerate in a sphere floating. Venus has enough atmosphere to shield from a solar flares type event plus your water tanks make fine shields 3 feet of water can stop any gigavolt level cosmic rays or solar wind at its theoretical worst.
Mars thin atmosphere doesn’t offer the same amount of protection you would need to be underground or under a water pool in any big solar event. But Mars has water in big amounts ,nitrogen at 2.5% and plenty of CO2 for carbon and oxygen. We know there is phosphate minerals present too sulfur should be there as gypsum salts its what gets left behind when salt water evaporates or sublimes.
Jupiter is a charged particle nightmare environment. Humans would not survive on the surface of Europa or any of the inner ice moons of that system.
Titan is cold very cold but humans could stand on it in cryosuits it has 1.5 bar of pressure so no pressure suit needed just protection against liquid methane temps and oxygen. It would be dark cold and slushy humans would struggle to have a habitat there such little solar insolation means things won’t grow even if you had a warm dome you would need LEDs there is no free oxygen and only trace CO2 so you would need to drill deep into the crust to hit a water ice layer and mines H2O that way for the O2 and the water. At minus 290F even the best insulated dome is going to take a nuke of some large size to keep it warm and then it will be sinking as it melted the solid methane and ethane ice of the surface I guess you could float it on a liquid methane lake and let it boil off under you hoping the lake volume is enough to.keep up with the boil off rate vs condensation and return rate.
Mars is the best spot for humans in domes and if we can get a plasma bubble in front of it then crashing some meteors into the polar ice caps could throw up a decent atmosphere after some big hits and the debris settled out. Deorbiting one of the Martian moons and crashing it could also up the gas content by impact heating and outgassing of the rejected debris. Needless to say you don’t want to be on Mars when you start playing cosmic pin ball. Seems easier to build large mega domes and use TBM machines like the boring company already does to drill out miles and miles of subsurface space. Easy to pressurize, plenty of radiation shielding, you get access to all the water bearings strata you are boring through plus the heat of your tunnels melts more surrounding them drain that off via French drains and use it.
All of the NASA photos and videos of the moon landings have been evaluated using AI Deepfake tools. They’ve all been determined fakes (for different reasons). Some studio, some layered photoshop like edited, most both. That said, Chinese photos of the moon were judged to be legitimate. However China has never put men on the moon. Presumably because of radiation ☢️ danger in and beyond the Van Allen Belts
I have heart many stupid ideas. Living on Mars takes the cake.
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I’ve heard many stupid comments. Yours is in the running for the stupidest.
Some good news about our future Mars missions:
Blue Horizons has the Mars Telecommunication Orbiter in the works - the launch engine will use a combination of chemical fuel and electrical. This will allow a wide latitude of possible launch dates since in will have potentially unlimited power.
The MTO itself will be a series of satellites with Lan/Wan abilities allowing for signals to be relayed in near real time. No more waiting minutes for a reply.
Blue Origin
The Mission: Blue Origin’s Mars Telecommunications Orbiter
https://www.blueorigin.com/news/blue-origin-mars-telecommunications-orbiter
The Falcon/Raptor engines are very decent, apparently. They “self demonstrated”, for sure.
Sorry, those are faked reports. Now, answer the question about the artifacts on the moon in all of the right places that were photographed by non-US assets. Are China, India, and Japan in ob the conspiracy?
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