“There are really a tremendous number of changes between the last Starship flight and this one,” Mr. Musk said.
With hot staging, Starship’s upper-stage engines will ignite while the booster is still attached and some of the booster engines are still firing.
Hot staging, which is commonly used on Russian rockets, could improve the performance of Starship by 10 percent, Mr. Musk said.
Hot staging also “results in kind of blasting the booster,” Mr. Musk said.
“We don’t know with accuracy what the most important thing is, because we’ve not yet reached orbit,” Mr. Musk said.
Persons:
” Elon Musk, Musk, ”, Mr, “ It’s, ” Mr, we’ve
Organizations:
SpaceX, Twitter, Federal Aviation Administration