The SpaceX starship’s fire in flight test 2 imagined in sharp animation

After conducting Starship’s first test launch in April, SpaceX plans to make several modifications to the rocket. These will build on the company’s experience with the first launch, as while Starship launched successfully, some of its engines failed in flight and the rocket’s first and second stages failed to separate. To prevent this from happening, the spaceship’s second stage will fire its engines before separating to give the stage separation an extra kick. Now, a YouTube graphics creator has done a life-like rendering of the event, which you can see ahead of Starship’s next test flight later this year.

All engines of the spaceship’s second stage fire in illustration of hot staging during flight test 2

So far, all signs point to a second test of the spacecraft in at least two months as SpaceX races to upgrade both the launch pad and rocket. As part of its pre-launch series of tests, the company tested the upper-stage Starship rocket last month while briefly igniting its six engines as part of a hot-fire test. This run was successful, and SpaceX has since begun building the launch pad cooling system after repairing it from damage from the first test.

The big mistake SpaceX made at its April launch was trying to fly Starship without a cooling system for the pad. Now, wise from its mistakes, the company has begun moving massive steel plates to the launch site. These are part of a water cooling system and have channels through which the water will dissipate the heat from the world’s largest rocket before it can damage the concrete of the platform.

For the rocket, one of the many changes SpaceX is making is the move to hot staging for stage separation. In a rocket launch, stage separation occurs when the first stage of the rocket separates and the second stage continues the remainder of the journey.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket uses a pusher to separate the two rockets, with the first stage engines shutting down upon stage separation. Conversely, for Starship’s new plans, some first stage engines will continue to run while separation occurs when the second stage engines also fire.

These details were shared by the head of the company, Mr. Elon Musk, who shared in a Twitter space:

So we’ve made a sort of last-minute change, which is really quite significant, to the way stage separation works. Namely to use a hot staging, what is called hot staging where we fire the upper stage or ship engines while the first stage or booster stage engines are still fired. So we shut down most of the booster motors, leaving only a few running. And then at the same time it starts the engines on the ship, or upper stage, which results in a sort of booster stage explosion, so you have to protect the top of the boost stage from being incinerated by the upper stage engines.

To protect the first stage, it will be fitted with vents to deflect flames away from the top of the first stage. Unlike other rocket companies, SpaceX plans to reuse the first stage by landing it, and its plans also call for rapid reuse of the first stage.

An animation of the blazing fire was posted on YouTube by animator Hazegrayart. Covers Starship from three angles, with close-ups unlikely in an actual launch. Also visible are the first stage’s hot gas thrusters that refocus it for rearward thrust, and the video is dubbed with audio from previous SpaceX launches.

You can take a look below: