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SpaceX has a message for itself, and for the spacecraft set to make history today (Nov. 13): Don’t panic.
The company’s Starship megarocket will conduct its 15th test flight this afternoon, a landmark liftoff that will feature the first-ever attempt to catch both of its stages with its launch tower’s “chopstick” arms.
On Thursday (Nov. 12), SpaceX rolled the Flight 15 upper stage, a vehicle known as Ship 42, out to the launch pad at its Starbase site in South Texas to prep. The company shared photos of the move on X, and in two of those shots we can see some intriguing words inked on the spacecraft: “Don’t panic.”
The phrase is familiar to fans of Douglas Adams’ sci-fi classic “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy“: In the novel, the electronic guidebook that helps travelers find their way across the cosmos has “Don’t panic!” on its cover.
And Ship 42 itself is connected to the beloved book, by virtue of its serial number. In “The Hitchhiker’s Guide,” a supercomputer named Deep Mind is asked to come up with “the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.” It thinks for 7.5 million years and comes up with “42.”
SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has voiced his affection for “The Hitchhiker’s Guide” in the past — and he has already paid tribute to it with a well-placed “Don’t panic.”
The debut launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket back in February 2018 sent Musk’s red Tesla Roadster into orbit around the sun, with a spacesuit-clad mannequin named Starman at the wheel and its entertainment display programmed to read “Don’t panic!”
Starship Flight 15 is scheduled to launch today during a 75-minute window that opens at 5:45 p.m. EST (2245 GMT; 4:45 p.m. local Texas time). You can watch it here at Space.com.
If all goes according to plan, Starship’s Super Heavy first stage will come back to Starbase for a chopsticks catch about 6.5 minutes after liftoff.
Ship 42, meanwhile, will head to orbit, a destination that Starship reached for the first time on Flight 14, which took place on Sept. 28. Ship 42 will deploy 26 of SpaceX’s next-gen Starlink V3 satellites today — the second batch of the spacecraft to reach orbit. (The first set of 26 were delivered on Flight 14).
Ship 42 will stay up for a while after that, circling Earth 14 times before coming back for its own chopsticks catch on Saturday afternoon (Nov. 14), 22.5 hours after launch.
That’s the plan, anyway; SpaceX will only go through with a Ship catch attempt if all systems on the vehicle look good. If there are any problems, the company will divert to a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, near either Hawaii or Chile.
Both of Starship’s stages — Super Heavy and the Ship — are designed to be rapidly reusable. And “rapidly” is a bit of understatement: SpaceX wants to launch 10,000 Starship missions per year by 2030, Musk has said.
The chopsticks-catch strategy is a big part of that vision. Bringing both Starship stages directly back to the launch mount will greatly reduce the time needed for inspection, refurbishment and reflight, according to SpaceX.
The company has already caught Super Heavy on three previous Starship test flights. It has never tried to do so with Ship, instead targeting ocean splashdowns with the upper stage.
The double catch attempt may be unprecedented, but SpaceX seems to be taking its own advice: There’s no panic around Flight 15 or its bold goals.
“I’d say it’s more likely than not that this succeeds next flight,” Musk said last month, during SpaceX’s third-quarter earnings call.