THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA says SpaceX’s next Starship flight could test refueling tech.

“NASA and SpaceX are reviewing options for the demonstration to take place during an integrated flight test of Starship and the Super Heavy rocket,” Russell said in a statement. “However, no final decisions on timing have been made.”

Elon Musk, the company’s founder and CEO, said on November 19 that hardware for the next Super Heavy/Starship test should be ready in three to four weeks. That projection seems dubious because SpaceX hasn’t moved any pieces of the rocket to the launch pad for pre-flight testing, but a test flight early next year appears realistic.

Other factors that could play into the Starship launch schedule include tune-ups or fixes to resolve problems that occurred on the November 18 test flight and receiving a new launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration.

When SpaceX tries transferring 10 metric tons of propellant from tank to tank inside Starship, it will be at a scale never before attempted in space. But it’s a small fraction of the amount of fuel and oxidizer needed to fill a Starship spacecraft in orbit. The ship’s total propellant capacity is some 1,200 metric tons. After the tank-to-tank demonstration, SpaceX will attempt a ship-to-ship propellant transfer between two Starships linked together in Earth orbit.

“That’s really when we start maturing the systems, and when it really gets exciting for HLS, because those are the building blocks that we need, and, frankly, it’s never been done successfully in orbit,” said Lisa Watson-Morgan, NASA’s HLS program manager, in an interview with Ars last month.

Stay tuned…