Starship Reaches Orbit, Giving Engineers Months of Flight Data to Analyze
Former SpaceX Starship software manager Scott Morton calls the rocket’s first trip to orbit a “monumental step forward,” despite an engine failure during ascent. In an interview with Bloomberg’s Ed Ludlow, Morton argues that the flight’s data may prove as valuable as the milestone itself: engineers will spend weeks or months examining how the vehicle and its software performed. He says Starship’s goal of carrying people to Mars was part of the program’s vision from the beginning.
Orbit was the milestone; the data is the next measure of progress
Scott Morton called Starship’s first trip to orbit a “monumental step forward.” The flight had an engine hiccup, but the vehicle deployed Starlink satellites in orbit and, Morton said, appeared to complete its first deorbit burn. He said he would regard the flight as a massive success if he were still at SpaceX.
The flight’s visible achievements are only part of its value. Morton expects engineers to spend weeks, probably months, examining every system and the software that ran it. In some cases, they will review telemetry point by point to determine whether the vehicle performed as expected. He called the data the most valuable thing to come out of the flight and said the team had likely learned a tremendous amount.
That makes the test’s outcome both a milestone and the start of a substantial review. Reaching orbit mattered, Morton said, and so did the detailed record of how the vehicle behaved along the way.
Ed Ludlow framed the flight around the complexity of a launch system and spacecraft that operate autonomously. Morton said that autonomy begins even before liftoff, while Starship is still on the launch pad. His preference is to encode as much of the planned operation as possible in software rather than depend on manual commands. A plan expressed in software, he said, is easier to reason through.
Automation means planning for contingencies, not changing the plan in flight
Morton said software was already prepared for the type of contingency that arose during the flight. In his account, automation includes both carrying out planned operations and having software ready for scenarios that could interrupt them.
That preparation sits alongside a conservative approach to changing software. Asked whether Starship could receive updates in the way a Tesla can, Morton said SpaceX could not make over-the-air updates during his time on the program. He was unsure what the capability was at the time of the interview.
Some parameters and other settings could be adjusted, he said. But the general preference was to keep the software locked down, especially during flight, and to operate within expected bounds rather than make changes in real time. Morton suggested that vehicles on long-duration missions in orbit might eventually need some kind of update capability; that was not how the program worked during his tenure.
The flight record is how engineers test what the software did
The months of review Morton expects will cover both the vehicle’s systems and the software that controlled them. Engineers will check whether performance matched expectations, using the flight data to examine what happened across the mission rather than relying only on its headline outcome.
That scrutiny matters in a program where, as Morton described it, software plans for the vehicle’s operation and for contingencies. The data gives the team a way to inspect how those plans played out. Morton said he had been on the program from its beginning and was probably the first software engineer at Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas. He found the vehicle’s reaching orbit “incredibly exciting,” but emphasized the work still to come in analyzing the flight.
The vehicle’s Mars purpose was part of the plan from the start
Morton recalled that the team had CAD drawings of a vehicle resembling the Starship that exists today, even at the program’s beginning. He said the goal was for Starship to take people to Mars, an ambition the team had in mind during the long hours of work.
Ludlow connected that vision to full and rapid reusability, which he said SpaceX’s future business lines depend on. Morton’s account was that the Mars aim was not a later addition to the program’s purpose: it was part of what the team was working toward from the outset.