Hot Staging

Starship and other large birds

Hello there! Welcome to issue one of my eponymous newsletter. We’re working out the kinks, feedback is welcome. On deck: Keeping my hand in with a few thoughts on the world’s largest and most polarizing rocket, and, later, a brief discussion of cooking a turkey two ways.

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I took in the second test flight of SpaceX’s Starship in my study, in the dark, sipping on coffee. On my computer screen, the 36-story tall rocket’s reusable “Super Heavy” booster fired its 33 Raptor engines just after 6 am PT, launching from the southern tip of Texas on a parabola across the Caribbean Sea.

The Starship fired its 6 engines as it separated from the booster 47 miles above the earth, a bit of rocket business called “hot staging,” that sent the vehicle on its way to the Pacific Ocean. In SpaceX’s previous attempt to fly Starship out of the atmosphere, the vehicle lost control and exploded before separation, so getting this far was excellent news for the folks in the control room.

But as the booster did a backflip to fly safely back to Earth, it exploded. And somewhere 150 miles over the sea near the Virgin Islands, Starship’s self-destruct system activated, blowing it into pieces—we’re not sure exactly why: Perhaps the vehicle was straying off course towards a populated area, leading to a decision to say adios by flight controllers, or a computer in the rocket.

It’s the nature of rocket test flights end violently. That makes it hard to evaluate their success or failure, particularly because companies don’t always let you in on what the actual hypothesis is. SpaceX declared victory, and for good reason: Besides getting a little farther on the flight path, their engines appeared to perform more reliably this time around, and the launch pad wasn’t destroyed thanks to new safety equipment. It’s quite an accomplishment: This is literally the most powerful rocket ever created, beggaring analogies—I failed to come up with a relatable image for the combination of power and precision involved, giving up while contemplating the use a sledgehammer to toss an egg 100 yards into a dixie cup.

Still, it’s worth examining our expectations. That first flight test in April was supposed to be an orbital flight test. This attempt was dialed back to an “integrated flight test,” which is fine—but it’s moving the goal posts. Starship still hasn’t left Earth’s atmosphere to orbit the planet, and because of how this test ended, it’s not clear if the Starship was actually demonstrating that it could do that—or if hot staging technique is commensurate with the survival of a reusable booster.

In October, NASA’s Jim Free, the man with the herculean task of taking America back to the Moon, said a successful orbital test flight from Starship was required make his deadlines. Free needs that vehicle to put astronauts on the Moon. But after getting Starship to orbit, there’s a lot to do before a Moon landing—specifically, figuring out how to fuel up the Starship for a second leg of travel after its gets to space, something that’s never been done before with the kind of super-cold propellants that the vehicle uses. This week, a panel of NASA advisers said it might take nearly 20 launches to fuel up a Moon-bound Starship. It took SpaceX five years to launch SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket 20 times; the company can move faster now than it did in the oughties, but this is also a much more complex vehicle.

And while NASA has margin in its schedule to beat China to the lunar surface before 2030, SpaceX might have less wiggle room. Elon Musk’s financial engineering bets are as aggressive as his aerospace engineering.

Earlier this month, Musk said SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network was cash-flow positive. That’s important, because it’s arguably the most immediately valuable business inside SpaceX. But cash-flow positive isn’t enough, because building a huge satellite network requires huge amounts of up-front capital, on the order of $10 billion. For Starlink to succeed, it needs to throw off enough cash not only to amortize the cost of its construction and deliver profits to finance a city on Mars; it also needs to start financing the replacement of its satellites as hundreds of spacecraft launched in 2019 and 2020 reach the end of their lifespans in 2024 and 2025. That’s a key reason Musk denied plans to spin the communications network out through an IPO, at least for now.

Musk has said in the past that he needs Starship’s ability to efficiently deliver Starlink satellites to orbit in order to make money on his space internet network. If SpaceX’s engineers can’t figure out how to get that monster to orbit on a regular cadence soon, the pressure on SpaceX to raise new capital will become intense. That’s never been a problem for Elon Musk before, but entering 2024, the burden of Twitter on his personal finances and time, the impact of his anti-semitic speech, and the competition from rivals like ULA, Blue Origin, and Amazon will decrease his wiggle room. Better hope that the Fed starts cutting interest rates…

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I’m proud of my Turkey technique.

It’s too late, I assume, for you to replicate this, but if you want to dominate Thanksgiving without breaking a sweat, this is how I do it.

• Obtain a bird. As with all cooking, ingredients are everything. I get a “heritage bird” from Marin Sun Farms, essentially a gamier variety, akin to a goose, the other holiday fowl I endorse. Try to get it from a butcher who will do two things for you: Cut off the legs, and spatchcock the bird. You could do it yourself at home with a sharp, heavy knife, as with a chicken, but a turkey is a bigger bird and it’s a lot more work.

• Dry-brine that breast for a few days: I use this spice blend. Make your gravy in advance with the neck. Fry the sage for Samin Nosrat’s special salsa verde in advance, too.

• Confit those legs days before the holiday. Here’s the recipe. Slow cook them in olive oil with garlic and chiles. Make a salsa matcha with the aromatics and the oil. This is almost like a Turkey carnitas: Dark meat, beautifully flavored.

  

• Don’t roast the breast. Grill it over indirect heat. Mark Bittman explains. Grilling and glazing big cuts of meat is so much more forgiving than roasting in the oven; you can use apple or cherry or even mesquite wood to add flavor. Plus, your oven is now free for everything else that needs to be cooked.

• When the breast is done, let it rest while you brown the confited legs. Carve the breast. Your gravy and salsas are already done.

• Enjoy!

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Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Thanks for subscribing to my newsletter; we will be back in two weeks with more writing and links. Please share widely and don’t hesitate to tell me to stop indulging in amateur food blogging…

your pal,

t