SpaceX Has a Major Problem: New Versions of Starship Are Performing Worse Than Older Ones
On Thursday, during Starship's eighth orbital flight test, the vehicle's upper stage exploded, showering debris down over the coast of Florida. Worse, it marked the second time that the Block 2 Starship blew up; a similarly spectacular scene played out during the previous flight test in late January, when the upper stage experienced a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" over the Caribbean.
The pair of botched flights could be a huge setback for SpaceX.
"There's this persona that has built up around SpaceX, but you're starting to see that they're human, too," Daniel Dumbacher, a professor of engineering practice at Purdue University and a former NASA official, told the NYT.
Until this year, the Elon Musk-owned aerospace company has made considerable strides with its flagship rocket, overcoming the ill omen of its explosive debut.
Engineers have successfully demonstrated that the lower-stage Super Heavy booster can guide itself back to a launch tower and be caught midair, in a key step towards making the launch system reusable. They have also shown that the upper stage Raptor engines can be relit in the vacuum of space, which will be necessary if the Starship is to be able to perform controlled re-entries into the Earth's atmosphere.
But the latest attempts to build on that progress have backfired. Both tests of Starship Block 2, which features a slightly larger upper stage with added heat shielding and a redesigned fuel line, have ended in midair explosions before reaching space. Whereas older iterations of the upper stage have successfully made it to orbit, flown thousands of miles, and re-entered for a splashdown in the ocean.
Destruction is par for the course for SpaceX, whose ethos mirrors Silicon Valley's "move fast and break things" approach. But what's especially worrying in this case with Starship, the NYT notes, is that the failures in both of the Block 2 tests appear to be caused by a similar issue in the area near the vehicle's engines. If so, that hints there's a huge design flaw in the new Starship that engineers haven't been able to figure out yet, according to the newspaper.
Musk, for his part, brushed off the explosion.
"Today was a minor setback," he wrote on X, following the blast. On the other hand, Musk exhibited extremely thin skin in response to detractors who mocked the latest failure, which could be a sign that, internally, the situation is more dire than he's willing to let on.
Dumbacher is bullish on Starship's success, but even he's not certain how quickly SpaceX can turn things around.
"I have no doubt that they'll get it addressed, and they'll get flying again and they'll get things fixed," Dumbacher told the NYT. "I just don't know how long it's going to take them to do that."
More on Starship: SpaceX Says Numerous Fires Broke Out on Board Its Starship Spacecraft During Most Recent Launch
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