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WIRED
3 days ago
- Business
- WIRED
Starship's Latest Test Reveals New Problems for SpaceX to Solve
Stephen Clark, Ars Technica May 29, 2025 5:30 AM Unlike in recent tests, SpaceX's ninth Starship survived launch, but a fuel tank leak meant it lost control before it could complete its objectives. SpaceX's Starship rocket, flying with a reused first-stage booster for the first time, climbs away from Starbase, Texas. Photograph: SpaceX SpaceX made some progress on another test flight of the world's most powerful rocket Tuesday, finally overcoming technical problems that plagued the program's two previous launches. But minutes into the mission, SpaceX's Starship lost control as it cruised through space, then tumbled back into the atmosphere somewhere over the Indian Ocean nearly an hour after taking off from Starbase, Texas, the company's privately owned spaceport near the US-Mexico border. SpaceX's next-generation rocket is designed to eventually ferry cargo and private and government crews between the Earth, the moon, and Mars. The rocket is complex and gargantuan, wider and longer than a Boeing 747 jumbo jet, and after nearly two years of steady progress since its first test flight in 2023, this has been a year of setbacks for Starship. During the rocket's two previous test flights—each using an upgraded 'Block 2' Starship design—problems in the ship's propulsion system led to leaks during launch, eventually triggering an early shutdown of the rocket's main engines. On both flights, the vehicle spun out of control and broke apart, spreading debris over an area near the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands. The good news is that that didn't happen Tuesday. The ship's main engines fired for their full duration, putting the vehicle on its expected trajectory toward a splashdown in the Indian Ocean. For a short time, it appeared the ship was on track for a successful flight. 'Starship made it to the scheduled ship engine cutoff, so big improvement over last flight! Also, no significant loss of heat shield tiles during ascent,' wrote Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder and CEO, on X. The bad news is that Tuesday's test flight revealed more problems, preventing SpaceX from achieving the most important goals Musk outlined going into the launch. 'Leaks caused loss of main tank pressure during the coast and reentry phase,' Musk posted on X. 'Lot of good data to review.' With the loss of tank pressure, the rocket started slowly spinning as it coasted through the blackness of space more than 100 miles above the Earth. This loss of control spelled another premature end to a Starship test flight. Most notable among the flight's unmet objectives was SpaceX's desire to study the performance of the ship's heat shield, which includes improved heat-absorbing tiles to better withstand the scorching temperatures of reentry back into the atmosphere. 'The most important thing is data on how to improve the tile design, so it's basically data during the high heating, reentry phase in order to improve the tiles for the next iteration,' Musk told Ars Technica before Tuesday's flight. 'So we've got like a dozen or more tile experiments. We're trying different coatings on tiles. We're trying different fabrication techniques, different attachment techniques. We're varying the gap filler for the tiles.' Engineers are hungry for data on the changes to the heat shield, which can't be fully tested on the ground. SpaceX officials hope the new tiles will be more robust than the ones flown on the first-generation, or Block 1, version of Starship, allowing future ships to land and quickly launch again, without the need for time-consuming inspections, refurbishment, and in some cases, tile replacements. This is a core tenet of SpaceX's plans for Starship, which include delivering astronauts to the surface of the moon, proliferating low Earth orbit with refueling tankers, and eventually helping establish a settlement on Mars, all of which are predicated on rapid reusability of Starship and its Super Heavy booster. Last year, SpaceX successfully landed three Starships in the Indian Ocean after they survived hellish reentries, but they came down with damaged heat shields. After an early end to Tuesday's test flight, SpaceX's heat shield engineers will have to wait a while longer to satiate their appetites. And the longer they have to wait, the longer the wait for other important Starship developmental tests, such as a full orbital flight, in-space refueling, and recovery and reuse of the ship itself, replicating what SpaceX has now accomplished with the Super Heavy booster. Failing Forward or Falling Short? The ninth flight of Starship began with a booming departure from SpaceX's Starbase launch site at 6:35 pm CDT (7:35 pm EDT; 23:35 UTC) Tuesday. After a brief hold to resolve last-minute technical glitches, SpaceX resumed the countdown clock to tick away the final seconds before liftoff. A gush of water poured over the deck of the launch pad just before 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines ignited on the rocket's massive Super Heavy first stage booster. Once all 33 engines lit, the enormous stainless steel rocket—towering more than 400 feet (123 meters)—began to climb away from Starbase. An onboard camera shows the six Raptor engines on SpaceX's Starship upper stage, roughly three minutes after launching from South Texas on Tuesday. Photograph: SpaceX Heading east, the Super Heavy booster produced more than twice the power of NASA's Saturn V rocket, an icon of the Apollo moon program, as it soared over the Gulf of Mexico. After two and a half minutes, the Raptor engines switched off and the Super Heavy booster separated from Starship's upper stage. Six Raptor engines fired on the ship to continue pushing it into space. As the booster started maneuvering for an attempt to target an intact splashdown in the sea, the ship burned its engines more than six minutes, reaching a top speed of 16,462 mph (26,493 kilometers per hour), right in line with preflight predictions. A member of SpaceX's launch team declared 'nominal orbit insertion' a little more than nine minutes into the flight, indicating the rocket reached its planned trajectory, just shy of the velocity required to enter a stable orbit around the Earth. The flight profile was supposed to take Starship halfway around the world, with the mission culminating in a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean northwest of Australia. But a few minutes after engine shutdown, the ship started to diverge from SpaceX's flight plan. First, SpaceX aborted an attempt to release eight simulated Starlink Internet satellites in the first test of the Starship's payload deployer. The cargo bay door would not fully open, and engineers called off the demonstration, according to Dan Huot, a member of SpaceX's communications team who hosted the company's live launch broadcast Tuesday. That, alone, would not have been a big deal. However, a few minutes later, Huot made a more troubling announcement. 'We are in a little bit of a spin,' he said. 'We did spring a leak in some of the fuel tank systems inside of Starship, which a lot of those are used for attitude control. So, at this point, we've essentially lost our attitude control with Starship.' This eliminated any chance for a controlled reentry and an opportunity to thoroughly scrutinize the performance of Starship's heat shield. The spin also prevented a brief restart of one of the ship's Raptor engines in space. 'Not looking great for a lot of our on-orbit objectives for today,' Huot said. SpaceX continued streaming live video from Starship as it soared over the Atlantic Ocean and Africa. Then, a blanket of super-heated plasma enveloped the vehicle as it plunged into the atmosphere. Still in a slow tumble, the ship started shedding scorched chunks of its skin before the screen went black. SpaceX lost contact with the vehicle around 46 minutes into the flight. The ship likely broke apart over the Indian Ocean, dropping debris into a remote swath of sea within its expected flight corridor. Victories Where You Find Them Although the flight did not end as well as SpaceX officials hoped, the company made some tangible progress Tuesday. Most importantly, it broke the streak of back-to-back launch failures on Starship's two most recent test flights in January and March. SpaceX's investigation earlier this year into a January 16 launch failure concluded that vibrations likely triggered fuel leaks and fires in the ship's engine compartment, causing an early shutdown of the rocket's engines. Engineers said the vibrations were likely in resonance with the vehicle's natural frequency, intensifying the shaking beyond the levels SpaceX predicted. Engineers made fixes and launched the next Starship test flight March 6, but it again encountered trouble midway through the ship's main engine burn. SpaceX said earlier this month that the inquiry into the March 6 failure found its most probable root cause was a hardware failure in one of the upper stage's center engines, resulting in 'inadvertent propellant mixing and ignition.' In its official statement, the company was silent on the nature of the hardware failure but said engines for future test flights will receive additional preload on key joints, a new nitrogen purge system, and improvements to the propellant drain system. A new generation of Raptor engines, known as Raptor 3, should begin flying around the end of this year with additional improvements to address the failure mechanism, SpaceX said. Another bright spot in Tuesday's test flight was that it marked the first time SpaceX reused a Super Heavy booster from a prior launch. The booster used Tuesday previously launched on Starship's seventh test flight in January before it was caught back at the launch pad and refurbished for another space shot. Booster 14 comes in for the catch after flying to the edge of space on January 16. SpaceX flew this booster again Tuesday but did not attempt a catch. Photograph: SpaceX After releasing the Starship upper stage to continue its journey into space, the Super Heavy booster flipped around to fly tail-first and reignited 13 of its engines to begin boosting itself back toward the South Texas coast. On this test flight, SpaceX aimed the booster for a hard splashdown in the ocean just offshore from Starbase, rather than a mid-air catch back at the launch pad, which SpaceX accomplished on three of its four most recent test flights. SpaceX made the change for a few reasons. First, engineers programmed the booster to fly at a higher angle of attack during its descent, increasing the amount of atmospheric drag on the vehicle compared to past flights. This change should reduce propellant usage on the booster's landing burn, which occurs just before the rocket is caught by the launch pad's mechanical arms, or 'chopsticks,' on a recovery flight. During the landing burn itself, engineers wanted to demonstrate the booster's ability to respond to an engine failure on descent by using just two of the rocket's 33 engines for the end of the burn, rather than the usual three. Instead, the rocket appeared to explode around the beginning of the landing burn before it could complete the final landing maneuver. Before the explosion at the end of its flight, the booster appeared to fly as designed. Data displayed on SpaceX 's live broadcast of the launch showed all 33 of the rocket's engines fired normally during its initial ascent from Texas, a reassuring sign for the reliability of the Super Heavy booster. SpaceX kicked off the year with the ambition to launch as many as 25 Starship test flights in 2025, a goal that now seems to be unattainable. However, an X post by Musk on Tuesday night suggested a faster cadence of launches in the coming months. He said the next three Starships could launch at intervals of about once every three to four weeks. After that, SpaceX is expected to transition to a third-generation, or Block 3, Starship design with more changes. It wasn't immediately clear how long it might take SpaceX to correct whatever problems caused Tuesday's test flight woes. The Starship vehicle for the next flight is already built and completed cryogenic proof-testing April 27. For the last few ships, SpaceX has completed this cryogenic testing milestone around one and a half to three months prior to launch. A spokesperson for the Federal Aviation Administration said the agency is 'actively working' with SpaceX in the aftermath of Tuesday's test flight but did not say if the FAA will require SpaceX to conduct a formal mishap investigation. Shana Diez, director of Starship engineering at SpaceX, chimed in with her own post on X. Based on preliminary data from Tuesday's flight, she is optimistic the next test flight will fly soon. She said engineers still need to examine data to confirm that none of the problems from Starship's previous flight recurred on this launch, but added that 'all evidence points to a new failure mode' on Tuesday's test flight. SpaceX will also study what caused the Super Heavy booster to explode on descent before moving forward with another booster catch attempt at Starbase, she said. 'Feeling both relieved and a bit disappointed,' Diez wrote. 'Could have gone better today but also could have gone much worse.' This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.
WIRED
14-05-2025
- Science
- WIRED
SpaceX Tests Starship Fixes After Back-to-Back Failures
Stephen Clark, Ars Technica May 14, 2025 7:31 PM The next Starship launch may come as soon as next week. A recent test of its Raptor engines suggest SpaceX has resolved the issues that plagued its recent flights. Photograph:SpaceX fired six Raptor engines on the company's next Starship rocket Monday, clearing a major hurdle on the path to launch later this month on a high-stakes test flight to get the private rocket program back on track. Starship ignited its Raptor engines Monday morning on a test stand near SpaceX's Starbase launch facility in South Texas. The engine ran for approximately 60 seconds, and SpaceX confirmed the test-firing in a post on X: "Starship completed a long duration six-engine static fire and is undergoing final preparations for the ninth flight test." SpaceX hasn't officially announced a target launch date, but maritime warnings along Starship's flight path over the Gulf of Mexico suggest the launch might happen as soon as next Wednesday, May 21. The launch window would open at 6:30 pm local time (7:30 pm EDT; 23:30 UTC). If everything goes according to plan, Starship is expected to soar into space and fly halfway around the world, targeting a reentry and controlled splashdown into the Indian Ocean. After Monday's successful static fire test, SpaceX is in the final stretch of preparations for Starship's ninth full-scale test flight. Last month, SpaceX test-fired the rocket's massive booster stage, known as Super Heavy. The Super Heavy booster assigned to the next Starship launch will become the first that SpaceX will reuse from a previous test flight. This, alone, is a significant step for the Starship program. SpaceX wants the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage to become rapidly reusable, eventually operating more like an airplane than a legacy rocket. The booster slated to launch on Flight 9 made its first flight in January, when it soared to the edge of space, released SpaceX's Starship upper stage, and returned to the launch pad, where it was caught in mid-air by heavy-duty mechanical arms. SpaceX will again try to catch the Super Heavy booster on Flight 9. Righting the Ship While reusing the first stage is a noteworthy milestone, the next flight is important for another reason. SpaceX's last two Starship test flights ended prematurely when the rocket's upper stage lost power and spun out of control, dropping debris into the sea near the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands. With Flight 9, SpaceX hopes to get the Starship program back on track. The company aimed for as many as 25 Starship test flights this year, but will now likely fall short of that number. Near-term goals beyond Flight 9 include returning Starship from low-Earth orbit to the launch site, with a tower catch similar to the one SpaceX used to recover the Super Heavy booster. Then, SpaceX will begin flight experiments with an in-space refueling system to transfer super-cold liquid propellants between two Starships in orbit. This is an important milestone for NASA, which has a contract with SpaceX worth more than $4 billion to develop a version of Starship for landing humans on the Moon. To do that, SpaceX must launch around 10 Starship refueling tankers—the exact number remains unclear—to gas up the Moon-bound Starship lander before it can depart low-Earth orbit. SpaceX founder Elon Musk also wants Starship to fly to Mars, which will, likewise, require a mastery of in-space refueling. NASA may also soon rely on Starship and other massive commercial rockets to launch astronauts from Earth. The Trump administration has proposed canceling NASA's Space Launch System rocket after two more flights in favor of lower-cost commercial options. Before any of this becomes possible, SpaceX must prove it has overcome the setbacks encountered on the two previous test flights. Both flights failed at roughly the same time—approximately eight minutes after liftoff—near the end of the ship's engine firing. SpaceX investigators, working under the oversight of the Federal Aviation Administration, determined the Starship test flight in January failed after propellant leaks led to fires in the rocket's aft compartment, or attic. This led to the early shutdown of the rocket's engines and eventual breakup. Engineers concluded the leaks were most likely caused by vibrations during the ship's climb into space. The vibrations were in resonance with the vehicle's natural frequency, intensifying the shaking beyond the levels SpaceX predicted. For the next test flight on March 6, SpaceX made changes to the ship's feed lines routing fuel to its Raptor engines, made adjustments to propellant temperatures, and flew the engines at a new throttle setting. But that didn't solve the problem. Once again, Starship's engines cut off too early, and the rocket broke apart before falling to Earth. SpaceX said "an energetic event" in the aft portion of Starship resulted in the loss of several Raptor engines, followed by a loss of attitude control and a loss of communications with the ship. The similarities between the two failures suggest a likely design issue with the upgraded "Block 2" version of Starship, which debuted in January and flew again in March. Starship Block 2 is slightly taller than the ship SpaceX used on the rocket's first six flights, with redesigned flaps, improved batteries and avionics, and notably, a new fuel feed line system for the ship's Raptor vacuum engines. SpaceX has not released the results of the investigation into the Flight 8 failure, and the FAA hasn't yet issued a launch license for Flight 9. Likewise, SpaceX hasn't released any information on the changes it made to Starship for next week's flight. What we do know about the Starship vehicle for Flight 9—designated Ship 35—is that it took a few tries to complete a full-duration test-firing. SpaceX completed a single-engine static fire on April 30, simulating the restart of a Raptor engine in space. Then, on May 1, SpaceX aborted a six-engine test-firing before reaching its planned 60-second duration. Videos captured by media observing the test showed a flash in the engine plume, and at least one piece of debris was seen careening out of the flame trench below the ship. SpaceX ground crews returned Ship 35 to the production site a couple of miles away, perhaps to replace a damaged engine, before rolling Starship back to the test stand over the weekend for Monday's successful engine firing. Now, the ship will head back to the Starbase build site, where technicians will make final preparations for Flight 9. These final tasks may include loading mock-up Starlink broadband satellites into the ship's payload bay and touchups to the rocket's heat shield. These are two elements of Starship that SpaceX engineers are eager to demonstrate on Flight 9, beyond just fixing the problems from the last two missions. Those failures prevented Starship from testing its satellite deployer and an upgraded heat shield designed to better withstand scorching temperatures up to 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit (1,430 degrees Celsius) during reentry. This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.
WIRED
08-03-2025
- Science
- WIRED
SpaceX's Latest Starship Explosion Marks Two Consecutive Failures
Stephen Clark, Ars Technica Mar 7, 2025 11:00 PM The new version of Starship will be tested again in four to six weeks. A third consecutive failure could indicate fundamental problems with the updated design. SpaceX's mega rocket Starship makes a test flight from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, Thursday, March 6, 2025. Photograph: Eric Gay/AP Photo SpaceX's Starship launcher spun out of control minutes after liftoff Thursday, showering fiery debris over the Bahamas and dealing another setback to Elon Musk's rocket program after a failure under similar circumstances less than two months ago. Starship and its Super Heavy booster, loaded with millions of pounds of methane and liquid oxygen propellants, lumbered off their launchpad in Texas at 5:30 pm Central time to begin the eighth full-scale test flight of SpaceX's new-generation rocket. Thirty-three Raptor engines propelled the 404-foot-tall (123.1-meter) rocket through a clear afternoon sky with more than twice the power of NASA's Saturn V rocket, the workhorse of the Apollo lunar program. Repeating a feat SpaceX accomplished with Starship twice before, the rocket's Super Heavy booster separated from the Starship upper stage roughly two-and-a-half minutes into the flight, then guided itself back to the Texas coastline for a catch by mechanical arms on the launchpad's tower. SpaceX is now 3-for-3 with attempts to catch a Super Heavy booster back at the launch site, a sign that engineers are well on their way to mastering how to recover and reuse boosters in a similar way as they do with the smaller workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. This story originally appeared on Ars Technica, a trusted source for technology news, tech policy analysis, reviews, and more. Ars is owned by WIRED's parent company, Condé Nast. But SpaceX is now 0-for-2 on test flights of the newest version of Starship, called Block 2 or Version 2. The first six Starship test flights used an initial version of the ship, but SpaceX is modernizing its fleet with Starship Block 2, which stands slightly taller than the first version in order to accommodate additional propellants. Starship Block 2 also debuts smaller forward flaps to give the hardware another layer of protection from the scorching heat of reentry. The other notable change with Block 2 is a redesigned fuel-line system to feed propellants to the ship's six Raptor engines. Hardware Rich The good news is there are many more Starships under construction in South Texas, so SpaceX likely won't have to wait long to try again. The company started the year aiming for as many as 25 Starship test flights in 2025 but will end the first quarter of the year with just two. 'Today was a minor setback,' wrote Elon Musk, SpaceX's CEO, on X. 'Progress is measured by time. The next ship will be ready in 4 to 6 weeks.' SpaceX Starship Flight 8 launches from Orbital Launch Pad A at Boca Chica beach on March 06, 2025 in Boca Chica Beach, Texas. Photograph:SpaceX has contracts with NASA worth approximately $4 billion to design and develop a human-rated Moon lander based on the Starship design. The Starship lander is a central piece of NASA's architecture for the Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface later this decade. For Starship to fly to the Moon, SpaceX must refill it with super-cold propellants in low-Earth orbit, something no one has done at this scale before. Musk sees Starship as the interplanetary backbone for transporting cargo and people to Mars, one of his most consistent long-term goals. This, too, requires orbital refueling. Musk recently suggested SpaceX could be ready to demonstrate ship-to-ship orbital refueling in 2026, a year later than the 2025 goal NASA officials discussed in December. Starship will also launch SpaceX's next-generation Starlink Internet satellites. Before Thursday's launch, ground crews loaded four Starlink mock-ups inside Starship's payload bay to test the rocket's deployment mechanism. Officials were eager to assess the performance of Starship Block 2's heat shield before committing to an attempt to recover the ship intact (like SpaceX is already doing with the Super Heavy booster) on a future mission. But the premature ending of this test flight means those objectives must wait. SpaceX oversees Starship using an iterative development cycle. Engineers come up with new designs, rapidly test them, and then incorporate lessons learned into the next rocket. It's not surprising to see a few rockets blow up using this spiral development cycle. But back-to-back failures, especially with so many similarities, may point to a more fundamental issue. The flight plan going into Thursday's mission called for sending Starship on a journey halfway around the world from Texas, culminating in a controlled reentry over the Indian Ocean before splashing down northwest of Australia. The test flight was supposed to be a do-over of the previous Starship flight on January 16, when the rocket's upper stage—itself known as Starship, or ship—succumbed to fires fueled by leaking propellants in its engine bay. Engineers determined the most likely cause of the propellant leak was a harmonic response several times stronger than predicted, suggesting the vibrations during the ship's climb into space were in resonance with the vehicle's natural frequency. This would have intensified the vibrations beyond the levels engineers expected. The Super Heavy booster returned to Starbase in Texas to be caught back at the launch pad. Photograph: Scott Schilke/AP Photo Engineers test-fired the Starship vehicle earlier this month for this week's test flight, validating changes to propellant temperatures, operating thrust, and the ship's fuel feed lines leading to its six Raptor engines. But engineers missed something. On Thursday, the Raptor engines began shutting down on Starship about eight minutes into the flight, and the rocket started tumbling 90 miles (146 kilometers) over the southeastern Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX ground controllers lost all contact with the rocket about nine-and-a-half minutes after liftoff. 'Prior to the end of the ascent burn, an energetic event in the aft portion of Starship resulted in the loss of several Raptor engines,' SpaceX wrote on X. 'This in turn led to a loss of attitude control and ultimately a loss of communications with Starship.' Just like in January, residents and tourists across the Florida peninsula, the Bahamas, and the Turks and Caicos islands shared videos of fiery debris trails appearing in the twilight sky. Air traffic controllers diverted or delayed dozens of commercial airline flights flying through the debris footprint, just as they did in response to the January incident. There were no immediate reports Thursday of any Starship wreckage falling over populated areas. In January, residents in Turks and Caicos recovered small debris fragments, including one piece that caused minor damage when it struck a car. The debris field from Thursday's failed flight appeared to fall west of the areas where debris fell after Starship Flight 7. A spokesperson for the US Federal Aviation Administration said the regulatory agency will require SpaceX to perform an investigation into Thursday's Starship failure. This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
SpaceX's Latest Starship Exploding on Launch Is a Grim Setback for the Company
NASA's Space Shuttle successfully reached orbit during its first attempt in April 1981. The Saturn V rocket that launched the first humans to the Moon also didn't explode during liftoff in July 1969. Even NASA's ultra-expensive and expendable Space Launch System didn't erupt into a giant fireball during its maiden voyage in late 2022. But SpaceX has taken a strikingly different approach for its reusable, two-stage rockets. Instead of lining up an orbital-ready vehicle on the launch pad, the company has picked an iterative design methodology — with varying degrees of success, and a string of explosions that are starting to look less like learning from failure and more like a sustained failure. The pros and cons of the approach have never been more apparent when it comes to its heavy lift vehicle, dubbed Starship, the "world's most powerful launch vehicle" ever developed. SpaceX has run into serious issues trying to get a prototype upper stage launched into orbit, then reenter the atmosphere and make a soft landing upon its return. During its latest attempt on Thursday evening, the company's prototype, dubbed Starship 34, roared into the sky from SpaceX's testing facilities in South Texas. But an "energetic event in the aft portion of Starship resulted in the loss of several engines" minutes into the launch, according to the company's statement published late on Thursday. "This in turn led to a loss of attitude control and ultimately a loss of communications with Starship." It was a moment of deja vu, as Starship 34's predecessor suffered a notably similar fate during the company's seventh test flight in January. At the time, the prototype self-destructed following an oxygen leak, flashes, and "sustained fires" in its aft section. In short, SpaceX has had two of its Starships break up into countless pieces in a row, resulting in a stunning display of bright streaks lighting up the night sky each time. The back-to-back mishaps highlight the degree of difficulty SpaceX is wrestling with. "The loss of Starship on ascent during the second flight in a row is clearly a serious setback for SpaceX," tweeted Ars Technica's Eric Berger, who has published two books on the company's history. "Loss of engines and attitude control on SpaceX's Starship Flight 8, failing at about the same time as Flight 7," wrote his colleague, space reporter Stephen Clark. "Some real growing pains for the world's largest rocket." Meanwhile, Musk remained quiet, eventually venting his frustration by slinging insults at his critics on his social media platform. Where the latest setback leaves SpaceX's ambitions to deliver NASA astronauts to the lunar surface in a matter of just two years as part of the agency's Artemis program, let alone send humans to Mars, remains to be seen. Through the company's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX has already demonstrated that its iterative design methodology can work. But Starship is a project of unprecedented scale, with a gargantuan learning curve. How many more "rapid unscheduled disassemblies," a term used by SpaceX officials to denote an explosion, can the company still afford? SpaceX claimed that its eighth flight was a step in the right direction. "With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today's flight will help us improve Starship's reliability," the company wrote in its statement. "We will conduct a thorough investigation, in coordination with the FAA, and implement corrective actions to make improvements on future Starship flight tests." The space firm has already moved mountains to lift a 400-foot tower of stainless steel off the ground. But getting it to reliably enter orbit, survive the extreme heat during reentry, and land in one piece appears to be a far more difficult exercise. A major glimmer of hope, however, is Starship's booster, Super Heavy, which was successfully caught by the company's "Mechazilla" tower for the third time this week — a major engineering feat that could buy the company some time as it irons out the many kinks of its upper stage. More on Starship: SpaceX Having Trouble Getting Starship Launched Again After Explosion
