Starship Rocket Breaks Up Mid-Flight, But SpaceX Catches Booster Again After Launch (cnbc.com) 68
SpaceX conducted its seventh test flight of the Starship rocket on Thursday with mixed results. The upper stage was lost nine minutes after launch, but the Super Heavy booster successfully landed back at the launch site, marking a second successful recovery. CNBC reports: SpaceX said in a post on X that the ship broke up during its ascent burn and that it would "continue to review data from today's flight test to better understand root cause." After the rocket lost communication, social media users posted photos and videos of what appeared to be fireballs in the sky near the Caribbean islands. Starship's launch trajectory takes it due east from Texas, which means the fireballs are likely debris from the rocket breaking apart and reentering the atmosphere.
Starship launched from SpaceX's private "Starbase" facility near Brownsville, Texas, shortly after 5:30 p.m. ET. A few minutes later, the rocket's "Super Heavy" booster returned to land at the launch site, in SpaceX's second successful "catch" during a flight. It did not catch the booster on the last flight. There were no people on board the Starship flight. However, Elon Musk's company was flying 10 "Starlink simulators" in the rocket's payload bay and planned to attempt to deploy the satellite-like objects once in space. This would have been a key test of the rocket's capabilities, as SpaceX needs Starship to deploy its much larger and heavier upcoming generation of Starlink satellites. You can watch a recording of the launch here.
Starship launched from SpaceX's private "Starbase" facility near Brownsville, Texas, shortly after 5:30 p.m. ET. A few minutes later, the rocket's "Super Heavy" booster returned to land at the launch site, in SpaceX's second successful "catch" during a flight. It did not catch the booster on the last flight. There were no people on board the Starship flight. However, Elon Musk's company was flying 10 "Starlink simulators" in the rocket's payload bay and planned to attempt to deploy the satellite-like objects once in space. This would have been a key test of the rocket's capabilities, as SpaceX needs Starship to deploy its much larger and heavier upcoming generation of Starlink satellites. You can watch a recording of the launch here.
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The super-genius strikes again. He really expects this shit to make to Mars? It can't even make it to LEO! BTW his mother must have been referring to the WIle E. Coyote version of a 'genius'.
The actual comedy gold, is trying to watch everyone else pretend they can do what he does.
You actually expect to rely on anyone else to get you off this dying rock? Good luck with the ACMEs of the world.
Re:127.0.0.1 (Score:4, Insightful)
No one is getting "off this dying rock". There is nowhere to go, no matter what the various conmen try to sell you. Either we fix it (unlikely) or we all die.
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Good luck trying "fixing" the sun becoming a red giant.
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Good luck trying "fixing" the sun becoming a red giant.
... in five billion years. Which is a good thing, because Mars will be if anything *less* habitable than it is now. To put five billion years in perspective, animals only diverged from our common ancestor with mushrooms only 800 million years ago. Any descendants we may have alive at that point will be less human than a hagfish -- the most primitive vertebrate still in existence.
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Good luck trying "fixing" the sun becoming a red giant.
A little over one century ago, humans first left the ground and took flight. We’ve gone just a tad farther than that since then.
If we haven’t figured out how to get off this “dying rock” by the time our Sun becomes our enemy, we deserve our lazy-ass fate.
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"If we haven’t figured out how to get off this “dying rock” by the time our Sun becomes our enemy, we deserve our lazy-ass fate."
So, you're planning to stand under a tree when it rains and when the rainwater begins raining through, you plan to just move under the next tree? :-)
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If we haven’t figured out how to get off this “dying rock” by the time our Sun becomes our enemy, we deserve our lazy-ass fate.
Human beings aren't lazy. We're stupid.
If we were lazy, we wouldn't have created industries that now have brought us climate change.
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That's not the deadline. The earth will become uninhabitable long before the sun becomes a red giant.
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We actually only have ~1-1.5 billion years to leave.
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C4 photosynthesis is expected to shut down in about one billion years. Complex life forms have a billion years to go here on earth, that's the deadline.
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Indeed. At the current rate, the humanity will render it uninhabitable in 50 years.
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No one is getting "off this dying rock"
Not with that attitude, they ain't!
Re: 127.0.0.1 (Score:2)
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No one is getting "off this dying rock". There is nowhere to go, no matter what the various conmen try to sell you. Either we fix it (unlikely) or we all die.
Someone is getting off of this rock. It won't be me or you or even our immediate children, but someone will (unless the Fascists fully win).
We are all going to die anyways. Soon. I guarantee you have less than 150 years left to live.
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The actual comedy gold, is trying to watch everyone else pretend they can do what he does.
Not everyone has enough money to do groundbreaking things like put a car in orbit.
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You want to be technical, the car was a giant successful publicity stunt.
The groundbreaking involving the car was the successful launch of Falcon-Heavy on the first attempt. Normally, they'd just have a concrete/steel mass as the payload simulator, because nobody was willing to risk an actual satellite on a brand-new rocket, even if SpaceX offered the space for free.
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Successful first launches of rockets is... the norm, lol.
I guess groundbreaking for SpaceX.
That isn't to shit on SpaceX- their model is different, and that's on purpose.
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Successful first launches of rockets is... the norm, lol.
Not really, the failure rate of the first launch of a new rocket is around 30%. [bbc.com]
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The actual comedy gold, is trying to watch everyone else pretend they can do what he does.
Anyone can do what Shit-Nazi-Turd Nazi Musk does. Because all he does is take credit for the accomplishments of other people.
Tesla was founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.
Tom Mueller is the ACTUAL rocket scientist behind SpaceX.
Hell, PayPal was created by Max Levchin. Musk was the retarded dumb-as-fuck moron who kept insisting they rename the company "X" [the-independent.com] (a running theme for the fucking retarded Afr
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Sincerely,
Peter Thiel
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The actual comedy gold, is trying to watch everyone else pretend they can do what he does.
I can do what he does, watch: "Wokeism is a mind virus and today I solved it." There I did what he does. I can also deadname his daughter if that helps.
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Hey, Elon wrote a fantastic computer game while he was still at school -- I'm sure he must have placed it in the public domain so that the Japanese could make an arcade variant called "Alien Invaders". Then he invented the Hyperloop and, being the philantropist that he is, refused to patent it so that Goddard could could come up with the VacTrain (albeit a century earlier). Rumor is that, thanks to a weird temporal anomaly, Von Braun was a student of Musk's teachings in respect to rockets.
There is not
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Stop being anonymous...and lets revisit this in 6 months.
Bittersweet. Caught Booster, Lost Ship (Score:5, Interesting)
The booster catch was awesome, looks like they lost the first Version2 (carefully avoiding invoking Godwin's law) ship though, complete opposite to New Glen that lost the booster but got the payload into orbit. Can't wait to see what the next version of both these vehicles accomplishes.
It's not surprising though, after all it's a flight test and there are thousands of changes to the new vehicle. Now the question is if they re-fly this booster and will the FAA impose a flight delay until the loss of the ship is determined?
This is great, congrats to SpaceX and Blue Origins for making such awesome progress.
Re:Bittersweet. Caught Booster, Lost Ship (Score:4, Informative)
Agree, unfortunately this looks like the kind of incident that the FAA will want a full report on before green-lighting any further test. If anything because it caused all flights to be diverted over the Northern Atlantic.
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Thats a good point. Space X should be compensating airlines for having to reschedule flights. eg Qantas from Au to South Africa multiple times even for postponed launches.
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Now the question is if they re-fly this booster and will the FAA impose a flight delay until the loss of the ship is determined?
I'd say "no" and "yes".
"No" on the booster re-fly because they want to study the crap out of it for signs of potential failures, and that likely will involve disassembly.
"Yes" on the flight delay, because it appears SpaceX had to activate the Flight Termination System on the Starship 2nd stage. That resulted in debris flying over populated areas, as you can see in the videos.
From where I'm sitting, I don't know much. But I'm going to guess the ship failed to achieve the planned suborbital trajectory, perhap
RUD (Score:2)
I love SpaceX's term for an explosion: rapid unscheduled disassembly (RUD)
SpaceX is doing some amazing stuff, including introducing some new lingo.
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That's not new. The same terminology was used in 1986.
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That's not new. The same terminology was used in 1986.
Nobody likes facts, or historical facts, on the Internet (or even overall) in 2025 America. Don't you know that only Oligarch Elon, his minions, and his hand-puppets are allowed to christen such terms!!!
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Geez, I never thought I'd ever be a Musk apologist, but you seem to have an inordinate amount of hate that doesn't seem justified from the facts.
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It's fucking pathetic that most of the comments on this story are snide digs at the owner of SpaceX. Slashdot isn't a place to come to to talk about tech any more, sadly.
Agreed. Discussions get sidetracked too easily.
That said, Elon Musk is a public figure and revels in spreading his opinions. It's to be expected that people will react to them, especially the ones that are batshit crazy and offensive.
History is replete with people who made a difference, and who also were total assholes.
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All I've got to say is, Musk baby needs to ride the next one.
It'd be pretty impressive, the first time a US president has gone into space.
Re: Lost the crew but caught the booster! (Score:2)
Moment of Flight Termination (Score:3)
https://x.com/AutismCapital/st... [x.com]
Preliminary Cause (Score:3)
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/... [x.com]
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Remember how long is took NASA to even get the most preliminary reading on the cause of any failure? Then there was the mandatory two years of program delay while Congressional factions squabbled over Assigning Blame.
As Sleepy Joe put it in his farewell address, we''re in the new age of robber barons - and I wouldn't have it any other way. This is Cornelius Vanderbilt vs. Leland Stanford all over again. This time around, we will be getting a Transcontinental Railroad to Mars.
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New Glenn GS1 was going through the plasma blackout zone when they lost contact with it. The destruction will not be as visible as Starship, which is significantly lower altitude.
Fireworks (Score:2)
The footage taken from the cockpit is pretty spectacular.
https://www.reddit.com/r/aviat... [reddit.com]
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Amazing - Rockets can land by using their engines! (Score:1)
You have to admire innovation. I'm in my 60s, remember the old sci-fi tv shows with rockets that would land on Earth by firing their engines. People used to laugh at that in the 70s and 80s when shuttle service was vogue. Hard to believe all the PhDs at NASA couldn't do the math on that, not to mention cost+ contracts would have made it amazing expensive.
You've go hand it to Space X and Musk for exploring and implementing new ideas.
So much dogma (Score:1)
Lemme see if I'm getting this straight.
Basically there's something like 4 camps around Elon Musk:
These will have you believe EM is competing with DJT and TR for the job of Satan's Personal Private Mentor Of Evilness. Or even Satan's Lord And Master.
Absolutely EVERYTHING he ever says or does, is always only ever EVIL.
The reason given for this, when actually not circular, is often a screed about how Freedom Of Speech is somehow NOT for thought-criminals to the right of Pol
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All of this ties in with the two-or-so reasons for making outrageous claims about #MuyMalHombre, whether this be Orange Man, Elon, or Tommy;
The first group hates him because they think he's ...kowtowing to Satan. (I was gonna use a word that starts with "fell" and rhymes with "ratio", but some people just can't handle words...)
These people can often list reasons for this, even to the point of being truthful. They even have a point here and there.
The second group believe he's ...kowtowing to th