SpaceX's Latest Starship Test Flight Ends With Another Explosion (npr.org) 275
SpaceX's eighth Starship test flight ended in failure after losing control and breaking apart shortly after launch, sending debris over Florida. "Starship didn't make it quite as high or as far" as the attempt nearly two months ago," notes NPR. That attempt ended with an explosion that sent flaming debris raining down on the Turks and Caicos. From the report: This time, wreckage from the latest explosion was seen streaming from the skies over Florida. It was not immediately known whether the spacecraft's self-destruct system had kicked in to blow it up. The 403-foot rocket blasted off from Texas. SpaceX caught the first-stage booster back at the pad with giant mechanical arms, but engines on the spacecraft on top started shutting down as it streaked eastward for what was supposed to be a controlled entry over the Indian Ocean, half a world away. Contact was lost as the spacecraft went into an out-of-control spin.
Starship reached nearly 90 miles in altitude before trouble struck and before four mock satellites could be deployed. It was not immediately clear where it came down, but images of flaming debris were captured from Florida, including near Cape Canaveral, and posted online. The space-skimming flight was supposed to last an hour. "Unfortunately this happened last time too, so we have some practice at this now," SpaceX flight commentator Dan Huot said from the launch site. SpaceX later confirmed that the spacecraft experienced "a rapid unscheduled disassembly" during the ascent engine firing. "Our team immediately began coordination with safety officials to implement pre-planned contingency responses," the company said in a statement posted online. You can watch a recorded livestream of the launch on X.
Starship reached nearly 90 miles in altitude before trouble struck and before four mock satellites could be deployed. It was not immediately clear where it came down, but images of flaming debris were captured from Florida, including near Cape Canaveral, and posted online. The space-skimming flight was supposed to last an hour. "Unfortunately this happened last time too, so we have some practice at this now," SpaceX flight commentator Dan Huot said from the launch site. SpaceX later confirmed that the spacecraft experienced "a rapid unscheduled disassembly" during the ascent engine firing. "Our team immediately began coordination with safety officials to implement pre-planned contingency responses," the company said in a statement posted online. You can watch a recorded livestream of the launch on X.
Ended in data, not failure. (Score:5, Insightful)
SpaceX's eighth Starship test flight ended in failure
No, it ended in data.
Which can lead to full success when you keep trying.
Catching the booster alone was a big deal because that had not been done before, only second stage.
The important thing is how fast they can iterate based on whatever data they gather, and it seems like they can iterate rapidly now.
Re:Ended in data, not failure. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Ended in data, not failure. (Score:5, Informative)
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SLS has already sent Artemis around the moon and back.
Re: Ended in data, not failure. (Score:2)
You still have to pay draftees. The only people you don't have to pay are conscripted slaves, and they are not reliable as the first duty of the slave is escape.
Re:Ended in data, not failure. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the data they would have gotten was that great either. They really need to test heat shield performance and the flap design changes made to starship. They need the results from this to inform the next step in starship design. What they really need, if they want to be able to iterate on the design quickly, is to have starships coming back to the launch tower so they can inspect them.
But they are not making progress towards this goal. They still need to have an orbital flight, and I doubt they will want to do this until they have had at least two V2 designs perform sub-orbital flights without issue. Starship is massive. Having it stuck in orbit, to re-enter at a time that they can't control, would be a serious safety issue.
I guess the problem is that they have a very full development program - if everything went well, they would be pushed to get a starship return to launch within the year. After that they still need to make the stack reusable, then rapidly reusable and then deal with things like orbital refuelling and figuring out how to land on mars/moon. There is a lot of work, and if at each point they are going to have setbacks due to items they have already tested, then it is going to slow the design massively.
To be honest, this is really one of the flaws with their 'agile' approach. Moving quickly works well when you have only a few probabilities stacking up (e.g. testing belly flop landing and things like that), but as your system becomes more and more complicated, you get hammered by even small failure probabilities in parts that you aren't trying to test. This seems to be the case with these two flights, and it will just get worse and worse as they try to add capability to starship. It could very well get to the point where they are better off sitting down and doing meticulous bench design and testing of parts, rather than spending $100million per launch to find out that there are unexpected tolerances in some valve body etc that didn't appear before.
Re: Ended in data, not failure. (Score:4, Insightful)
Please stop saying stupid things like that because it just makes you look like a fool. SpaceX bid on public programs, and they won the contracts...period. Would you have preferred companies like Boeing to have been awarded the contracts?
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SpaceX bid on public programs, and they won the contracts...
Of course they did... We even had an article on that three stories down :)
Ah, whatever, arguing with Kool Aid drinkers has never been a sport I enjoy, keep sucking musk from that failed implant.
Re: Ended in data, not failure. (Score:5, Informative)
Just for reference, SpaceX did and does bid on public programs, but Starship/Superheavy is primarily funded by SpaceX, not by federal funding.
(they do have a contract to turn it into a lunar lander, once they get it working as a launch vehicle).
Progress by trial and error [Re: Ended in data...] (Score:5, Insightful)
This can be a very effective way of learning. But only if they:
1. DO make an intelligent effort to learn from their errors.
2. Don't give up just because something failed once.
3. Don't run out of money
4. Don't create a danger, or appearance of possible danger, so much that there's a public outcry to stop it.
This was very much the way orbital boosters were developed in the 50s and 60s, and I recommend looking at some of the youtube videos of early rocket devleopment failures: https://www.youtube.com/result... [youtube.com]
But, we mostly gave up on this approach.
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Re: Progress by trial and error [Re: Ended in da (Score:4, Interesting)
Society is crumbling down here on Earth
No, we're not. By all accounts we still remain in the most universally prosperous age in history. To call it a golden age is an understatement.
It's annoying the way some people declare that the world has gone to shit every single time their guy loses an election. Just move to Canada where all of your problems will suddenly go away and you'll live happily ever after. If not, then sit down, shut up, and wait until the mid-terms where you'll either laugh at the opposition or simply repeat what you're already doing.
And yeah, I get it, you believe there won't be anymore elections, which is all the more reason why you should go to Canada be slow like fluffernutter. Meanwhile, those still grounded in reality will just treat it as yet another election year.
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But, we mostly gave up on this approach.
To be fair there really wasn't an alternate at the time of those failures. There was no FEA to simulate what would actually happen, just your math, slide rules and prior knowledge.
We were also still in the post-WWII industrial boom so we were flooded with skilled metalworkers and welders and pipefitters so the pace that were able to iterate and build was much much faster. I can appreciate SpaceX trying to hearken back to those times but it has it's drawbacks as well, there was another post here about stac
Re:Ended in data, not failure. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it ended in data.
Sweet! You've just redefined every rocket failure in history to data!
I love these rules.
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No, it ended in data.
Sweet! You've just redefined every rocket failure in history to data! I love these rules.
No, that's the difference between "test flight" and "flight". What Challenger did was a failure. What Columbia did was a failure. What Apollo 1 did was a failure (though arguably it was meant as a test, but they did run it so badly that it ended in a failure rather than just data). This was not. You know, you can tell, as these flights are announced beforehand as "test" flights, tend to carry mass simulators (or apparently cars), instead of actual satellites (and definitely not people!), and tend not to aim
Re:Ended in data, not failure. (Score:5, Insightful)
I know, it's hard, but you can learn.
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right. if my rocket is supposed to test some newfangled satellite release system and instead it blows up on the launchpad, i can't handwave it away as 'a test'. it's clearly a failure.
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Um, no. It's not that he has an irrational hatred of Elon, it's that you have an irrational defense of him.
Calling any failure of a 'test flight' a success because it ended in data is pretty amazing mental gymnastics.
Tell me, how many of these successes do you think SpaceX can afford before they go bankrupt ? I'm quite certain, despite the outward facing glib response, internally they're deeply concerned.
Re:Ended in data, not failure. (Score:4, Insightful)
Tell me, how many of these successes do you think SpaceX can afford before they go bankrupt ?
I was with you up until there. Trust me, they can afford a heck of a lot of these failures before going bankrupt.
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The former chief engineer (now retired) of the aircraft development program I'm working on used to say, "We learn more from failure than we do from success." But that's true only if what you learn from a failure helps you avoid repeating the failure a few months later, especially if the failure is prohibitively expensive.
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You've got a serious misconfiguration in your brain. Might be time to ditch the fine-tuning on this model and go back to the base checkpoint.
Re: Ended in data, not failure. (Score:3)
They were expecting data from a later stage of the flight which did not occur. They did get data, it is not worthless, but they also did not get the data they were trying to get. So while you're slightly right, you're mostly wrong.
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is there any issue with the ship which can cause a RUD during flight
Fuck, I hope not.
I suspect you made that up, since any design tested in such a way is doomed to failure and killing people.
Even Musk, in a break from his verbiage that you have thoroughly fine-tuned your brain to emulated, called it a "minor setback", because it did, in fact, not meet its goals.
Why are you so aggressively shilling/simping?
Re:Ended in data, not failure. (Score:5, Insightful)
It was supposed to fly to the Indian Ocean for a controlled re-entry, half the world away. Instead it exploded shortly after takeoff over Florida. It didn't even get close to what it was supposed to test. Tests are supposed to test certain parameters, not explode randomly at the start. This makes it a failure.
I know, it's hard, but you can learn.
Oh, and for what purpose? I mean did they have any cargo that needed to be delivered to the Indian Ocean, and failed to do so? No? So I guess the *actual* goal was to *attempt* that, and see if anything goes wrong on the way. Which they did.
They were attempting to test X, instead it failed at Y long before it got to X.
That means that after they fix the failure that caused Y they will need to do another test to test X again.
Therefore, it was a failure.
Re: Ended in data, not failure. (Score:3)
Fail better [Re:Ended in data, not failure.] (Score:2)
No, it ended in data.
Sweet! You've just redefined every rocket failure in history to data! I love these rules.
No, that's the difference between "test flight" and "flight". What Challenger did was a failure.
To the contrary, the Challenger failure resulted in valuable data that showed a problem. It was an expensive way to get data, but they addressed the problem, fixed it, and demonstrated that it was fixed with a hundred more flights. It was a failure that we learned from.
What Columbia did was a failure. What Apollo 1 did was a failure
Again, failures we learned from that showed problems that we are now aware of and have addressed.
It can be an expensive way to learn, but it is a way to learn. Quoting Samuel Beckett:
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fa
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An army of posters comes out of nowhere to defend the government.
lol- not in my experience.
SLS not taking off- never mind exploding- is the most pathetic failure ever witnessed in the history of rocket launches.
It's amusing watching you shit-for-brains pivot.
Re:Ended in data, not failure. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is literally what happens on Slashdot when a NASA rocket explodes.
Goddamn it. Please, for the love of Christ, lead with FACTS.
NASA rockets almost never explode. Why? Because unlike Musk, NASA is never given permission to fail.
If NASA blew up rockets as often as SpaceX does, the Republican would have endless hearings and Musk-loving asshat fanboys would demand its funding be eliminated.
How often does NASA launch rockets and when was the last time?
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November, 2022, I believe.
It notably did not explode, and successfully launched a payload around the moon.
It notably put Artemis 1 into TLI- basically an Apollo mission, which is in fact not a nothing- it's something that only NASA has ever accomplished.
Re:Ended in data, not failure. (Score:5, Interesting)
They'd have much ore data if it hadn't gone bang.
At some point you really do have to acknowledge that Starship is currently failing. Yes, they'll probably turn it round unless they run out of money, but they re years late.
Re: Ended in data, not failure. (Score:3, Insightful)
this is a fantastic point. It seems Starship was just not designed well in the first place. How could the greatest genius in history let this happen??? it is a little weird to me that someone can get all the kudos for what was supposed to change civilization forever, but then not receive any criticism when it is fairly apparent that they failed.
hey, can you pass me some special K? I... Have not had breakfast yet.
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While an individual launch remains fairly cheap (all things considered), they're up to about half of the total SLS spending, and the SLS has successfully sent a modern Apollo around the moon and back home.
Re: Ended in data, not failure. (Score:2)
Failure to get Valuable Data (Score:2)
No, it ended in data.
There are many ways to fail so data that tells you one way to avoid failing is much less valuable that data telling you one way to achieve success. So, even looked at from the data perspective, it's still a failure.
Ok to Fail, but Still Failure (Score:2)
So collecting data that will tell you how to avoid that one way of failure is in itself a failure?
No, not if that's what you were aiming for but let's face it that's absolutely not what SpaceX were aiming for especially on the eighth launch. It's ok to fail when you are doing something really challenging and you do still learn something but don't start trying to delude yourself into believing that it is somehow not a failure.
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One data point: apparently the debris got very close to commercial aircraft; the exclusion zone was too small.
That's one of the points that the former head of the FAA was making. But now that Musk got him fired, we're apparently just going to ignore that data point.
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No, it ended in data.
And the data says failure.
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Catching the booster alone was a big deal because that had not been done before, only second stage.
This was the third time they recovered the booster, not the first.
Re: Ended in data, not failure. (Score:2)
We would be a lot more excited if it were public data and nasa was doing this. Itâ(TM)s a lot less fun when public money is being burnt for private profit.
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big, huge fireballs of data!
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SpaceX's eighth Starship test flight ended in failure
No, it ended in data.
Which can lead to full success when you keep trying.
Catching the booster alone was a big deal because that had not been done before, only second stage.
The important thing is how fast they can iterate based on whatever data they gather, and it seems like they can iterate rapidly now.
DOGE can shut down the part of the FAA that keeps stalling out when needing to sign the launch papers. GO GO CORRUPTION JUNCTION! It's like Conjunction Junction's barely functional cousin, in the form of a government agency designed specifically to streamline life for the billionaires. I LOVE AMERICA! (<-Imagine that screamed like it was in the Fear Factory tune where he lists all the murder and rape stats for our country.)
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That's some strong copium you've got there.
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They do the same thing with their "full self driving" cars.
Users are beta testers and when they crash, Tesla gets lots of good data.
Re: Ended in data, not failure. (Score:4, Interesting)
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Yes, but Elon is an unbounded super genius. This should not be happening.
Dudes out there playing 8d connect4
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To be fair, if you're comparing with the launch failures of the entire Ariane family since 1979, you should do the same with all SpaceX rockets, not just a very experimental rocket that hasn't carried any useful payload yet. Please add Falcon 9 to your comparison, and see how it fares.
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To be fair, if you're comparing with the launch failures of the entire Ariane family since 1979, you should do the same with all SpaceX rockets, not just a very experimental rocket that hasn't carried any useful payload yet. Please add Falcon 9 to your comparison, and see how it fares.
Yes, but Ariane still got four successful lauches and only one failure in their first three years and they did that back in the 1980s when people did not have modern computers, modern design tools, and of course Musk's world beating GROK artificial intelligence. Nor was the Ariane project being led by an unbounded once in a millennium autistic genius like Musk. Given the advantages they enjoy I expect Musk and SpaceX to do better than a bunch of engineers half a century ago working only with 8 bit computers
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Good (Score:3, Interesting)
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There is a big difference ( for me for sure ) between working at something you have to do and working at something you really want to do well.
Trouble is, this will affect Spacex's, and mankind's, amazing progress in space, but I fear it will do nothing to get Musk to reign back Trump and save the lives of Ukrainians and help stop global warming.
Re: Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Good (Score:2)
Re: Good (Score:2)
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But what the space program that we did get is now good for is what Musk says - making intelligent life in the universe a little more likely to survive by helping make mankind multi-planetary.
I see that as a duty of intelligent beings.
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And no intelligent person can say that letting Russia invade Ukraine and keep the land it stole is right.
No intelligent person can say that we do not have to limit global warming.
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Nope, there are plenty of amoral intelligent people.
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I've thought about this as well. When I was a young engineer working for a big corporate, the older people tended to keep their politics to themselves (wise advise ultimately), but us younger folk were a bit more outspoken. However the general company policy was to not discuss politics and everyone in leadership was quite careful about this. Thinking back now, this makes a lot of sense - I think I would have been horrified at some of the views fellow engineers had. I think the issue with places like SpaceX
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Re: Good (Score:2)
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Then Musk went full nazi. Nobody wants space nazis. Nobody. Hope every launch explodes until he's bankrupt. I just feel sorry for the poor engineers working for that tyrant.
Looks like the Nazi-Base on Mars is on hold for the time being.
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Yeah, the all too common trans-centrists, identifying themselves as centrists without actually being them.
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In fact, he's auditing and removing waste from the government; most tyrants don't decrease the size of government.
In fact, that is exactly what Hitler and his party did.
Read: How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days: https://www.theatlantic.com/id... [theatlantic.com]
(posting as AC because I had mod points)
I said lunch (Score:2)
Finally... (Score:4, Insightful)
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This isn't a waste, it's our best chance at getting Elon off this world and abandoning these worthless rich arseholes on Mars.
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Donald Trump isn't my president. And Kamala wouldn't have been either. What happens over in that crazy country has no impact on me. Can't I just hate a habitual lying rich cunt without you making it political?
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his reelection chances
LOL, what?
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The government doesn't pay for this stuff.
And SpaceX has done a great service for the government, driving down the cost of rocket launches so far that it's made the cartel that Boeing and Lockheed made to drive up the costs through a single bidder all but go out of business.
Your comment shows how myopic your perspective is, and how emotional it is, not based in any logic.
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The government doesn't pay for this stuff.
Sure they do. HLS wasn't awarded for off-the-shelf services. Are they covering all the costs? Of course not. But they're absolutely contributing to development.
You know who else paid for last night's launch? The airlines.
Re: Finally... (Score:2)
I want to see SpaceX succeed (Score:4, Funny)
Because then, hopefully, Elon Musk will emigrate to Mars!
ISS (Score:2)
Data Polluting the Caribbean (Score:2)
Is data collection really the main concern here? ;)
Hopefully this time Elon will arrange a clean up of the tons of debris about to wash up on many foreign beaches.
Is it about time he started spending some cash on simply fixing up this planet rather than hoping that a few of the mega-rich will get to escape another.
(I write this on behalf of all the flora and fauna that donâ(TM)t have much of a voice on this planet we are rapidly fâ¦ing up.
I'm sure this will be rigerously investigated (Score:3)
I have full confidence the FAA will ground future star ship launches until there is a thorough investigation and required design and procedural changes are fully implemented.
https://www.the-independent.co... [the-independent.com]
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this is all Biden's fault.
Aarrgh (Score:2)
rapid unscheduled disassembly
George Carlin [youtube.com] is rolling over in his grave.
Both fails are Starship Block 2 (Score:3)
The last two Starship launches were the first to use Starship Block 2. Seems likely there is a bad design change. Hot staging could be an issue too.
Hopefully they can work the kinks out soon. The launch pace is pretty exciting.
Re: Karma's a Bitch (Score:5, Insightful)
I found space flight more fascinating when it was a publicly funded scientific endeavor for the benefit of all mankind, not just a means for the richest man on the planet to become richer.
Re: Karma's a Bitch (Score:2, Troll)
Re: Karma's a Bitch (Score:2)
it's far more than the right arm (Score:2)
I would be more concerned about his actual far-right / white supremacist tweets, as well as use of symbols from such movements. And very outspoken support for far-right groups, including AfD which in some regions in Germany is classified as a anti-constitutional far-right extremist groups, by court decisions based on constitutional writings specifically made to avoid getting a Nazi party to reappear.
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and a guy who once waved his hand without thinking what it looks like, you are a fucking moron and I have nothing else to tell you.
Ooof, fucking hell guy. No, no, no, wait, roman salute, right? My heart goes out to you gesture maybe? Yeah. Definitely not a fucking nazi. Read some history, sucking up to them doesn't make them like you. And hey, if you got 10 people at a table and 9 of them are nazis and the 10th isn't challenging them you've got 10 fucking nazis.
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Re: Karma's a Bitch (Score:3, Insightful)
"and a guy who once waved his hand without thinking what it looks like"
He did it because he meant to and it's demented to suggest otherwise. You cannot simultaneously claim that he's a genius and he doesn't know what a Nazi salute "looks like" without being an idiot yourself.
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He was always a piece of shit. https://www.theguardian.com/te... [theguardian.com]
Shitty kid too. According to the elder Musk, one high school-era incident Elon has repeated — when a classmate pushed him down a stairwell, leaving him hospitalized — actually began when Elon antagonized another boy about his father’s suicide. https://www.yahoo.com/entertai... [yahoo.com]
Re: Karma's a Bitch (Score:2)
"Without thinking"?
LOL. The putin state of Amurika is full of Nazi apologists.
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Re: Karma's a Bitch (Score:4, Insightful)
He's just not right in the head.
Re: Karma's a Bitch (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, no argument about "not right in the head" actually. Not qualified to diagnose whether it's narcissism or autism spectrum, but there definitely is something. Still, that doesn't make him a Nazi.
Yeah, but supporting the AfD (one of the most far-right, right-wing populist, and national-conservative political parties in Germany) might.
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For me and I think a lot of people I don't actually have an issue with paying SpaceX, the money invested of them paid off, it's a great example of public/private partnership.
What I don't appreciate is when this façade that SpaceX was just this scrappy little underdog who did their work *in spite of* the government rather than the fact they have been partners, sharing information and collaborating on goals. It's wholly for political talking points and not a view based in reality, it's gaslighting to pr
Re:Anti America! (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing is more American than punching a nazi.