SpaceX loses contact with Starship rocket after ninth test flight launch
SpaceX loses contact with Starship rocket after ninth test flight launch
SpaceX Starship breaks up over Indian Ocean in latest bumpy test
SpaceX mission control lost contact with the rocket after it leaked fuel and spun out of control, despite already flying halfway around the world
SpaceX mission control lost contact with its latest Starship rocket on Tuesday, as it leaked fuel, spun out of control, and made an uncontrolled re-entry after flying halfway around the world, likely disintegrating over the Indian Ocean, officials said.
“Just to confirm, we did lose contact with the ship officially a couple of minutes ago. So that brings an end to the ninth flight test,” said SpaceX’s Dan Huot during a live feed.
Starship, the futuristic rocket on which Elon Musk’s ambitions for multiplanetary travel are riding, roared into space from Texas on its ninth uncrewed test launch and flew further than the last two attempts that ended in explosive failure.
Just for comparison, on their 9th test flight the Apollo program they had already successfully reached orbit 5 times.
The 9th test flight of the Soyuz was their 7th time reaching orbit.
Elon's 9th attempt is his second time reaching the bottom of the Indian ocean. Shows the level of proficiency in spacex.
It concerns me from a standpoint that is similar to Oceangate - the engineers are probably aware something is going wrong, but money is getting the final say. Then the people on one of these things end up dying, and it won't be Musk.
I'm also concerned because this lax approach to engineering is becoming more apparent in the private sector. Engineers have a very difficult job -traditionally balancing budget, schedule, and quality. But we also are vital in ensuring regulatory compliance, safety, disposal, process, efficiency etc.
Engineer salaries, however, have stagnated like the rest of American workers. It's true we still get paid better, but compared to how much the salary got you in the 80s-90s, we get much less.
Private sector engineers are largely not PEs as we're shielded by our employers. We are more worried about being laid off than fucking up a project to the point lives get risked.
Part of this is why I chose to no longer work on systems that can cause injuries/ harm to a user. If I'm doing that, I can assume I'm not alone. If those of us consciously avoiding it because of fears of hurting users, it might mean that the ones working on the systems aren't motivated by safety of the user.
The one good thing from oceangate was the fact that the CEO trusted his own life to his invention. He was in the sub when it imploded.
As stupid as he is, musk is unfortunately smart enough to know not to risk his own life in his own rockets.
Oceangate, stockton basically cut corners on everything. hence he got killed by his owned hubris.
And while both of those programs weren't starting from zero, like Apollo learned from Mercury and Gemini, SpaceX should have learned from all of them.
spacex is also not starting from zero. They previously made the falcon 9.
The Saturn V's 9th flight was the third time it took humans to the moon...
Apollo 9Apollo 8 went to the moon but they had multiple test flights prior to that numbering. Those are a more reasonable point of comparison.Edit: I misremembered the number.
I believe this is the 4th (or is it 5th?) time starship successfully reached orbit too (just lacking an insertion burn which is on purpose for these tests). But it’s also important to keep in context the fact that starship and super heavy are so big, while trying to be completely reusable and be assembly lined. Very different goals, technology, and ideas happening between the generations. One starship launch intends to replace between 3 and 5 falcon 9 launches if they can nail down the reliability.
They still haven't tested it under the Artemis payload weights, either. They're testing with 17 ton payload and last year at the starship launch celebration Musk said starship is supposed to be capable of 50 ton payloads to LEO. For comparison SLS block 2
can liftwill be able to lift 100 tons to LEO.The Artemis HLS is supposed to be 110 tons to the lunar surface, but supposedly loaded up in like 12 launches.
I assume they're still a few years away from Starship being usable.
The space shuttle was also big and reusable. It did not have issues like these during development.
I think that is less about competence and more about a completely different style of work. I don’t want to sound like a fanboy, but it isn’t apples and apples. There were much more stringent testing standards for that program. SpaceX is all about throwing shit in the dryer on the fluff cycle and seeing what they scrape off the lint screen.
As a comparison too SpaceX can launch Starship at least 6 more times before reaching the cost of a single Saturn V launch, I an not even talking about development cost.
Starship also did reach orbital velocity on several launches.
The goals are different.
There hasn't been a single one of elon's companies that delivered on promised prices.
Falcon 9 is more expensive than promised. His tunnels weren't cheaper. His cars are more expensive than promised. Cybertruck is over $100k when he promised under $40k at the launch.
Focus on what his companies can deliver. That is real. His fantasy rockets that would be superior in all ways do not exist.