Summary
SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft exploded in space minutes after launching from Texas, marking the second consecutive failure this year.
The rocket spun uncontrollably before breaking apart, with debris seen over Florida and the Bahamas. The cause remains unclear, though multiple engines shut down before contact was lost.
The failure raises concerns about setbacks in Elon Musk’s Mars rocket program. The FAA temporarily halted flights at major Florida airports due to falling debris.
A similar Starship failure in January scattered wreckage over the Caribbean.
Lol “Move fast and
breakcatastrophically explode things” is once again shown to be a flawed methodology for pioneering space travel.To the flabbergasted shock of everyone. /s
At this point SpaceX is making Boeing look like they have quality control.
NASA at least had a reputation for taking every conceivable precaution they could, and getting it right without wasting tons of fuel and rare materials (and potentially precious lives) by exploding VC-funded prototypes across the atmosphere, into the ocean, on the ground.
Like a lot of people, I’ve fantasized about space since being a wee kiddo, but you couldn’t pay me to get on a Musk-rocket. To think, they wanna go to Mars‽ With human beings‽
We’d at least be excited if they send Elon, Bezos and co. first.
Time to tax the filthy peasants who live in the carribean to make up for all Elon Musks rocket equipment they have taken possession of.
There use to be a show on TV, it was like "Most shocking " or something like that. Anyway, it had a video of a rocket blowing up a little after take off.
The woman on the show said “We experienced an anomaly.” The TV show host couldn’t let that phrase go! “Evidently ‘anomaly’ means 'bad ass explosion!” From then on all I can think of when I see a rocket blowing up…" We’ve experienced an anomaly " ha
“The cause remains unclear” lmao
As if everyone on the livestream couldn’t see the fire in the engine bay, the exact problem that blew up the last rocket too.
Obviously the fire suppression failed again and it caused an energetic failure in one or more engines, flinging Starship into a rapid spin. It held on for, I dunno, 30 seconds to a minute, until they sent the kill command.
One of the inner engines had a visible outgassing pointing to structural failure in the engine itself. This was followed briefly by an engine explosion. No reasonable fire suppression system can handle an event this size. The best way to address this is detecting it early and running an emergency shutdown of the valves on the supply lines.
Surely shutting down failed engines is part of the fire suppression plan, no?
“Why didn’t I think of that?!”
-SpaceX
I’m sure they did. I doubt they had enough time to make the correct changes since the launch cadence is too high.
The cause is Elon incompetence., edit : his incompetence in ideas and scheduling pressure.
Ive had passing experience with Musks leadership. They make top down demands, like “I dont care, I want a demo of this tomorrow”. To get to that demo you cut every imagineable corner and show them a potempkin product the next day that is insanely fragile. And then they make a similar demand the next day, and the next. Then later on they ask why the product sucks.
Ship the demo!
that’s giving him too much credit. he’s just an ideas guy.
I don’t think he’s terribly involved at SpaceX these days. Other than causing schedule pressure… which certainly may have caused this failure by not giving the engineers proper time to research and fix the issue from the previous launch.
Anyone else get a familiar feeling watching this timeline?
To be fair, most news today feel like over exaggerated parodies of reality. Comedy artists are going to lose their jobs at this rate… or become plain reporters
i remember when i thought of that movie as a comedy… now it’s just (almost) reality
Which movie is that
Don’t Look Up (2021)
I’m sorry for the Caribbean, but if I’m totally honest, the news made me smile.
Same. But as someone who has always been enthusiastic about Space Exploration, seeing humanities frontier efforts led by a literal nazi is now devastating and embarrassing. European leaders need to rethink their academic and business policies so they can nurture a SpaceX without the evil. At the rate the US are going, I’m even cheering on China’s efforts 😬
SpaceX without the evil.
I dunno if there can be such a thing with a privatized space industry.
At least NASA carried the hopes and dreams of people across the planet into space on their shoulders. Same with the cosmonauts before and alongside them, and all the other national space projects that lead to wonders like the ISS.
(How telling that Musk is already running his dome about bringing the ISS down way ahead of schedule.)
Privatized space exploration has finally managed to do space what corporations have always done: Make it depressingly boring and awful. There’s no wonder, no reverence, no awe. Just another unexploited opportunity for profits to a small group of sociopaths.
And we’re supposed to be excited about this. Hooray.
“Alrighty, boys and girls, if we get this rocket to space, daddy Elon gets stupidly richer and you get a pat on the back! Woo!”
They dream of a world where people are working off lifetimes of debt but in zero-G, renting sleep capsules, subscribing to air, and seeing a night sky full of ad space, while they sail space yachts in high orbit.
I’d smile if elon had been inside.
Hey y’know what we should do? Give them billions in taxpayer money to take over the FAA systems and make everything go perfect.
Consumer Schmonfidence!
This is not news
Wake me up when a space ship does not explode, so that for once SpaceX crew will not be cheering
Reminder that SpaceX is owned and run by scammer Nazi Elmo Musk who literally lies about everything. Musk is gutting government subsiding everywhere yet SpaceX floats on billions of dollars to blow up rockets. Waste? Naaahh.
Fuck SpaceX, its a scam just as the rest of Elmo
It’s news because it’s dropping hazardous material over populated areas.
Yes, exactly.
They’ve been doing that so much now that it’s not news but the expected outcome. It’s no news liek trump impromptu deciding to do something stupid and three days later reverting it. Sure, the details differ slightly each time, but the actual event is just the same over and over and over, making it not news
Waitwaitwait, you’re telling me Elon Musk runs SpaceX???
Friend I get what you’re saying but this newest explosion is quite literally news, and pretty much everyone here knows that it is news that affects the asshole raping our country right now, which is why it is such newsy news. So I am not sure what your point is.
You’re missing the point in that space x rockets blow up more than they don’t, literally, showing that the company is incompetent and without massive aid from the US government it would cease to exist immediately.
This leads also to the point where Elmo musk is and has been a scammer for all his life. He was incompetent back then, he is moreso now. All he does is hype people and governments to give him loads of money and then he gives shit back
3 billion at least to watch space x crew cheer over blowing up a banana over the Indian ocean, money well spent!
It’s a very efficient device for delivering large amounts of methane straight to the upper atmosphere, where it’ll do the most damage.
why would you use a picture of the part that works perfectly not the part that failed?
This is going to happen more frequently, and be significantly more disruptive. Elon wants to do like 130 launches a year, and for some reason, thinks it’s smart to break shit in a love environment rather than do more virtual testing or preparation.
Good
Remember that this business always caused debris raining all over the world, not just now with musk as the ceo
