SpaceX loses contact with Starship rocket after ninth test flight launch
SpaceX loses contact with Starship rocket after ninth test flight launch
Ship flew farther than on two previous attempts but sprang leaks and began spinning before re-entering atmosphere out of control
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.
Oceangate, stockton basically cut corners on everything. hence he got killed by his owned hubris.
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.
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.
I remember a NASA engineer saying that if NASA had half the failures that SpaceX has had in its early days they would have been disbanded as an organization and their funding pulled completely.
Yet this private org somehow gets bailed out again and again and again and again and again all while not only wasting massive tax payer money, but also causing a hell of a lot of waste. SpaceX is the waste fraud and abuse that should be trashed, not the national park service.
thats why he moved to texas, less regulations there.
Less workplace rights and employee protections
Next time put that Nazi fuck Elon in it.
It seems like destiny for that to be how dies. Killed by his own hubris like Mr. Expired carbon fiber submarine.
i wonder if he would even go into one of his rockets anymore.
I thought it said SpaceX lost a contract and got excited for a moment
aw man, same
Yeah. I don't like having this response because I feel like anything that increases our reach and activity in space is a positive step. It's unfortunate that spacex has musk's shitty fingerprints all over it.
Best part of this is that they just won the contract for launch services even though they still haven't proven the thing can fly without blowing up yet.
Well, they still have the smaller rockets that usually don't blow up.
No cardboard, no cellotape, highest quality materials
Launch services isn't a contract to launch anything, it's just NASA collecting information about every rocket. Rockets that blow up just get listed as Category I High Risk, allowed for Class D payloads that are cheap and replaceable.
Musk reaction video:
ship loses attitude control and burns up on reentry
Welcome back, starship flight 3
Damn, I thought it said "loses contract."
Governments are still going to throw money at anything this guy does. Useful idiots couldn't have been more useful a few years ago.
"Uh, yeah, it was supposed to do that. We learn a lot from billion dollar failures."
People estimate ~100 million, which is still a lot. Of course it's worth noting that they weren't attempting to launch a payload or really recover much of anything, so the only real cost of failure is that they might need to launch more test flights later than they otherwise would have had to.
Apparently estimated total development costs are probably a bit less than half of the Artemis program cost, although the Artemis program has actually developed a fully functional and reliable rocket by now. So it's hard to say if SpaceX's development method will be cheaper in the long run. (Discounting the later manufacturing costs because I don't see any reason why a more ULA, Blue Origin, or NASA-like development process wouldn't still be capable of producing a cheap rocket if that was the focus)
Honestly losing to the US military industrial complex in development cost would be pretty embarrassing. (Congress makes NASA use all the MIC suppliers for their rockets)
I'm sure SpaceX workers are all super inspired and motivated to make a shit ass cunt neo nazi billionaire achieve his megalomaniac space goals.. I heard they're even putting the extra hour for free.
I guess you have to call a place on solid ground Starbase when everything you build to carry building supplies into space to build a Starbase fails.
All the money being spent on this bullshit could've been better spent improving the living conditions of the working class.
Lmaooo in the USA? Unlikely.
Well, there are at least 5 million Starlink users around the world, and I'm sure if you ask them they'll say their lives and living conditions have been improved.
Go fetch it and re-use it.
Elons not a nazi, because nazis are good at making rockets
Just like Elon musk's mind has lost contact with reality.... Because of ketamine...
Everything was fine when Biden was in office. What is Trump doing to allow this to happen?
