The SpaceX Starship has rightfully garnered a reputation for showering the ocean and coastal areas with rocket debris. Starship’s ninth test flight actually made it to space on Tuesday, but the private space company lost control of the massive rocket before it broke up during re-entry over the Indian Ocean. SpaceX is trying to highlight the marginal gains in development to distract from its failure, like noting that the test was the first reuse of a Super Heavy booster despite breaking apart during landing this time around.
The flight launched from Starbase, the recently incorporated company town in Texas, with the aim of releasing eight Starlink simulator satellites in space. Everything went to plan for the first six minutes until the point where the Starship successfully separated from the Super Heavy booster. SpaceX stated it lost contact with the booster, previously used during the seventh test, after “the start of landing burn when it experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly.” It’s just technical jargon to describe the stage breaking up over the Gulf of Mexico.
SpaceX will continue to blow up rockets until morale improves
The Starship’s upper stage completed its ascent burn. However, the spacecraft’s payload bay door wouldn’t open to deploy its dummy satellites. This was followed by an altitude control error and Starship couldn’t relight its engines to position itself for re-entry. As a result, SpaceX lost contact as the spacecraft presumably broke apart during re-entry. The company stated that the debris fell within a “planned hazard area in the Indian Ocean.” I guess it’s a better destination than raining rocket pieces over the Bahamas or the Turks and Caicos.
For as much as Elon Musk complains about developmental delays and cost overruns with NASA’s troubled Artemis program, he’s a part of the problem. The planned Artemis III landing on the Moon will be conducted with a Starship. The space agency still hasn’t approved Starship for crewed spaceflight, and it doesn’t seem to be on the horizon. Musk can seemingly comprehend how resource-exhaustive and challenging rocket development is when he does it.
