SpaceX resets 'Days Since Last Starship Explosion' counter to zero, again
- Reference: 1748411997
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/05/28/starship_flight_9_crash/
- Source link:
Elon Musk’s private rocketry company staged the ninth launch of the craft on Tuesday and notched up one success by managing to leave the launchpad by re-using a Super Heavy booster for the first time.
SpaceX paused the countdown for Tuesday’s launch at the T-40 mark for some final tweaks, then sent Starship into the sky atop the Super Heavy at 1937 Eastern Daylight Time.
[1]
After stage separation, the booster crash-landed six minutes into the flight, after SpaceX used a steeper-than-usual angle of attack for its re-entry "to intentionally push Super Heavy to the limits, giving us real-world data about its performance that will directly feed in to making the next generation booster even more capable."
[2]
[3]
And the Starship upper stage did better than the previous two tests flights, in that it actually reached space, but subsequently things (like the craft) got a well and truly turned around.
One of the goals for Musk's space crew was to release eight mocked up Starlink satellites into orbit. SpaceX already failed at its last two attempts to do this when the pod doors never opened. And it was third time unlucky last night when the payload door failed yet again to fully open to release the dummy satellites. SpaceX has not yet provided a reason for the malfunction.
[4]
Another goal for Flight 9 was to check out the performance of the ship's heatshield – SpaceX specifically flew it with 100 missing (on purpose) heatshield tiles so that it could test key vulnerable areas "across the vehicle during reentry." (The spacecraft also employed “Multiple metallic tile options, including one with active cooling" to test different materials for future missions.) But it needed controlled reentry to properly assess stress-test that, and that failed too.
After the doors remained stubbornly closed, a " [5]subsequent attitude control error resulted in bypassing the Raptor relight and prevented Starship from getting into the intended position for reentry." It began spinning out of control, blowing up, er, experiencing "a rapid unscheduled disassembly" upon re-entry.
SpaceX boss Elon Musk had rated Starship’s re-entry as the most important phase of this flight. But Starship spinning out as it headed back to Earth meant SpaceX was unable to capture all the data it hoped to gather. Although it says it did gather a lot of useful information before ground control lost contact with Starship approximately 46 minutes into the flight.
[6]FAA gives SpaceX the nod for Starship Flight 9 but doubles the danger zone
[7]SpaceX scores $5.9B lion's share of Space Force launch contracts
[8]SpaceX's 'Days Since Starship Exploded' counter made it to 48. It's back to zero again now
[9]SpaceX loses a Falcon 9 booster and scrubs a Starship
Musk nonetheless [10]rated the mission a success.
“Starship made it to the scheduled ship engine cutoff, so big improvement over last flight!” he Xeeted. “Also, no significant loss of heat shield tiles during ascent. Leaks caused loss of main tank pressure during the coast and re-entry phase. Lot of good data to review.”
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The billionaire added: “Launch cadence for next 3 flights will be faster, at approximately 1 every 3 to 4 weeks.”
That may be a little optimistic, as the USA’s Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) must authorize Starship launches and is yet to do so for future flights.
Previous Starship missions caused concern in the aviation industry after debris from SpaceX hardware fell to Earth. For this mission the FAA enlarged the Aircraft Hazard Area that aviators avoid after launches. SpaceX’s commentary on the launch made several mentions of the company having secured permission and chosen remote – and therefore safe – locations for touchdowns.
The FAA, however, is not keen to authorize flights until it is satisfied with safety. Three explosive endings in a row could make Musk’s timeline for future launches harder to achieve. ®
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[5] https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-9
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/23/faa_spacex_starship_9/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/07/spacex_space_force_contracts/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/07/spacex_starship_mission_fail/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/04/spacex_loses_falcon_9/
[10] https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1927531406017601915
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[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Gulf of Mexico?
No mate. Gulf of Mexico is where all the failures go. Successes go to the GoA. Presumably SpaceX are still barging Falcons?
Re: Gulf of Mexico?
Barges aren't in the Gulf of Mexico though, they launch from either the west or east coast of the US, not an internal east coast.
Oh Dear
Seems like it's still shaking itself to bits. It's progres of a sort - it got further - but this is going on for rather a large number of flights. Intentionally stressing a vehicle in test is one thing, but at the moment they've not bracketed a mission design / load / profile that doesn't lead to failure.
Most iterative approaches start off gentle to see it the thing at least works, then harden-up testing thereafter. It feels like they're trying to claim they're doing the opposite. But to me that smacks of over confidence.
I think what's going on is that they're slowly discovering that vibration modes all over the craft are severe, complex and difficult to solve. Solving those through iteration is going to take either a lot of material to dampen down the vibrations in pipes, structures, etc, (which will add weight), or an awful lot of analysis (which is not something Musk likes apparently), or a very long time and luck.
Worse, with vibration being mostly due to turbulent flow in pipes, success on one day is not guaranteed to lead to success on another day with the same design. The flow's turbulence is hard to predict, and not assured to be consistent (because it's also subject to vibration of pipes). A craft like this is going find all manner of exciting and thrilling ways in which it can tear itself apart, and it could take a looooong time before it stops surprising them with new ways of falling to pieces.
A lot of the success of such a program relies on progress, and enthusiasm. Musk has pretty much destroyed any credibility he had, and his team knows that (regardless of whether they're fans or not). If there's any hint at all now that money is getting tight, people will start to leave the project. With Tesla seemingly getting into severe problems, and Musk's performance over Twitter, there's likely a lot of wise money choosing to not get involved in any Muskian enterprises right now. Raising seriously large amounts of new money could be difficult.
Re: Oh Dear
Agree. Even if they achieved MECO this time without fire or explosion, the underlying root cause of loss of control according to live stream commentary around 30 minutes into the flight again was a fuel leak. So the root cause "fuel leak" now has caused the last 3 losses in a row.
However they do not seem to really have tackled this root cause (ruptures from oscillating pipes), instead they added fire suppression and enlarged ventilation openings.
This might have indeed worked as designed, in a way, preventing Starship from exploding before MECO.
But it seems to have turned out, only implementing a workaround resulted in a different kind of failure, namely loss of attitude control.
So probably SpaceX will be forced to solve its oscillation/vibration problem, which, as you say, will probably add development time and weight.
Re: Oh Dear
Turbulent flow in pipes is not exactly the problem; chances are flow rate is too high for the flow to remain laminar, and turbulent flow is not necessarily a problem on its own.
The problem is almost certainly a fluid / structure interaction - oscillations in the fluid flow occurring in a non-random pattern which matches a natural mode of vibration of the pipe. (A bit like "Water Hammer"). Possible solutions:-
1. Tie down the pipes at more positions
2. Change the length of the pipe slightly
3. Change the pipe diameter and/or wall thickness.
Re: Oh Dear
Even at very low pressure and fluid volumes, pipe flow is important. A domestic central heating pump has a performance curve that it uses to best move the fluid around. I learned this when we were having problems with hot water causing the pipes to oscillate and produce a rumble. Solution was to select a different pump curve on the Grundfos pump.
So if it matters in such a light duty, for a rocket motor with cryogenic fuel and zero atmosphere, I cannot comprehend the engineering challenges involved.
Re: Oh Dear
"Raising seriously large amounts of new money could be difficult."
Really? US equity markets are the least rational places in the world (including most lunatic asylums), Musk himself is a past master of "three cups and a pea" stock accounting (as demonstrated by his various corporate actions), he's besties with the Orange Turd, and Space X is essentially reliant upon generous government subsidies and promises.
You and I wouldn't lend a brass farthing to Musk, but there's plenty of clueless dupes who are WAYYYYY richer than we are who would happily punt their life saving on him. On a vaguely related side note, I see SCROTUS has signed an order permitting US pension investments to be "invested" in private equity deals, showing how little the new owner of the White House cares about the peasant classes who voted for him.
Re: Oh Dear
Yes, it is getting much harder to raise capital because capital costs have ridden both due to higher interest rates – Musk was really able to play the system in the years of free money – but, more importantly in the US, due to rising bond yields.
Other companies have to learn to work with greater financial discipline. Though I'm confident that SpaceX has engineers who will solve the problems over time, Musk's insistence on a rapid launch schedule could well prove counterproductive.
Debris search and recovery is being hampered due to no one in the US being able to locate the Gulf of Mexico.
By my account this flight was a failure on nearly all points.
- Booster re-entry testing was only half successful as only the aerodynamic portion succeeded after which it promptly ceased to exit as soon as they attempted to light the engines
- the ship made it as far as "space" but lost control, the payload door couldn't open and re-entry was uncontrolled making any heating data not that useful as far as the aerodynamics and protection of the flaps goes. Control loss was already stated to be due to loss of fuel caused by leakage which to me signals they haven't solved their structural oscillation problems and their "reinforce everything" strategy isn't working. Not surprising since they still seem convinced they can find structural oscillations of a body in free-flight by doing static fire tests on a test stand.
Spin it all you want, this was a failure.
I think the only success was to push on beyond previous failures. I get the feeling, though, that they may have gone down an engineering dead end and everything done to make it work now is a compromise or kludge rather than a refinement and they cannot afford the time to do a rollback and address the design with this generation.
Sounds credible. The engineers have got the clueless Elmo breathing over their shoulder all the time, imparting his shallow wisdom, and his ranty toddler-esque demands for short term results. That's no recipe for success.
Spin it all you want
I see what you did there ;)
>> awful lot of analysis (which is not something Musk likes apparently)
I suppose it's a potential use-case for the enormous computing resource that Tesla / X etc is implementing.
“SpaceX already failed at its last two attempts to do this when the pod doors never opened.”
Did they say please when they asked for them to be opened?
They did, but the reply was "I'm sorry Elon, I can't do that"
FAA Approvals
With Musk's friend in the top American job, I can't see FAA approval being an issue for Elmo.
After stage separation, the booster crash-landed six minutes into the flight, after SpaceX used a steeper-than-usual angle of attack for its re-entry...
Meanwhile, it is a criminal offence to throw a crisp packet into the sea.
Gulf of Mexico?
Never heard of it.
Fake news.
D