Obviously FAA needs to listen to [1]this and get ready.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu0cE9RgK5M

Do they really know already all the fixes to the faults identified? (And be sure they can be implemented quickly?)

Probably... (speculation follows)

They perhaps shaved structural margins a bit too much on the booster. The structure vs weight tradeoff is where a rocket engineer earns his paycheck, especially in the first stage.

Or perhaps the maneuvering was just too sporty and they need to tone it down. Perhaps you can't just flip a SuperHeavy booster as hard as a Falcon 9.

Maybe they turned up an issue in the flight termination system or guidance in the second stage. That could be hardware or software. Maybe the FTS overdid it instead of underdoing it like last flight.

They certainly fixed the pad issue, the issue with not all the first stage engines firing, the flight termination system, and the staging, so I'm sure they'll have some sort of solutions to what broke on this flight.

And then we'll see what breaks next! Wheee!

My money is on the heat shielding. You could see tiles coming off. Of course the Space Shuttle orbiter had the same problem and they lost a bunch of tiles too. Difference there was that the orbiter was manned, so it was a slight bit more critical.

The next one will probably make it to orbit, but we'll have to see how many separate pieces re-enter over Hawaii.

You can sure tell they're big fans of Kerbal Space Program.

On the booster flip. I suspect the fuel sloshed, which took the fuel out of the lines, then the engines went off. Another option is the blast on the top of the booster from the second stage opened the top of the can .

The heat shields coming off. Would be interesting to see how far that survived re-entry. Stainless is a very different material to aluminium. But you are right, tiles were clearly lost. The question is why the second stage didn't make it to orbit. I've not seen any real explanation of that.

>Another option is the blast on the top of the booster from the second stage opened the top of the can .

The heat from the hot staging will have also increased the pressure in the fuel tanks. If that was higher then they expected it could have contributed to the engine failures. The bottom of the second stage will also have experienced higher temperatures during the first moments of hot staging. It will be interesting to see if the stick with the hot staging procedure with the next flight as it was a rather late change to the design.

On a similar note, the booster engines shut down in stages, probably to reduce the levels of deceleration "pushing" the fuel upwards, potentially either cause pressure issues or hydraulic shock, and so was a mitigation. But I wonder if the thrust from the Starship engines doing a hot staging "pushed" back on the booster, causing an increase in deceleration rate and resulting in fuel pushing "upwards" and/or hydraulic shock" to levels more than expected? Whatever caused the problem, it does seem to have been an issue with fuel feeds to the engines as they seemed to go out in a cascade very quickly after re-light.

An analysis I saw of the telemetry showed the booster decelerating markedly when the second stage engines fired for the separation. This would have created negative G's in the booster's propellant tanks disrupting the smooth flow to the engines. The booster had reduced thrust considerably by then down to just three engines. Perhaps that was too much.

LOL, I should have read on a bit further before posting my reply. I said almost the same thing :-)

Well my electric bike goes over 50 miles without needing a tow truck, unlike my friend's Harley Davidson...

At least it would keep your fish and chips warm.

What does the *actual* supremo (Gwynne Shotwell) think?

Probably optimistic, but it does suggest they know what went wrong and how to fix it. And FAA approval should be easier this time. Nothing went wrong over land.

Let's wait until the wildlife and fisheries people have checked out the results of the water deluge and any possible debris scatter! It may be minimal effects, but how long will it take them to confirm that and raise the thumb? :-)

"While SpaceX fanatics are trying to paint the second Starship Super Heavy launch as a success..."

While habitual Musk / SpaceX detractors are determined to paint it as a failure. Seems to be a lot of that about. The truth is somewhere closer to the middle ground, as usual.

This latest test - key word being test - of a highly experimental vehicle showed substantial improvement over the previous test, and those improvements were made in a very short time. That is impressive, and certainly indicates a degree of success, just as no improvement, or even deterioration, would have been a failure.

That said, there is clearly room for further improvement. Indeed, the whole point of the test, it's predecessor and successors, is to identify things that don't go to plan and facilitate remedial action. From that perspective, the test was also successful - two RUDed stages will provide lots of opportunities to identify things that didn't go to plan. Even so, the test did not achieve everything that was planned (though I doubt anyone expected that it would) and those parts of the plan therefore failed by definition.

Naturally, the FAA will want to know what happened, and how that outcome can be avoided in future, though not as badly as SpaceX will want to know, I expect.

Had this been a real mission, resulting in the total loss of not one but both stages of a tried and tested, flight proven vehicle, then the gleeful proclamations of failure would be amply justified. But it wasn't. It was a test, an experiment, some aspects of which had never been done before. I'm sure that most of the failurites understand the nature and purpose of experiments perfectly well, but are unable to resist the temptation to poke at SpaceX / Musk.

Perhaps, instead of claiming success or failure, they could agree that progress has been made, and will likely continue to be made, towards improvement in human spaceflight capability. That can't be a bad thing.

"Flight two of the Starship Super Heavy improved on its predecessor, but only if you imagine that your self-driving electric car did not crash into a tree and catch fire. Instead, it made it a bit farther down the road, and then caught fire."

Now I'm NO Musk fanboy; the guy is an egregious wankpuffin with an ego the size of a small planet. But I'd have to call that a rather negative tone.

The first launch was a complete clusterfsck.

The latest attempt was an 'almost worked'. The booster apparently performed pretty much perfectly, but the attempt to boostback and recover it resulted in loss of control and was terminated by a manual RSO destruct command, AFAIK. The upper stage apparently performed pretty much perfectly, but was terminated by a computer-initiated auto-destruct command for no particularly obvious reason.

When you think how many Falcons they blew up in their early days, they actually seem to be on a pretty good trajectory with this latest toy.

How many Falcons do you think were blown up? The first 3 Falcon 1 launches were failures, then they got it right and promptly retired the rocket.

In 275 launches, the Falcon 9 has had one complete launch failure, one partial launch failure (one of 2 satellites didn't make the correct orbit). One other early version blew up on the pad. Every other launch has been a success.

If you mean how many Falcons blew up on landing attempts, then yes. There were a few on tests after the primary mission was a success. Then they got it right and land every time now. The last attempted landing that failed was in February 2021. Who else can land an orbital class rocket?

I was using 'Falcons' sensu lato, and 'blew up' sensu lato.

"When you think how many Falcons they blew up in their early days, they actually seem to be on a pretty good trajectory with this latest toy."

And, of course, not forgetting the number of early Starship "hops" that ended in RUDs too, but to be fair, this is effectively two separate rockets, each with the own foibles and problems doing things that have either not been done before or not been done on this huge size of vehicle and then combining them and their "unknowns" into one big launch stack :-)

I wasn't surprised the first launch ended in explody bits, but was surprised at the amount of damage to the launch pad and tower. I wasn't *too* surprised at the second lauch booster explosion and was really getting hopeful for Starhip as it just seemed to keep going up and was sadly dissapointed but hugely surprised that it too didn't fully succeed.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. SpaceX seem to operated a little like Kickstarter projects. There's a goad you want and need to reach, and then there's "stretch goals" that would be nice to reach. On the whole, SpaceX do generally seem to meet their main goals and sometimes reach some of the stretch goals. If nothing else, it's a lot more existing than spending 10 years, going massively over budget and massively of target date for a "first time success" :-) And as someone else suggested, a first time success could mean it's over engineered and over weight as well as over budget!

"Now I'm NO Musk fanboy"

Neither am I, especially since he bought TwitteX. But he has given the world cheap reusable launch vehicles.

It seems to me SpaceX's way of working (break things, then fix them) is fundamentally incompatible with the FAA's.

The FAA either needs to become more lenient (since there wasn't a chance of anyone getting hurt this time) or SpaceX will be unable to fulfill its commitments to put people on the Moon by 2025.