Posted on 03/30/2021 6:53:55 AM PDT by Red Badger
A SpaceX Starship rocket flies high above South Texas on Tuesday, minutes before the test flight crashed and exploded in fog below. Photo courtesy of SpaceX
March 30 (UPI) -- A fourth Starship rocket prototype for Elon Musk's SpaceX launch company exploded after a test flight on Tuesday morning in South Texas.
As with previous test flights, SpaceX flew Starship -- model SN11 -- to over 6 miles high above the launch facility about 180 miles south of Corpus Christi. The rocket then glided on wing flaps back to the launch pad.
Heavy fog and problems with the video feed made it unclear exactly what happened, but SpaceX engineer John Insprucker confirmed the explosion.
"Well, looks like we've had another exciting test of Starship ... A reminder again, this is a test series to gather data," Insprucker said during SpaceX's live broadcast.
Previous test flights of the giant, stainless steel rocket ended in fireballs in December, February and March. The last attempt, on March 3, featured an upright landing but a fire on the rocket's base caused an explosion moments later.
The tests are part of SpaceX's rapid prototype development methods, which the company used to develop its highly successful Falcon rockets.
Landing and reusing the rocket is key to Starship's proposed interplanetary use, according to the company. The rocket is roughly the height of a 14-story building.
RELATED SpaceX aims to nail landing on flight of moonship that exploded on last 3 tries Starship is "designed to carry both crew and cargo on long-duration, interplanetary flights and help humanity return to the Moon, and travel to Mars and beyond," according to SpaceX.
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with a stated goal of reducing spaceflight costs to enable human exploration of Mars.
Starship is one of three spacecraft NASA has chosen as possible means to send astronauts back to the moon this decade. The space agency intends to choose two proposals for those crewed lunar missions by mid-2021.
Every failure gets you closer to success.
Hey SpaceX, learn something from NASA. They canceled flights until the weather cleared.
“We have discovered 10 thousand ways of how not to make a light bulb.” - Thomas Edison.................
No immense government-bought land area as at Cape Canaveral.
That is a very, very compact landing pad-launch pad-launch tower complex very near the landing pad target!
Except for that one unfortunate occurrence in 1986.
On engine relight looks like only one raptor relight, causing hard landing, in the fog. Will be interesting to see after fog clears
Coincidentally, Allan J. McDonald - the Morton Thiakol (sp?) engineer who begged them to cancel the flight because of the unseasonably cold weather - just died a couple weeks ago.
I just missed it live, looks like Tim Dodd on Youtube’s camera was hit by debris. He’s bummed, and I am too.
Next one, SN15, is a major update. But if they can’t land that one, I really dunno how long they can keep this up.
Maybe Elon should make them BATTERY POWERED....................
Funny enough, the fins are powered by Tesla engines and batteries.
No wonder it bursts into flames...................
A Parachute would be cheaper than a entire Spaceship, but that’s just me. #;^)
Yes, if only to save some effort at clean up.................
‘Faster, better, cheaper’. You only get to to pick two out of the three.
In the immortal words of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”
From the ashes of failure grow the roses of success.
exactly - trial and error leads to success!
NASA had a failure back in January I think it was.
They’re still arranging meetings about it. Meanwhile SpaceX has had 5 launches.
Parachutes don’t work so well on the moon... or Mars for that matter.
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