Posted on 05/28/2025 5:54:11 AM PDT by Red Badger
The Starship test flight encountered problems approximately 30 minutes into its uncrewed journey.
Starship’s ninth flight test launch. - SpaceX/X
=====================================================================
On May 27th, SpaceX launched the ninth test flight of its 403-feet (123-metre) Starship megarocket.
Despite reaching orbit, the vehicle then lost attitude control, resulting in an uncontrolled reentry and its third consecutive failure.
After lifting off from Starbase, Texas, at 7:36 p.m. Eastern, the Starship test flight encountered problems approximately 30 minutes into its uncrewed journey.
An onboard fuel leak caused the mega-rocket to spin uncontrollably in space, leading to an earlier-than-planned re-entry into the atmosphere.
SpaceX announced on social media that Starship underwent a “rapid unscheduled disassembly,” indicating it burst apart.
As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly. Teams will continue to review data and work toward our next flight test.
With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s test will help us improve Starship’s…
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 28, 2025
Fuel tank issue
Prior to this recent launch, Starship had undergone eight integrated test flights with its Super Heavy booster.
Reportedly, this flight follows a March 6 explosion, which led the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to divert flights and temporarily halt departures at four Florida airports due to falling debris.
SpaceX’s Starship is designed for full reusability with its Super Heavy booster and Ship upper stage.
Flight 9 saw Starship’s two stages separate successfully, with the upper stage reaching space — a notable improvement compared to its last two flights.
However, SpaceX ultimately lost both stages before achieving all mission objectives.
A ground equipment issue briefly delayed flight 9’s liftoff, but the mission aimed to address prior engine problems that led to upper stage loss.
The Starship’s six Raptor engines performed as expected, successfully placing the vehicle into orbit, reported SpaceNews.
However, footage from the vehicle shortly after engine shutdown seemed to reveal propellant venting and a gradual roll.
“We are in a little bit of a spin. We did spring a leak in some of the fuel tank systems inside of Starship. At this point, we’ve essentially lost our attitude control with Starship,” Dan Huot, the SpaceX webcast host, stated.
After losing attitude control, a controlled reentry was impossible.
To prepare for reentry, SpaceX decided to “passivate” the vehicle, which involved venting its leftover propellant.
Intermittent video showed the reentry beginning over the Indian Ocean about 40 minutes after liftoff, with visible flap damage.
This marks the third consecutive Starship test flight that failed to achieve a controlled reentry and soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
“Starship’s ninth flight test marked a major milestone for reuse with the first flight-proven Super Heavy booster launching from Starbase, and once more returned Starship to space,” the SpaceX statement stated.
Failed to deploy dummy satellites
A primary objective of Flight 9 was to open Starship‘s payload bay and deploy eight dummy Starlink satellites.
However, the payload door malfunctioned, leading to the cancellation of the satellite release. It remains unclear if this door malfunction was linked to the propellant leak and subsequent loss of attitude control.
The mission also couldn’t perform its intended tests of new heat shield tiles or stress-testing of the vehicle’s vulnerable sections.
Despite these setbacks, the spirit of innovation at SpaceX remains unbroken.
As manufacturing engineering manager Jessie Anderson stated, “This is exactly the SpaceX way. We’re going to learn, iterate, and iterate over and over again until we figure it out.”
And they plan to do so quickly. Elon Musk hinted that the next three Starship test launches could occur every three to four weeks.
With the ambition of establishing human presence on the Moon and Mars, SpaceX is engineering Starship, which stands as the largest and most powerful rocket yet.
Interestingly, Musk recently made a bold claim stating that the Starship rocket could be launched to Mars by late 2026, a mission that will also include Tesla’s humanoid.
Ping!.....................
I’m starting to think ‘SABOTAGE’.................
I watched the launch for a while on youtube. After 10 or 15 minutes the indicated velocity started dropping which seemed unusual at the time, but I quit watching.
Geez! They act as if this was rocket science.
That thought has crossed my mind as well. He has so many workers, it could be anyone from a hands-on technician to a software engineer, or anyone in between. Someone with the knowledge to eff things up.
Ouch!
That's quite a stylistic way to say it blew-up.
Gotta love engineer-speak. Another way to put it:
it is amazing to me even 50 years+ after space travel was started how hard it still is to do right.
I imagine Russia would probably crash more nukes on its own land than us if there ever was a war.
I don’t ever want to find out.....................
The actual story is that the booster was intended NOT to land the way it normally did but to come down at a higher angle of attack to see if the empirical results matched what they were seeing in silico and in the wind tunnel.
Amazing technology. Thanks for posting.
When they get the kinks worked out, this is going to be a heck of an asset.
I don’t think so, I used to build parts for jet and rocket engines. There’s a lot that can go wrong. I’ve been following the Starship closely. I think one of the problems is that they do so many things well, they don’t do the triple redundant thing NASA did in the 60’s and 70’s. Fuel leaks happen. How do you handle it before the LOX or Liquid Methane freezes and cracks everything it touches when you have a leak. First leak detectors, second Pressurized inert gas to flush the leak out a vent, valves to isolate the leak and shunt the gas to a secondary supply system. All this is weight, which means money. Remember though, perfection is the enemy of production, so give up some weight for redundancy instead of expecting a perfect build every time. All that being said, As someone who grew up near Cape Canaveral, where my dad worked. Spacex is an incredible company doing incredible things. Catching a couple of hundred tons at the launch tower is not a trivial physics problem. ( BTW that means Spacex can drop that 200 tons going 18000 kph , figure those joules of force Iran, with a roughly 1 meter CEP from outside the atmosphere) And ever since “Rocky Jones Space Ranger” I had been waiting for ships to be reusable and land like they took off.
I’m not a rocket scientist, but I still don’t understand why they do that so-called “hot staging.” Seems to me the booster is still either attached or way too close to the upper stage that there probably is some sort of damage done to the upper stage when it ignites. Seems like there’s too much of a possibility of ignition shock wave damage to the upper stage.
Thank you. Came here to say this.
My step-dad worked on the Mercury Project............
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.