SpaceX Falls Short of Historic Double Starship Catch (bakersfield.com) 33
SpaceX's 15th Starship test flight successfully reached orbit Friday, but its historic attempt to catch both stages at the launch tower was derailed when the Super Heavy booster malfunctioned, forcing controllers to abort its return before it exploded after splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico. The upper-stage Starship did, however, successfully deploy 26 Starlink satellites and is scheduled to complete 15 orbits before attempting an unprecedented tower catch on Saturday. If successful, it would mark the first time a spacecraft has returned from orbit to land vertically at a launch tower. The Bakersfield Californian reports: The original goal was to retrieve every single piece of the rocket for the purpose of future recycling, something yet to be achieved anywhere in the world. Musk sees this leading to the kind of fast and consistent launch rates necessary for building moon bases and sending people to Mars. Shortly after reaching orbit, Starship dropped off 26 of the company's most advanced Starlink satellites. The plan is for Starship to complete 15 laps around the world at an altitude of around 170 miles (275 kilometers) before heading back to the launch site for Saturday's grand finale.
SpaceX had already made three booster grabs at the company's sprawling Starbase near the U.S.-Mexico border. That made Friday's miss all the more surprising. "Well, that certainly isn't the news that we had hoped to hear for today," observed SpaceX launch commentator Kate Tice, adding that it was in line with the many rigorous safety checks to protect the pad. No explanation was provided for what went wrong. This was the first attempt to capture the upgraded version of the booster that stretches 236 feet (72 meters) -- the production model for moon and Mars expeditions. It will also be the first time the company attempts to catch the spacecraft, which spans 171 feet (52 meters). Together, they form the world's biggest and most powerful rocket -- an astounding 407 feet (124 meters) in height.
The spacecraft portion of the 14 previous Starships ended up in the ocean, either by design at flight's end or by accident in a stream of flaming wreckage. During the first full-scale test flight in 2023, multiple engines failed to ignite and the tumbling rocket's self-destruct system was activated. The last test, in September, was the first to reach orbit, but SpaceX did not try to recover any of the rocket stages. You can watch a recorded livestream of the launch on YouTube.
SpaceX had already made three booster grabs at the company's sprawling Starbase near the U.S.-Mexico border. That made Friday's miss all the more surprising. "Well, that certainly isn't the news that we had hoped to hear for today," observed SpaceX launch commentator Kate Tice, adding that it was in line with the many rigorous safety checks to protect the pad. No explanation was provided for what went wrong. This was the first attempt to capture the upgraded version of the booster that stretches 236 feet (72 meters) -- the production model for moon and Mars expeditions. It will also be the first time the company attempts to catch the spacecraft, which spans 171 feet (52 meters). Together, they form the world's biggest and most powerful rocket -- an astounding 407 feet (124 meters) in height.
The spacecraft portion of the 14 previous Starships ended up in the ocean, either by design at flight's end or by accident in a stream of flaming wreckage. During the first full-scale test flight in 2023, multiple engines failed to ignite and the tumbling rocket's self-destruct system was activated. The last test, in September, was the first to reach orbit, but SpaceX did not try to recover any of the rocket stages. You can watch a recorded livestream of the launch on YouTube.
Looks like they were just cautious (Score:4, Interesting)
The video I've seen shows it descending to a tower-like height over the sea, then hovering until it ran out of fuel. So it they had been able to reach the tower it would probably have been caught.
So either it didn't have enough fuel to do that or they decided to be cautious to ensure they don't wreck the tower before the ship comes back. We'll find out when they make some official announcement later.
Re: (Score:2)
Contrary to the fine summary, SpaceX have said nothing yet about why they diverted the booster into the gulf. As yet, the problem could have been at the pad and nothing to do with the booster. Aside from one engine failing to restart for the boost-back burn (which is tolerable), the booster appeared to function correctly.
Re: (Score:1)
Good point. They aborted at least one other catch attempt because of an equipment problem on the tower rather than the booster, but I'm pretty sure somewhere in the launch broadcast today they said the tower was good to go this time.
Re: (Score:2)
Musk has since said the booster was low on fuel.
Spacex reports it was a 'GNC' issue. (Score:2)
That is, the rocket called the off-shore abort because something about the system that calculates the exact location of the rocket, and directs it to where it should be, was wrong. A problem with the rocket and the tower communicating would match this, but it could be any number of other things.
There were suggestions that it could have been not enough methane remaining, but that wouldn't match the new information. We did get a flash of green indicating oxygen rich combustion at the end, but that could have
Re: Spacex reports it was a 'GNC' issue. (Score:2)
Gulf of Mexico? (Score:1)
Uh oh someone is getting shit canned and defunded
Re: Gulf of Mexico? (Score:2)
Re: Gulf of Mexico? (Score:1)
This whole Mars thing is pure hypium (Score:1, Flamebait)
It is never going to happen, even if they find enough volunteers with a death wish.
Re: (Score:1)
Probably. But every time Elon tweets about it the stock price will go up.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't be such a naysayer! If Musk believes it'll work, maybe we'll get lucky and he'll get on one of those rockets.
Re: (Score:2)
Never is a very, very long time.
Yeah, we got to moon with blowing up anything .... (Score:3)
This whole Mars thing is pure hypium. It is never going to happen, even if they find enough volunteers with a death wish.
Yeah we got to the moon without any rockets blowing up or losing any astronauts during the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs ... oh wait.
Go watch the movie "The Right Stuff:.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0... [imdb.com]
Get somebody who knows what is going on to do the (Score:2)
At the time it happened no one knew which system triggered the abort, could have been the tower, could have been the rocket, only analysis of the logs will tell.
Yup. I wish journalists would do journalism. (Score:2)
The rocket itself called the abort, not any controllers. The rocket also seems to have called its flight termination when it hovered off-shore.
Re: (Score:2)
"forcing controllers to abort its return before it exploded " Forcing controllers to explode it after it had completed a picture perfect return, only in the ocean instead of at its Tower because one of the automatic systems triggered an abort.
Only Spacex can make a picture perfect return that didn't come back to the place it was supposed to.
I'll bet you think the Flying car is an actual flying car you'll be driving some day.
This is the unfortunate thing about the cult. Even the failures are perfect.
Failed (Score:2)
Not fell short. They failed again.
Re:Failed (Score:4, Informative)
It's not a 100% success. But if the explosion was because of some detected failure inside the first stage, this was a success for their internal monitoring systems and preserved their recovery tower and launch infrastructure.
For comparison, this is what real failure looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Oh you mean a failure like this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Yes, SpaceX is familiar with that sort of failure too.
Getting Good At This (Score:2)
So, since they're so good at this, maybe they should send rockets to currently orbiting, valuable satellites like super expensive communications satellites and space telescopes, and use the rocketry wizardry to soft-land them for repair, refurbishment, and relaunch. Would that be cool, or what?
Re: (Score:3)
So, since they're so good at this, maybe they should send rockets to currently orbiting, valuable satellites like super expensive communications satellites and space telescopes, and use the rocketry wizardry to soft-land them for repair, refurbishment, and relaunch. Would that be cool, or what?
It's been done. And it was cool.
https://www.lloyds.com/about-l... [lloyds.com]
The catch sometimes seems like a bad idea (Score:3)
Am I missing something?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes. Pretty much no-one thought SpaceX could land a rocket that couldn't hover on a barge that was bouncing around in the ocean, and they failed a bunch of times but now it's routine.
The catch exists because as you say it means no need to add delicate landing legs, and it means the booster can be placed back on the pad to be refuelled and relaunched in an hour or two. Obviously we're a long way from the point where a booster can be relaunched with minimal maintenance but that's the long-term goal.
As for pri
Re: (Score:2)
The contract price for a launch of a fully recovered Starship+booster is $90 million. We don't know how much it costs to build one, but its going to be more than that. Unrecovered, Starship should be very uncompetitive, particularly with something like Falcon.
SpaceX is at the point where they can start tak
Re: (Score:2)
Ok so catching a rocket means that the rocket doesn't need legs and probably some other heavy or expensive items. The commentators declared that SpaceX will only attempt the catch under perfect conditions because they don't want to take a chance of damaging the pad, ala New Glenn. That makes a lot of sense. This is spaceflight we're talking about. Big rockets, lots of explosive bits. "Perfect" is something will rarely occur, which means the boosters and upper stages will be splashed. That makes everything way more expensive and prevents SpaceX from keeping to their aggressive launch / catch / refurb fast turn-around cycle. Am I missing something?
"Perfect" is something that takes practice and refinement to happen reliably. It took quite a few launches before the Falcon 9 booster could reliable land too. There is a lot more scrutiny directed at Starship's refinement process than there was for Falcon 9. Falcon 9 was assumed to be expendable and successful at that. SpaceX started doing practice landings as a bonus activity. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't. But with progressive refinement it reached the point where nearly every launch e
OK let's fix all the errors in this summary (Score:5, Informative)
Congratulations, you got me to log in for the first time in FIVE YEARS to correct all the misreporting here:
> was derailed when the Super Heavy booster malfunctioned
Nope, we don't know that yet. Something between booster AND/OR the tower AND/OR the communications between them failed. It's a system. We'll find out soon enough, but we definitely do not know that "the booster malfunctioned".
> (re ship catch) If successful, it would mark the first time a spacecraft has returned from orbit to land vertically at a launch tower.
Technically true, but the real power of the Starship system will be that it will be the first to recover THE ENTIRE LAUNCH VEHICLE, all of the parts, not just the first stage. Of course in this case the booster was lost, so Flight 15 won't be the one that gets to claim that "first" title, but it's imminent. (attn pedants: the space shuttle expended the external tank, and cost a bazillion dollars and many months to refurb after every flight)
> The Bakersfield Californian reports:
Well, this is part of your problem. Since when do we rely on a farm town's local newspaper for space news? If it was actually a wire report, say that.
> The spacecraft portion of the 14 previous Starships ended up in the ocean, either by design at flight's end or by accident in a stream of flaming wreckage.
Poor writing. ALL of them ended up in the ocean in the end "by design", in a remarkable string of successes. After the first few attempts, they have pretty much stuck the landing every time, with the ship then blowing up after falling over into the water, as intended . The one exception was Ship 40 of Flight 13 that surprisingly did NOT blow up after it fell over into the water, which then gave us those 2-3 months of entertainment as they (successfully!) recovered that ship and brought it all the way back to Boca Chica.
There are lots of news outlets that cover this much better: NASAspaceflight (NSF), Ars Technica, SpaceFlightNow, heck even sad old Space.com probably does a better job.