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‘Success uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!’ Starship encounters ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly’

January 17, 2025 | | Print Article

Elon Musk’s SpaceX conducted a test flight Thursday that was both a success and failure at the same time.

SpaceX reportedly launched its Starship megarocket for the seventh time ever on Thursday.

“One of the goals of this ambitious test flight was to catch Starship’s giant first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy, back at Starbase’s launch tower, using the structure’s ‘chopstick’ arms,” according to Space.com.

This part of the test flight was a total success:

“The 33-engine booster nestled softly into the tower’s arms about seven minutes after liftoff today, showcasing the time-saving recovery strategy that SpaceX intends to use for both Super Heavy and Ship, Starship’s 171-foot-tall (52-meter-tall) upper stage,” Space.com notes.

What went wrong is that SpaceX reportedly lost touch with the ship itself only minutes into the flight.

“As we were getting to the end of that ascent burn, we saw engines dropping out on telemetry, and we have since lost contact with the Ship,” SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot said.

He later admitted that the Ship had outright been lost, though the reasons why remained unclear.

“Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn,” SpaceX said in a statement. “Teams will continue to review data from today’s flight test to better understand root cause. With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will help us improve Starship’s reliability.”

A “rapid unscheduled disassembly,” or “RUD,” is simply a term SpaceX uses to refer to an explosion.

According to Space.com, the Ship was supposed to fly around the globe and then land in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Australia. But that never happened.

The explosion produced debris that reportedly affected domestic commercial airline flights:

According to CNN, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for its part warned that flights leaving Miami International Airport and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport were being delayed because of a “rocket launch anomaly.”

“The FAA briefly slowed and diverted aircraft around the area where space vehicle debris was falling,” a statement from the agency reads. “Normal operations have resumed.”

Meanwhile, about 18 minutes after the test flight was launched, a pilot reportedly radioed an air traffic controller at a San Juan air traffic control facility.

“We just got a major streak [of debris], going from at least 60 miles, there’s all these different colors, just curious,” he said. “It looked like it was coming towards us, but obviously because of this, just letting you know.”

Below is a video of what he was talking about:

According to Space.com, there’s something else that was supposed to happen during the flight Thursday.

“About 17.5 minutes after liftoff, the upper stage was to deploy 10 mock satellites similar in size and weight to the next-gen version of SpaceX’s Starlink broadband spacecraft,” the site notes. “Ship didn’t make it that far into flight, however.”

Like the Ship, the dummy satellites were also supposed to land in the Indian Ocean.

A certain level of disappointment has now set in, especially given that the missing Ship sported a bevy of new, exciting features.

“The vehicle’s forward flaps have been reduced in size and shifted towards the vehicle tip and away from the heat shield, significantly reducing their exposure to reentry heating while simplifying the underlying mechanisms and protective tiling,” SpaceX wrote in the mission description.

“Redesigns to the propulsion system, including a 25% increase in propellant volume, the vacuum jacketing of feedlines, a new fuel feedline system for the vehicle’s Raptor vacuum engines, and an improved propulsion avionics module controlling vehicle valves and reading sensors, all add additional vehicle performance and the ability to fly longer missions,” the company added.

That said, many more test flights lie ahead for SpaceX, which is developing Starship specifically to one day take humanity to Mars.

Vivek Saxena
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