Nearly two months after an explosion sent flaming debris raining down on the Turks and Caicos, SpaceX launched another mammoth Starship rocket on Thursday, but lost contact minutes into the test flight as the spacecraft came tumbling down and broke apart.
This time, wreckage from the latest explosion was seen streaming from the skies over Florida. It was not immediately known whether the spacecraft’s self-destruct system had kicked in to blow it up.
All the trash being dumped over the caribbean when these blow up. Someone fine the guy.
Who pays to go around and clean all their trash up? Or do the just go “oops, sorry” and leave it.
Yes. Well, except for the “sorry” part
Shouldn’t Musk be test flying these things personally?
Either this or he should inspect the engines from below during launch.
There was a time when I would have been really bummed out about this.
Did it end in 2022, when there was supposed to be a base on Mars?
Or did it end 2024 when there was supposed to be manned flights to Mars?
Elon Musk is a fraud, which has been evident since at least 2017.Elon Musk claimed summon would be able to autonomously drive a Tesla across country to pick up its owner in about two years. (1/6/2016)
Yet another Musk project literally crashes and burns as a result of his leadership. Looks like we have a fireworks show in store for his latest project, the United States of America.
Elon Musk is such a genius, he has found a way to make fireworks financed by the government!
holy metaphor, Batman!
You see it’s actually a good thing all their rockets explode because it gives them data to keep making rockets that explode.
Please tell me that the
Mar a LagoTurd-O-Lardo golf course now has a mini golf feature.Somebody should convince Musk that they’re not exploding and that they figured out a way to go to Mars really fast, but the system won’t work unless he pilots.
Atleast the first stage landed succesfully (again) which is quite incredible achievement in itself.
Oh, no! Not Florida! Anyway…
It was not immediately known whether the spacecraft’s self-destruct system had kicked in to blow it up.
There was some kind of gas leak visible from the area with the rocket bells, the engine bay, prior to T+ 8:00.
Then at about T+ 8:06, multiple engines failed, seemingly explosively, gas leak became much more significant, craft began wildly tumbling out of control, then the video feed lost connection.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=2RMW0nWzRqs
This tumbling out of control occured during the ascent burn… not after it had completed.
My money is on they simply lost contact with it, it tumbled into the atmosphere and exploded during re-entry, and SpaceX did not have the ability to send the self-destruct signal after the craft began spinning so wildly their live feeds cut out.
In the video I linked, you can see the on board fuel level readings going all over the place as the thing tumbles wildly… how would it even be possible to confirm an onboard destruct system engaged and worked when you have unreliable telemetry, nor physical evidence?
EDIT:
//Watching the NASASpaceFlight stream (which is not actually a part of NASA btw), they have part of a feed from actual Space X employees, one of whom states that telemetry to Starship is completely lost at about T+ 10:10.
No mention whatsoever of an abort or self desctruct system being engaged.//
… How does Starship’s self-destruct system… even work?
More detail on the bullshit reporting and information around Starship's 'self-destruct' system
A bunch of mainstream news sources are claiming the self-destruct signal or process or system was engaged…
…but SpaceX has not actually directly stated that, and the news articles saying the self-destruct was engaged are citing Spaceflight Now, who don’t actually source that claim, and now mainstream sources are saying that SpaceX said something they didn’t say.
https://spaceflightnow.com/2025/03/07/starship-upper-stage-lost-in-second-mishap-in-a-row/
This is the same thing that occured with the last launch, IFT 7. Mainstream articles will run with titles that say or imply the self-destruct was engaged, and then not actually source that claim either at all, or not back to an actual SpaceX statement or document.
IMO, these are both RUDs, at no point was some kind of self destruct system being successfully manually or automatically executed.
If anyone can actually find any solid information actually describing how the Starship’s self-destruct system works, that’d be great.
All I can find is a NYT article from 3 years back describing how an ‘automated command’ took 40 seconds to destroy IFT 1’s Starship, when it should have been nearly instant.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/science/elon-musk-spacex-starship.html
Is… the self-destruct system wholly onboard the Starship, set to engage automatically upon various onboard systems getting sufficiently triggered?
Is it a manually sent signal from ground operators?
Is it both?
Is it a signal sent from the ground by monitoring systems on the ground that are supposed to trigger automatically?
How does the self-destruct system, once triggered or engaged… actually, mechanically work to destroy the craft?
???
I have not been able to find actual concrete answers to these questions for the 3 years of IFT launches.
Given how Musk ‘develops products’, I am highly inclined toward the thought that this system either funcrionally doesn’t exist at worst, or doesn’t function properly at best.
But if anyone can find some actual concrete details, I’d love to see them.
