2mo ago

SpaceX loses contact with Starship rocket after ninth test flight launch

www.theguardian.com

SpaceX Starship breaks up over Indian Ocean in latest bumpy test

SpaceX mission control lost contact with the rocket after it leaked fuel and spun out of control, despite already flying halfway around the world

SpaceX mission control lost contact with its latest Starship rocket on Tuesday, as it leaked fuel, spun out of control, and made an uncontrolled re-entry after flying halfway around the world, likely disintegrating over the Indian Ocean, officials said.

“Just to confirm, we did lose contact with the ship officially a couple of minutes ago. So that brings an end to the ninth flight test,” said SpaceX’s Dan Huot during a live feed.

Starship, the futuristic rocket on which Elon Musk’s ambitions for multiplanetary travel are riding, roared into space from Texas on its ninth uncrewed test launch and flew further than the last two attempts that ended in explosive failure.

United States | News & Politics @lemmy.ml

geneva_convenience @lemmy.ml

2mo ago

SpaceX Starship breaks up over Indian Ocean in latest bumpy test

www.theguardian.com /science/2025/may/28/spacex-starship-rocket-launch-9th-test-flight-lost-contact

44 comments

I remember a NASA engineer saying that if NASA had half the failures that SpaceX has had in its early days they would have been disbanded as an organization and their funding pulled completely.
Yet this private org somehow gets bailed out again and again and again and again and again all while not only wasting massive tax payer money, but also causing a hell of a lot of waste. SpaceX is the waste fraud and abuse that should be trashed, not the national park service.
- thats why he moved to texas, less regulations there.
  
  Less workplace rights and employee protections
- SpaceX is still hitting the milestones on their NASA contracts
  SpaceX has missed every single HLS milestone and is the primary reason the Artemis program is delayed:
  By definition, this is not a bailout or waste of taxpayer money, as it was fairly competed on the open market, and approved by the congresspeople who were voted in by the public.
  SpaceX famously hired William Gerstenmaier and Kathy Luedens right after they awarded them billions for the falcon and crew capsule. They barely skated by the government's "revolving door" conflict of interest regulations because SpaceX put them on "unrelated" projects.
  The contract awarded to SpaceX and Starlink under the Trump FCC was rescinded after Biden's FCC decided that they weren't meeting the requirements of the contract.
  Now SpaceX is awash in newly minted federal contracts from Trump's new federal agencies and Musk's "special employee" status.
  SpaceX's funding has never been "approved by congress" outside of some confirmed cabinet positions, nor has it ever been what one could call completely "fair."
  
  For the record: Why did you lie about them hitting their milestones on the NASA contract?
  
  SpaceX's cost to launch Starship just got substantially cheaper as well.
  They just launched Starship into space for the cost of fuel/minor refurbishment/operational cost instead of the cost of a whole new booster this launch. They reused the booster and 29/33 raptor engines (1 of which has flown 3 times). The only reason it went kaboom was they were doing a very aggressive test increase performance to see if it would fail since their modelling showed it may or may not work. It did not.
  SpaceX has designed, launched, landed, and reused an orbital rocket TWICE before anyone has done it once, and yet people just see failure. (And NASA's doesn't really count as it cost just as much to refurbish it as making a new one)
Best part of this is that they just won the contract for launch services even though they still haven't proven the thing can fly without blowing up yet.
- Launch services isn't a contract to launch anything, it's just NASA collecting information about every rocket. Rockets that blow up just get listed as Category I High Risk, allowed for Class D payloads that are cheap and replaceable.
- Well, they still have the smaller rockets that usually don't blow up.
  
  No cardboard, no cellotape, highest quality materials
I'm sure SpaceX workers are all super inspired and motivated to make a shit ass cunt neo nazi billionaire achieve his megalomaniac space goals.. I heard they're even putting the extra hour for free.
"Uh, yeah, it was supposed to do that. We learn a lot from billion dollar failures."
- People estimate ~100 million, which is still a lot. Of course it's worth noting that they weren't attempting to launch a payload or really recover much of anything, so the only real cost of failure is that they might need to launch more test flights later than they otherwise would have had to.
  Apparently estimated total development costs are probably a bit less than half of the Artemis program cost, although the Artemis program has actually developed a fully functional and reliable rocket by now. So it's hard to say if SpaceX's development method will be cheaper in the long run. (Discounting the later manufacturing costs because I don't see any reason why a more ULA, Blue Origin, or NASA-like development process wouldn't still be capable of producing a cheap rocket if that was the focus)
  Honestly losing to the US military industrial complex in development cost would be pretty embarrassing. (Congress makes NASA use all the MIC suppliers for their rockets)
I thought it said SpaceX lost a contract and got excited for a moment
- Yeah. I don't like having this response because I feel like anything that increases our reach and activity in space is a positive step. It's unfortunate that spacex has musk's shitty fingerprints all over it.
Just for comparison, on their 9th test flight the Apollo program they had already successfully reached orbit 5 times.
The 9th test flight of the Soyuz was their 7th time reaching orbit.
Elon's 9th attempt is his second time reaching the bottom of the Indian ocean. Shows the level of proficiency in spacex.
- It concerns me from a standpoint that is similar to Oceangate - the engineers are probably aware something is going wrong, but money is getting the final say. Then the people on one of these things end up dying, and it won't be Musk.
  I'm also concerned because this lax approach to engineering is becoming more apparent in the private sector. Engineers have a very difficult job -traditionally balancing budget, schedule, and quality. But we also are vital in ensuring regulatory compliance, safety, disposal, process, efficiency etc.
  Engineer salaries, however, have stagnated like the rest of American workers. It's true we still get paid better, but compared to how much the salary got you in the 80s-90s, we get much less.
  Private sector engineers are largely not PEs as we're shielded by our employers. We are more worried about being laid off than fucking up a project to the point lives get risked.
  Part of this is why I chose to no longer work on systems that can cause injuries/ harm to a user. If I'm doing that, I can assume I'm not alone. If those of us consciously avoiding it because of fears of hurting users, it might mean that the ones working on the systems aren't motivated by safety of the user.
  
  The one good thing from oceangate was the fact that the CEO trusted his own life to his invention. He was in the sub when it imploded.
  As stupid as he is, musk is unfortunately smart enough to know not to risk his own life in his own rockets.
- And while both of those programs weren't starting from zero, like Apollo learned from Mercury and Gemini, SpaceX should have learned from all of them.
  
  spacex is also not starting from zero. They previously made the falcon 9.
- The Saturn V's 9th flight was the third time it took humans to the moon...
  
  ~~Apollo 9~~ Apollo 8 went to the moon but they had multiple test flights prior to that numbering. Those are a more reasonable point of comparison.
  Edit: I misremembered the number.
- As a comparison too SpaceX can launch Starship at least 6 more times before reaching the cost of a single Saturn V launch, I an not even talking about development cost.
  Starship also did reach orbital velocity on several launches.
  The goals are different.
  
  There hasn't been a single one of elon's companies that delivered on promised prices.
  Falcon 9 is more expensive than promised. His tunnels weren't cheaper. His cars are more expensive than promised. Cybertruck is over $100k when he promised under $40k at the launch.
  Focus on what his companies can deliver. That is real. His fantasy rockets that would be superior in all ways do not exist.
Just like Elon musk's mind has lost contact with reality.... Because of ketamine...
Damn, I thought it said "loses contract."
Governments are still going to throw money at anything this guy does. Useful idiots couldn't have been more useful a few years ago.
Elons not a nazi, because nazis are good at making rockets
- They are actually more alike than you suggest:
  https://youtu.be/OdBh54MoZRE?
All the money being spent on this bullshit could've been better spent improving the living conditions of the working class.
- Well, there are at least 5 million Starlink users around the world, and I'm sure if you ask them they'll say their lives and living conditions have been improved.

44 comments