During its first short flight over a week ago, a giant Starship rocket built by SpaceX created an unexpected “rock tornado” on launch, causing multiple engine failures before spiraling out of control.
Afterwards, company founder Elon Musk said in an update delivered during a Twitter voice chat Saturday night that the end of the flight was more tense than it should have been. Destruction Command did not immediately destroy the starship. Instead, he had 40 seconds pass before the rocket finally exploded.
Despite everything going wrong, Musk considered Starship’s launch a success.
“Obviously not a total success, but still successful,” he said.
He said the goal of the test flights was to “learn a lot and we learned a lot” and that more test flights are planned for this year.
The most powerful spacecraft ever launched is central to SpaceX’s goal of sending humans to Mars and NASA’s plan to return astronauts to the moon by 2025 as part of the Artemis program.
Although the rocket did not reach space, “the results were largely in line with my expectations and may have been slightly better than I expected,” Musk said, adding that “there was minimal damage to the pads.” and left the pad.”
At the same time, he admitted that the firing had intensified. large area of debris A cloud of dust formed and reached a small town a few miles from the launch pad on the southern tip of Texas.
In a Twitter discussion that lasted nearly an hour, Musk answered tricky technical questions and provided a detailed timeline of what went wrong during the four-minute flight.
Three of the 33 engines in Starship’s booster stage were shut down before the rocket left the launch pad.
“The system decided they weren’t healthy enough to go all out, so they were shut down,” Musk said.
With the loss of three engines, the Starship tilted upward and sideways. “It should actually go straight.”
Twenty-seven seconds after launch, something went wrong with one of the engines, causing Musk to have “some sort of energetic event” that damaged several other nearby engines.
“But the rocket kept going,” Musk said. It was 85 seconds after the start of the flight that the rocket lost its ability to point the engine nozzles and change direction.
From there the rocket went out of control and continued to fly after the termination order.
“It took too long to destroy the tank,” Musk said of the flight termination system, which was intended to destroy the out-of-control rocket. The lag indicates the rocket’s resilience, which remained intact as it rolled.
“The vehicle’s structural margins appear to be better than expected,” Musk said.
For the next launch, more explosives can be added to ensure that “the rocket explodes instantly if a flight stop is required.”
Another unexpected surprise was that the concrete underneath the rocket shattered during launch.
The thrust of the 30 engines created an unexpected “rock tornado” that scattered debris over hundreds of acres and created a giant dust cloud.
“It’s basically a man-made sandstorm,” Musk said. “But we don’t want to do that again.”
Instead of the rocket’s 33 engines firing directly into the concrete beneath the rocket during launch, a large water-cooled steel plate is installed. Musk said the plate wasn’t ready for its launch last week.
He said repairs to the next rocket and launch pad would be ready within six to eight weeks. We have to be happy with SpaceX’s tweaks and improvements before we allow the next starship to fly.
The next launch will try to reach the goal of the first mission. That is, after the Starship vehicle successfully decouples from its booster and reaches space, it will orbit most of the Earth and land in the waters off Hawaii.
Musk couldn’t promise complete success on his second attempt. He said he expects another four to five Starship launches this year. “There’s probably an 80% chance that we’ll be on track this year,” Musk said. “I don’t want to tempt fate, but I think he’s close to 100% likely to be on track within 12 months.”
Musk said SpaceX has spent “around $2 billion” on Starship this year and doesn’t need additional investment to develop the rocket.
One of Starship’s primary uses is as a lunar lander during NASA’s Artemis III mission to bring astronauts to the moon’s surface near Antarctica. Musk confidently argued that Starship would be ready before NASA built other components like the Space Launch System rocket. “We are not the limiting factor at all,” he said.
He also highlighted the technical challenges SpaceX is trying to overcome in building giant spacecraft that can be rapidly and repeatedly reflighted, much like jetliners.
“This is certainly a candidate for the most difficult technical problem a human can do,” Musk said.
