{"id":488569,"date":"2023-04-21T07:29:14","date_gmt":"2023-04-21T05:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=488569"},"modified":"2023-04-21T08:40:17","modified_gmt":"2023-04-21T06:40:17","slug":"spacex-explains-what-went-wrong-with-first-starship-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/science\/488569-spacex-explains-what-went-wrong-with-first-starship-launch.html","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX explains what went wrong with first Starship launch"},"content":{"rendered":"

SpaceX\u2019s attempt to send its Starship system into space on Thursday ended in a blast after an engine failure forced it to blow up the rocket shortly after liftoff.<\/p>\n

The mishap potentially complicates chief executive officer Elon Musk\u2019s goal to send humans back to the Moon and to deep-space destinations including Mars.<\/p>\n

Thursday\u2019s test was a crucial one for Starship, the largest rocket ever built, and meant to show that the vehicle could reach space and complete a partial orbit of Earth.<\/p>\n

It also drew attention from the US Federal Aviation Administration, which said it will look into the flawed launch.<\/p>\n

The explosion occurred just under four minutes after Starship lifted off from the company\u2019s facility in Boca Chica, Texas, early morning on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The company said it blew up Starship and its Super Heavy booster after they failed to separate. It cited problems with some of Starship\u2019s 33 engines.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vehicle experienced multiple engines out during the flight test, lost altitude, and began to tumble,\u201d SpaceX\u00a0said<\/a><\/strong> in a statement posted on its website.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe flight termination system was commanded on both the booster and ship.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shortly after the explosion, Musk\u00a0tweeted<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0that the next test launch would take place \u201cin a few months.\u201d<\/p>\n

The CEO congratulated employees and said he\u2019s optimistic about the program\u2019s progress, according to an internal email seen by Bloomberg.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to jinx it, but I think we are highly likely to reach orbit this year and recover the booster and ship, if not this year, certainly next year,\u201d Musk said in the message. \u201cMars, here we come!\u201d<\/p>\n

Starship was conceived to bring people \u2014 including Nasa astronauts \u2014 and cargo such as satellites into Earth\u2019s orbit and beyond.<\/p>\n

The rocket is more powerful than any previous crewed spacecraft and taller than the Saturn V, which took humans to the moon.<\/p>\n

The launch vehicle system also had been designed to be fully reusable, which SpaceX promises will reduce costs.<\/p>\n

The FAA, which regulates commercial space launches, said Thursday afternoon that it would oversee an investigation of the rocket failure.<\/p>\n

The agency is responsible for ensuring uninvolved people and property aren\u2019t damaged during such launches.<\/p>\n

\u201cA return to flight of the Starship\/Super Heavy vehicle is based on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety,\u201d it said in an emailed statement.<\/p>\n

Musk\u2019s company, formally Space Exploration Technologies Corp., suggested on the livestream that the attempt may still provide valuable information, and that simply blasting off could be considered a success.<\/p>\n

The CEO also had sought to temper expectations earlier in the week.<\/p>\n

\n
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As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation<\/p>\n

\u2014 SpaceX (@SpaceX)\u00a0April 20, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI would like to just set expectations,\u201d Musk said during an audio discussion on Twitter on April 16.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe get far enough away from the launchpad before something goes wrong, then I think I would consider that to be a success. Just don\u2019t blow up the launchpad.\u201d<\/p>\n

The attempt Thursday came after a few stops and starts. SpaceX had\u00a0originally planned<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0to launch the uncrewed test mission April 17 before calling it off about 10 minutes before the scheduled takeoff due to a frozen pressure valve on the rocket.<\/p>\n

Musk\u00a0has<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0long been obsessed with April 20 \u2014 also known as 4\/20, commonly associated with smoking marijuana \u2014 and seemingly willed the launch date into existence.<\/p>\n

When the launch was originally set for April 17,\u00a0Musk tweeted<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0that he had \u201ca feeling it might get delayed 3 days…\u201d And in a reply to a meme illustrating the possibility of Starship launching on April 20th,\u00a0Musk wrote<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>that it was \u201cFate.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rocket lifted off from the Starbase facility at approximately 8:33 a.m. local time on Thursday, and climbed to a peak altitude of 39 kilometres over the Gulf of Mexico, not far from Boca Chica.<\/p>\n

There, the mishap occurred, causing the vehicle to move off course and begin to tumble, the company said. At roughly four minutes, the Starship launch system exploded at 29 kilometres.<\/p>\n

Now read: Astronomers use machine learning to mine data from South Africa\u2019s MeerKAT telescope \u2014 and find SAURON<\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite the test ending in a rapid unscheduled disassembly (SpaceX talk for an explosion), the Elon Musk-owned company and many in the industry regard it to be a success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":488573,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31750],"tags":[11373,77492,11375,60889],"class_list":["post-488569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","tag-elon-musk","tag-rocket-launches","tag-spacex","tag-starship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488569"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488569"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":488575,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488569\/revisions\/488575"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}