SpaceX Has Finally Figured Out Why Starship Exploded, And The Reason Is Even More Humiliating Than Last Time.

Musk is making a fatal mistake.

Photo by nader saremi on Unsplash

Starship is an unmitigated failure — that much we all know by now. But most people still don’t understand the full extent of what a terrible failure Starship actually is. At the time of writing, SpaceX has already spent approximately $10 billion on Starship and hasn’t even managed to reach proper orbit, let alone deliver any payload to space. For comparison, NASA’s Saturn V rocket, which was designed and built using more expensive and less accurate old-school analogue technology, cost roughly $6.4 billion to develop, and the launch costs were approximately $1.4 billion in today’s dollars. In other words, for the same amount of cash that Musk has splashed on creating a rocket that doesn’t work, NASA was able to send astronauts to lunar orbit using technology from the 1960s. And, even more embarrassingly for Musk, this sorry saga is only going to get worse. You see, SpaceX recently announced the cause of Starship’s spectacular failure during its most recent test flight, as well as detailing how they plan to solve this problem, which has exposed just how horribly flawed the Starship concept is.

To fully explain these issues, we need to rewind the clocks back to mid-January when Starship’s previous failed test flight, flight 7, was launched. Like all the other attempts, this test failed, with the upper stage disintegrating before it could deliver its dummy payload to orbit. Sure, the Super Heavy Booster was able to land, but this isn’t particularly impressive when you consider that landing the Booster is the easiest part of reentry because the Booster never leaves the atmosphere — not to mention that it has significantly less kinetic energy than the upper stage during landing as a result of its much lower speeds, making the process even easier. Moreover, this flight only had a 20-tonne dummy payload, which is just 13% of what Starship is designed for. This allowed both the Booster and upper stage to be lighter, as they required far less fuel, and the rocket engines were less stressed, as less thrust was needed.

Then how did test flight 7 fail? Well, excessive harmonic vibrations ruptured the fuel lines, creating a gigantic fire that destroyed the entire upper stage mid-flight. This occurred despite the reduced stress placed on the engines and structure itself. Even worse, test flights 7 and 8 were launched using an improved version of Starship, featuring redesigned and strengthened fuel lines to prevent these failures from occurring.

So, why did this solution not work? Well, Starship has a huge thrust problem. Musk and his engineers overestimated the amount of thrust their Raptor engine could produce while designing the Starship. Even Musk himself has publicly stated that Starship can only take less than 50% of its promised payload to orbit, which is likely an overestimate. This means they are forced to cut down on as much of the craft’s weight as possible and push the engines to the limit during launches. Unfortunately, this makes the rocket more fragile and means the engines generate excessive heat and vibrations — which is a perfect recipe for guaranteed failure.