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Arthur T Knackerbracket [soylentnews.org] writes:

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story [theregister.com]:

SpaceX's Starship has failed, again.

Elon Musk’s private rocketry company staged the ninth launch of the craft on Tuesday and notched up one success by managing to leave the launchpad by re-using a Super Heavy booster for the first time. But multiple fails for Flight 9 followed.

SpaceX paused the countdown for Tuesday's launch at the T-40 mark for some final tweaks, then sent Starship into the sky atop the Super Heavy at 1937 Eastern Daylight Time.

After stage separation, the booster crash-landed six minutes into the flight, after SpaceX used a steeper-than-usual angle of attack for its re-entry "to intentionally push Super Heavy to the limits, giving us real-world data about its performance that will directly feed in to making the next generation booster even more capable."

The Starship upper stage, meanwhile, did better than the previous two tests flights, in that it actually reached space, but subsequently things (like the craft) got well and truly turned around.

One of the goals for Musk's space crew was to release eight mocked up Starlink satellites into orbit. SpaceX already failed at its last two attempts to do this when the pod doors never opened. And it was third time unlucky last night when the payload door failed yet again to fully open to release the dummy satellites. SpaceX has not yet provided a reason for the malfunction.

Another goal for Flight 9 was to check out the performance of the ship's heatshield – SpaceX specifically flew it with 100 missing (on purpose) heatshield tiles so that it could test key vulnerable areas "across the vehicle during reentry." (The spacecraft also employed “Multiple metallic tile options, including one with active cooling" to test different materials for future missions.) But it needed controlled reentry to properly assess stress-test that, and that failed too.

After the doors remained stubbornly closed, a "subsequent [spacex.com] attitude control error resulted in bypassing the Raptor relight and prevented Starship from getting into the intended position for reentry." It began spinning out of control, blowing up, er, experiencing "a rapid unscheduled disassembly" upon re-entry.

SpaceX boss Elon Musk had rated Starship’s re-entry as the most important phase of this flight. But Starship spinning out as it headed back to Earth meant SpaceX was unable to capture all the data it hoped to gather. Although it says it did gather a lot of useful information before ground control lost contact with Starship approximately 46 minutes into the flight.

Musk nonetheless rated [x.com] the mission a success.

“Starship made it to the scheduled ship engine cutoff, so big improvement over last flight!” he Xeeted. “Also, no significant loss of heat shield tiles during ascent. Leaks caused loss of main tank pressure during the coast and re-entry phase. Lot of good data to review.”

The billionaire added: “Launch cadence for next 3 flights will be faster, at approximately 1 every 3 to 4 weeks.”

That may be a little optimistic, as the USA’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) must authorize Starship launches and is yet to do so for future flights.

Previous Starship missions caused concern in the aviation industry after debris from SpaceX hardware fell to Earth. For this mission the FAA enlarged the Aircraft Hazard Area that aviators avoid after launches. SpaceX’s commentary on the launch made several mentions of the company having secured permission and chosen remote – and therefore safe – locations for touchdowns.

The FAA, however, is not keen to authorize flights until it is satisfied with safety. Three explosive endings in a row could make Musk’s timeline for future launches harder to achieve. ®

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