The explosion on the flight of Spacex’s Starship rocket – the third consecutive failure – highlights the huge challenges faced by Elon Musk in his space ambitions, just when the richest billionaire in the world promises to reduce his political involvement in Washington to focus on his business.
On Tuesday night, when Starship took off from the south of Texas, employees celebrated the initial performance of the world’s largest and most powerful rocket. But in the middle of the flight ,.
Despite successfully reusing a super -heavy propeller – an essential step towards Musk’s dream of creating a fully reusable launch system – he was also destroyed before falling into Mexico’s Gulf as planned. Worse yet, the Starship door failed to try to release fictitious satellites, a crucial part of the test to expand Starlink internet service.
The unsuccessful mission launches questions about the progress of the Starship project and compromises Musk’s promises to start cargo flights to Mars next year. The episode also emphasizes the risks of the “fly-fuel-consence” approach used by Spacex in the development of rockets.
Musk, however, did not show publicly frustration and celebrated flight duration and thermal shield resistance. “Many useful data to analyze,” he wrote in X. “The cadence of releases for the next 3 flights will be faster.”
Spacex has stated that “tests are unpredictable, but each lesson learned represents progress towards the Starship mission to make life multiplanetary.”
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More focus on Starship
Engineers now investigate the causes of the failure, as the expectation grows on how long Musk will actually dedicate to Spacex. The billionaire told Bloomberg this month that he “has done enough” in politics and will reduce donations and time with the Trump administration. He also criticized the increase in deficit in the new government spending package.
This decision pleased Tesla investors, who saw the actions rise to the possibility of Musk distanced themselves from the political controversies that affected the image of the automaker.
At Spacex, a virtual assembly had been planned for Tuesday, focusing on the company’s plans and Musk to Mars, but the broadcast never aired.
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The Starship is a central piece in Musk’s dream of sending load and people to the red planet and bringing them back to Earth. He said he will send a Starship with Tesla robots to Mars in 2026.
Spacex also has a contract of about $ 4 billion with NASA to bring astronauts to the moon in 2027, a strategic role amid the increase of geopolitical tensions involving the space sector.
Fully reusable, Starship promises to replace Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets with lower release costs. Musk told Bloomberg that he wants to make the rocket “totally reusable to capture the propeller and ship later this year.”
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But this week’s failed mission shows how far this is still. For interplanetary flights, Spacex needs to prove that it can replenish the orbit rocket and develop life support systems – unpublished technologies that can take years and billions of dollars.
FAA recently authorized Spacex to increase from 5 to 25 the number of annual Starship releases on its Texas base.
“We are trying to do something impossibly difficult,” said commentator Dan Hot during Spacex transmission.
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