Exploding Totem Poles

Space X just blew up another Starship. That’s par for the course. The company is a great  believer in destructive testing. While that’s a common enough engineering procedure we don’t often see it on this scale. Maybe never. 

As far as failures go this last attempt appears to be a more successful kaboom. Right off the bat the first improvement was the launch pad success. It didn’t mimic a gigantic volcanic eruption like the previous attempt. Turn around time is so much better when you don’t have to rebuild your launch site from scratch. 

The next improvement was booster separation. It actually took place this time. However, the booster was not supposed to then explode in a spectacular manner. Ops. Stuff happens. Going to space is hard. 

The rest of the rocket appeared to be doing well. It went quite a distance before it too turned into a fireworks display. Let’s just say it’ll be a while before the vehicle is man rated. One problematic issue appears to be the shedding of heat tiles. You need those to be intact to come back safely. 

Of course the general public doesn’t have access to all the data. Hopefully Space X learned enough to keep these issues from happening again. There’s no sense in doing destructive testing if you can’t learn from your mistakes. 

For now, the Starship is on par with Musk’s other current projects, like the cybertruck and the acquisition of Twitter. 

-Sixbears