For SpaceX, 2025 should still be the best year.
Elon Musk, founder of the Private Space Company, is one of the most influential people in the oval office, and President Trump supports the vision of sending humans to Mars.
But so far it hasn't been a great year for the rocket company. The vehicle, which is the heart of SpaceX's huge Starship Rocket, the heart of Mars Goal, has been released twice this year and twice.
The latest explosion occurred Thursday during the eighth test flight of the spacecraft, less than two months after the seventh test flight left in space. Again, the shower of debris has rained, creating a novel headache for travelers around Florida and the Caribbean, who are not used to seeing “falling space fragments” as a reason for flight delays. Neither incident was injured.
The explosion is not necessarily a failure for businesses that thrived with the “start, break, fix it, release it again” mentality. Innovations such as landing and reusing rocket boosters have significantly reduced the cost of sending things into space. Designed to be fully reusable, Starship could once again overturn the rocket business.
However, the explosion of these two spacecrafts has been a step back in the SpaceX development process. The flights can't even repeat the success of previous test flights, indicating that perhaps the company's engineers are not as unpopular as the company's fans would want to think.
“There's this persona that's accumulated around SpaceX, and they're beginning to see that they're human too,” said Daniel Dumbacher, currently a professor of engineering practice at Purdue University and a leading innovation and strategy director for special aerospace services at engineering and manufacturing companies, including NASA and the US Space Force.
The delay could also affect NASA, which hired SpaceX to use the spacecraft version to land astronauts on the moon in 2027 during the Artemis III mission.
Two lost spacecrafts, the spacecraft failed within 10 minutes of lift-off, was an upgraded design. To my dissatisfaction, they were less successful than the older versions of the spaceships they flew last year. Three previous test flights successfully coasted along the way around the world, surviving atmospheric re-entry in the Indian Ocean, simulating landings in waters off the west coast of Australia.
Furthermore, the 7th and 8th flight failures occurred in roughly the same part of the flight, both appearing to occur near the engines of the two-stage spacecraft. That suggests that SpaceX did not diagnose and resolve the problem well. It could point to a critical design flaw in the upgraded spacecraft.
It also means SpaceX has previously failed to test aspects of the updated spacecraft design, including smaller, relocated forward flaps used to guide the spacecraft through the air during re-entry. SpaceX also planned to test dispensers like the PEZ to deploy StarLink Internet satellites.
The most powerful rocket ever built, the spacecraft is at the heart of Musk's dream of building a human settlement on Mars. The frequent rhythm of Starship's launch is also important for SpaceX's more pressing plans to make money.
The next generation of satellites from the Starlink Internet from the Space is bigger and heavier. The enormous cargo space on the spacecraft's upper stage allows the company to quickly and inexpensively replenish the constellations of thousands of orbiting satellites.
Failure of the test flight also means that SpaceX's development program could not proceed to other goals.
SpaceX must demonstrate that the spacecraft will remain in orbit for a long time. You will then fall out of orbit and return to the launch site, where you can be caught by the launch tower mechanical equipment. (The super heavy booster stage that doesn't go out of track has done this normally three times). The company also needs to show that it can quickly and in succession of several spacecrafts.
Most importantly, we need to show that liquid oxygen and methane propellants can be moved from one spacecraft to another. That procedure is key to allowing spacecraft to accumulate enough fuel to go to the moon and Mars.
Therefore, the spacecraft that is to reach the moon must remain in Earth orbit so that other spacecraft are fired and fired to raise propellants to restock the tanks of the Moon Lander spacecraft.
Musk argues that moving propellant is an easy movement. However, no attempt has been made to pump liquids quickly while floating in orbit, and no one knows yet whether the launch of a spacecraft needed for a single lunar mission (probably 20 spacecrafts still needed).
“I don't know what the tank's performance will be,” Amit Kshatriya, assistant deputy administrator of NASA's Moon to Mars program, told a media event in December that she “we don't know what the tank's performance will be.” “We don't.”
At the time, Kshatriya said NASA would learn it soon, as it was expected that a long-term version of Starship would be released in the spring. SpaceX was then able to test its ability to operate two spacecrafts simultaneously in orbit, and also determine how efficiently the propellant could travel between the two spacecraft.
These findings will help NASA put together a realistic schedule for Artemis III.
Within a year, “We're going to really understand the issue,” Kshatriya said. “But I can't schedule that innovation. There's no way.”
However, the schedule Kshatriya stated was assuming there were no major set-offs. The long-term spacecraft debut could be delayed by mid-year or even longer, as the Federal Aviation Administration is grounding the spacecraft until SpaceX completes its investigation into the failure of Flight 8.
Dumbacher believes SpaceX can solve the technical challenges posed by Starship. “There's no doubt they'll deal with it, and they'll fly again and they'll fix things,” he said. “I don't know how long it will take.”
In testimony to a House committee last month, Dumbacher said the spacecraft system with many fueled flights is too big and too complicated to meet the Artemis III, where China is scheduled to land astronauts on the moon, as well as the current target date for 2030, 2027.
Dumbacher suggested that NASA switch to a smaller, simpler Lander to improve the likelihood that NASA can win a 21st century moon race against China. SpaceX is supposed to demonstrate the spacecraft's landing aircraft without astronauts before the Artemis III, so astronauts landing on the moon using the spacecraft could require up to 40 launches.
He didn't consider the high chance of many successful launches. “We need to dramatically reduce the number of launches,” Dunbacher said at the hearing. “It needs to be easy.”
