SpaceX’s Starship rocket system reached several milestones in its second test flight before the rocket booster and spacecraft exploded over the Gulf of Mexico.
SpaceX’s Starship rocket system reached several milestones in its second test flight before the rocket booster and spacecraft exploded over the Gulf of Mexico.
I really wish they'd stop putting Musk's name on things like this. He didn't design the engines, he didn't plan the flight path, he did nothing but throw a bunch of money at a company because he's obsessed with Mars.
This is literally rocket science. The process to put humans into space is literally done this way, for this exact reason. They had two key primary objectives for this launch:
Successful ignition and control of 33 raptor engines in first stage.
Successful hot separation into second stage.
The first stage separated entirely and gained plenty of distance before it did explode.
The second stage flew for several minutes before the automated emergency flight termination kicked in and destroyed it.
All of the data that they were recording will pinpoint the failures in the return of the first stage, and the destruction in the second stage. They would not have that data if they did not do this test and nothing went wrong.
eh... it looks like hot-staging still has some bugs to work out, but the 2nd stage worked just fine (and since that's the part that matters, the end fate of the first stage is irrelevant)