Elon Musk’s SpaceX is eager to get humans to Mars and for that to happen, the Starship rocket system needs to perform reliably. Sadly, at the time of writing this story, the Starship isn’t a reliable space vehicle that Elon Musk and his entire crew at SpaceX had hoped for. In its ninth test flight, which SpaceX had hoped to go positively, ended up in bits over the Indian Ocean. Elon Musk, however, had a few positive takeaways from this failed test.
The test flight, which had hoped for the rocket to make it to space and coast followed by a reentry into the Earth, blew up after the ascent stage. While the rocket crashed over the Indian Ocean in the early hours of Wednesday, the Starship had performed better than its previous launches.
Musk clarified that the Starship made it to the scheduled ship engine cutoff, thus marking an improvement over the last flight. Another notable achievement was no loss of heat shield during the ascent stage, which allowed the vehicle to travel further than before during its fiery reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.
Musk reveals cause of crash
The cause behind the crash were a couple of leaks that caused a “loss of main tank pressure during the coast and re-entry phase.” Musk deduced a lot of a “good data” to review for the team.
Post the incident, Musk declared that the frequency of Starship flights will now increase, with 1 launch scheduled every 3-4 weeks.
Additionally, the ninth flight also proved the Super Heavy’s reusability with all the 33 Raptor engines firing – something that hasn’t been achieved in the history of spaceflight.
The Starship is one of the biggest rockets that mankind has ever built and SpaceX hopes to utilise this giant rocket in its mission to put mankind on Mars. The Starship is currently the largest and mosy powerful spacecraft that is capable of carrying up to 150 metric tonnes fully reusable and 250 metric tonnes expendable.