SpaceX Ship 36 Just Blew Up
Ship 36 explosion – NASASpaceflight.com
Keith’s note: a few minutes ago, during a routine pre-flight test, SpaceX Ship 36 blew up. Video below.
5 responses to “SpaceX Ship 36 Just Blew Up”
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I think NASA should consider the novel idea of launching rockets themselves again. Just a suggestion.
The nation really cannot afford it. First there are only parts enough for 8 SLS launches. After all the Shuttle leftover parts are used up, there are no more. Back in Shuttle days NASA would have launched about 4 times a year. At that rate the program would be over in a year. But they cannot launch that quickly anymore for some reason so now they launch about once every 2 to 3 years. But with the same number of people working that means the cost is about $3 to 4 billion a launch.
The nation can’t afford massive tax cuts for the rich either. But folks are not stopping those are they?
Nothing better than spending other people’s money…
SpaceX has long been a resume padding stopover in the aerospace industry. Even without Musk’s occasionally very public firing of employees the pay and benefits are substandard enough that even low to mid management level personnel are a revolving door. It’s very hard to retain institutional knowledge in this kind of shop.
The people who built Falcon 9 are long gone. The people who transformed it into what it is today have been gone for almost a decade. And Falcon 9 has been developing a sparse but repeating pattern of fuel leaks.
The original masterminds of BFR/Starship have been gone since 2022 in many cases, some as far back as 2020. And they very notably were not finished building it. Now two years into orbital testing and five years from SN8 we are still waiting on hot gas thrusters that were supposed to be ready for the suborbital “hop” tests. Still waiting on booster upgrades to fix issues that the “temporary” hot staging system avoids but doesn’t fix. Still waiting on Raptor 3 that was supposed to be ready for the first orbital test. Still waiting on the nine engine Starship that was supposed to be ready a year ago. Still waiting on the aerodynamic surface changes to fix the catastrophic reentry problems. Still waiting on many changes and treading water getting dubious test data from systems that are already asserted to be obsolete. All the while the same failure modes keep popping up time and again, even in otherwise successful attempts.