On its third try at landing its spaceship prototype, SpaceX showed that it could successfully maneuver the huge rocket ship back to a landing on the pad from where it just lifted off. At least, it was successful right up to the point where it became a huge fireball. That part’s still going to need some work.
The test flight was picture perfect, and the SpaceX play-by-play announcer even said, around 6 minutes after the craft had touched down, that the, “Third time’s a charm.” And he was right, at least for a couple of minutes, after which the autonomously flown rocket ship ignited into a spectacular fireball, launching the flaming rocket from its perch atop its pad hundreds of feet back into the air, where it exploded. No one was injured.
The announcer seemed to miss, or just didn’t want to mention, that there was, clearly visible, still a fire burning on one side of the ship. An automated water canon was blasting water toward the fire, but it didn’t seem to be doing much to keep the flame from burning. And then, shortly after that, SpaceX cut the video short, before the most dramatic part, some would argue.
In what has become an expected style of response, SpaceX wryly said about the explosion, that “SN10 experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly shortly after landing. All in all a great day for the Starship teams—these test flights are all about improving our understanding and development of a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo on long-duration interplanetary flights, and help humanity return to the Moon, and travel to Mars and beyond.” It went on to congratulate “the entire Starship and SpaceX teams on the flight test.”
SpaceX has blamed the explosion on the failure of an automatic fire suppression system on the spacecraft.
It is not, by any measure, a huge setback for the company. It has several additional test vehicles either ready to fly or in assembly, so we should get to see another test flight, hopefully with fewer fireworks, soon.
