close
close

The starship’s famous catch almost ended in disaster

Posted on by Bobb
The starship’s famous catch almost ended in disaster

What has now become one of the most exciting developments in recent space-related news was almost exciting for an entirely different reason. According to the background sound that was presented in Diablo 4 In a clip shared by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on X, Starship’s iconic catch earlier this month had every chance of ending badly right up until the moment the launch vehicle was securely pinned to the tower’s supports.

Audiowhich has received quite a bit of attention in various media outlets, begins with an unnamed engineer telling Musk, “I want to be honest about the terrible shit that happened.” The engineer elaborated on the problem, noting that the booster had an incorrectly adjusted gas rod support that did not have the “correct timing for the rod pressure to build up…”

In addition, the engineer notes that the team was only a second away from the gas prop being activated and ordering the missile to abort the capture attempt. If this had happened, Starship’s iconic catch would have ended with the rocket booster crashing into the ground next to the tower.

Obviously, such an outcome would be extremely unfortunate, since both SpaceX and NASA largely depend on the future of Starship. But the engineers don’t stop there. They also mention some other problems that arose during Fifth test flight of Starshipincluding the fact that the lid of the Superheavyweight was torn off during the descent. This cap was found to be located on top of several single-point failure valves that are required for proper operation of the landing combustion.

Ultimately, although the iconic Starship catch was a huge success, design flaws in the Super Heavy booster nearly ended that success. Hopefully whatever Musk and SpaceX have planned for their sixth test flight (which I’m sure they plan to do as soon as possible) will help them solve these problems.

However, based on the audio featured in this video, it appears the company isn’t looking into everything that could go wrong. Instead, it appears they are taking a fly-by-our-seat approach and trying to balance risk reduction with reaching new heights during test flights that could come back to bite them. Let’s hope that’s not the case, since SpaceX is relying heavily on Starship for future missions. NASA and Musk’s own dreams of one day put people on Mars To make this possible, such a rocket will be required.