Back-to-back mishaps indicate big setbacks for program to launch satellites and send humans to the moon and Mars

SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft exploded on Thursday minutes after lifting off from Texas, dooming an attempt to deploy mock satellites in the second consecutive failure this year for Elon Musk’s Mars rocket program.

Several videos on social media showed fiery debris streaking through the dusk skies near south Florida and the Bahamas after Starship’s breakup in space, which occurred shortly after it began to spin uncontrollably with its engines cut off, a SpaceX livestream of the mission showed.

The failure comes just more than a month after the company’s seventh Starship flight also ended in an explosive failure. The back-to-back mishaps occurred in early mission phases that SpaceX has easily surpassed previously, indicating serious setbacks for a program Musk has sought to speed up this year.

  • vxx@lemmy.world
    53·
    2 days ago

    Whats cool about mining colonies on other planets? They will probably send slaves prisoners there.

    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
      1·
      9 hours ago

      the cool thing is that it will give these “christian” dictators in the US something to do, other than destroying earth, that will hopefully distract them from destroying earth in the first place. and conveniently, it would also send them very, very far away, with low chance of them ever returning, i hope.

    • KinglyWeevil@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      7·
      2 days ago

      Elon Musk watched The Expanse, looked at the Belters, and thought to himself, “Yes, this is the ideal human living condition.”