Why SpaceX ’ s Starship Explosion Is No Big Deal

To hear the folks in charge tell it, you’d think that SpaceX’s Starship rocket—the biggest, grandest, most powerful rocket ever built—didn’t blow up over the Gulf of Mexico this morning, just four minutes into its maiden flight and barely 39 km (24 mi.) above ground on what was supposed to be an around-the-world orbital journey. For one thing the company didn’t call the incident an explosion. Starship instead experienced a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” SpaceX tweeted. For another thing, the apparent failure was met less with hung heads than high fives. “Congrats to @SpaceX on Starship’s first integrated flight test!” tweeted NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Every great achievement throughout history has demanded some level of calculated risk, because with great risk comes great reward. Looking forward to all that SpaceX learns, to the next flight test—and beyond.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] SpaceX founder and boss Elon Musk was no less sanguine. “Congrats @SpaceX team on an exciting test launch of Starship!” he tweeted. “Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months.” Again, just for the record, the 40-story rocket—whose upper stage is intended to serve as the lunar landing vehicle on NASA’s crewed Artemis 3 mission in the late 2020s—blew up rather than going to space. There is no prettifying that unhappy fact. But there is no...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Space Source Type: news