Another launch, another failure? With the ninth flight of SpaceX鈥檚 massive Starship rocket ending in the vehicle鈥檚 loss, questions are being asked about whether Elon Musk鈥檚 company can ever deliver on its promises to return people to the moon, launch new space stations and one day take astronauts to Mars.
鈥淚 expected more progress from SpaceX by now,鈥� says at space industry consultancy Astralytical. 鈥淚t鈥檚 frustrating from an outsider鈥檚 perspective, because I鈥檓 rooting for them. So much of the space community is relying on Starship.鈥�
The latest test flight of the largest rocket ever built took place on 27 May, launching from SpaceX鈥檚 Starbase site in Boca Chica, Texas. The rocket reached space as intended but, minutes after the large lower Super Heavy booster detached from the upper Starship vehicle, communications with the booster were lost and it crashed into the Gulf of Mexico. Starship, meanwhile, disintegrated about 47 minutes into the flight after a fuel leak. The doors of the craft also failed to open and deploy mock satellites, and the vehicle spun out of control.
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SpaceX has always taken an iterative approach to rocket development, seeing failures as a learning opportunity rather than something to be avoided. Responding to the latest test, Musk remained positive. 鈥淟ot of good data to review,鈥� he , the social media site he also operates.
For Starship, this approach has seen some successes, like the Super Heavy reusable booster being impressively caught by the company鈥檚 chopstick-like arms on the ground, but the company has yet to perform a fully successful flight where the upper Starship vehicle also makes it successfully back to the ground.
at the University of Michigan says this is nothing to be concerned about. 鈥淪paceX is following its normal storyline, which is fail fast, learn faster,鈥� she says. 鈥淭he problems we鈥檙e seeing are problems that we鈥檝e seen on other rockets. They are not good, but they are things we know how to address.鈥�
And yet, another of SpaceX鈥檚 rockets, the older Falcon 9, saw success much more quickly, launching actual hardware to space from its second mission in December 2010. 鈥淚 think people were hoping for a similar progression with Starship,鈥� says Forczyk, although the newer vehicle is much more complex than its predecessor. SpaceX didn鈥檛 respond to a request for comment from 快猫短视频.
The continued failure of Starship is holding up many other space missions. The rocket is the cornerstone of NASA鈥檚 return to the moon in its Artemis programme, with an uncrewed test landing of the craft on the lunar surface due to take place next year ahead of its scheduled use in the crewed Artemis III mission to the moon in 2027. Other companies have also earmarked Starship to ferry future hardware, such as Voyager Space in the US, which plans to launch its large Starlab space station in its entirety inside Starship.
But despite the failures and delays, Starship is currently the only option for many ambitious space plans. One rival, NASA鈥檚 much-derided Space Launch System rocket that has been in development since 2011, completed a successful flight on its first launch in 2022. Its next launch is expected in April 2026 for the Artemis II mission, taking astronauts on a flyby around the moon, but it may only ever launch a handful of times.
That is in marked contrast to Musk鈥檚 plans for Starship, eventually targeting multiple launches a day. He remains bullish about the rocket鈥檚 prospects, and the frequency of test flights is set to pick up rather than slow down. 鈥淟aunch cadence for [the] next three flights will be faster, at approximately one every three to four weeks,鈥� he wrote on X. Whether this will mean success or failure remains to be seen.
