Musk and Trump watch on as SpaceX's booster catch deemed 'no-go' and splashes into ocean

SpaceX owner Elon Musk was joined by the soon-to-be president of the US Donald Trump to watch the company's latest flight test of its Starship rocket.

Operators decided the criteria had not been met for the tower to catch the booster.

Instead, it splashed down in the ocean off the coast of Texas.

#spacex #space #starship

[steviebee]

Misleading video title. No failure. Booster diverted to off shore for safety reasons

[cruzaviator]

Can't spin this. Both the Booster and Ship today had a SOFTER and SMOOTHER water landing than ANY manned parachute capsule splashdown ever IN HISTORY!!

[blackdogadonis]

People need to realize this wasnt a failure, this was a successful test of maximum thresholds capacity. Its a win

[Steelninja]

It only splashed down because the rocket exhaust damaged the pylon on the top of the tower so they risked not having good tower telemetry during the catch so aborted the catch. they will repair the pylon and find a way to protect it from the exhaust next time.

[brenz]

Your banner is covering the bottom of the rocket at the most exciting powerful part of it launching

[KeitelDOG]

That's the equivalent of try { } catch { } in Software Engineeting where if something goes differently than expected, it is caught nicely and handled in a last specific manner to avoid a total crash.

[haoweitang]

“Fails to dock” means when they insist to dock but crashed during the execution, “Landed at sea for additional reason” is the proper term. Sign up a writing class please.

[theswirl]

“Fails to dock”🤣They deliberately aborted catching the Super Heavy Booster today

[wisdomchukwu]

Has to be a pretty bem thing to be an American right now 😁 I'm Nigerian and yet I'm grinning from ear to ear each time I see something like this. God bless Elon. God bless America

[Doctaphil]

The booster is relatively cheap and can be mass produced. The launch stand is not and they weren't willing to risk damaging it.

[vishnunarayanan]

The title's so misleading, i though something went wrong, well, it didn't. Elon for the win yet again!! Love to see it!

[romulopontual]

Misleading title. Booster diverted to off shore due to a "no-go" from a tower issue. Booster landed smoothly on the sea proving that it was capable of returning to tower.

[JynxedKoma]

Trust SLY NEWS to spin this story negatively. Still sour over Trump and Elon's most recent promotions. They didn't "fail to dock" anything.

[spiritusinfinitus]

And remember that the ship was using an older version of the heat shield tiles, with 2100 of them totally removed as a test, and was at an increased angle of entry to further stress the craft, and it STILL managed to get back for a sea touch down. We haven't yet heard if the catch was aborted due to a problem with the booster or the catch tower. The tower is more expensive and time consuming to build than the boosters, of which they have several ready to go, so this is also a possibility that something failed on the tower which prevented a catch attempt.

[MrB-abc]

It didn't fail. They have strict criteria for safety. Don't be a hater

[jroar]

These are tests and as such, there are several catch criteria that have to be met. In this case, it wasn’t the booster but a bad sensor on the catch back stand. This was the last of this booster. The next model will launch in early 2025. Starship preformed better than engineering numbers indicated. It landed in daylight with exacting catch-back velocity next to the offshore stationed camera. In fact, it demonstrated its viability regardless of the impediments placed aboard such as depleted heat shielding in areas and other test scenarios. The bottom line is that newer versions of Starship and the booster are already in production, waiting their turn to fly. By purposely handicapping this flight helped to identify potential unknown issues.

[gitfoad]

BBC, Sky, ITN, etc., all mendacity pigeons.

[duongden_thanhcong]

All 6 Starship launches:

• Starship 1: April 20, 2023
• Starship 2: November 18, 2023
• Starship 3: March 14, 2024
• Starship 4: June 6, 2024
• Starship 5: October 13, 2024
• Starship 6: November 19, 2024

[jamesoleg-ctgk]

The antenna on top of mechazilla was damage by shockwave so thats why they abort catch

[prochenmedia]

It was not meant to dock for this test. Misleading heading.