Starship Explosion: How Elon Musk’s SpaceX Got Here | WSJ Timeline

Elon Musk’s Starship exploded minutes into its first attempt at its first flight into space, but the fiery ending wasn’t entirely unexpected for SpaceX. CEO Musk is calling the launch a success despite the explosion as the spacecraft manufacturer continues with its high space-exploration ambitions.

Here’s what led up to Starship’s inaugural flight, and what the explosion could mean for SpaceX going forward.

0:00 What Elon Musk's latest Starship test means for the rocket's future
0:43 Why Starship is important to the future of space travel
2:00 SpaceX’s trial and error method: why crashes aren’t necessarily bad for the company
4:05 Starship’s first test flight using both Super Heavy and the main spacecraft: what happened?

#ElonMusk #SpaceX #WSJ

[arpanmahapatra]

Remember when Falcon boosters used to crash land and blew up into pieces? Look at it now, every booster now successfully lands autonomously.
In a few years Starship will have its success

[nly----]

News Leak: Elon Musk invested millions into Metabourne Token

[apk]

I like how they act like this strategy is new and try to make it sound bad when trial and error have been happening since rockets been invented

[jasonliang]

Nice Job 👍. Finally, a non clickbait, non biased report .

[sustn]

Sorry, did I miss the part where they explain how SpaceX's approach to rocket development made Falcon 9 into one of the most successful and game changing rockets operating today???

[brianxx]

Well done! Most mainstream media seems to think explosion = failure.

In this case, getting off the launch stand was success. Anything else that goes right or wrong is extra learning. It got past max-q, which is the most demanding part of ascent. That's huge!

Reconfiguring the launchsite will eliminate most of the problems they encountered. The hardware of the next test articles are alrady upgraded to eliminate some of the other problems. I would guess a change is needed in the programming so that stage separation works more reliably.

It's looking like the next launch will see each stage reaching their water landings intact. Then they need to refine the landing until they can launch one a second time.

After that, or perhaps in parallel, start testing in-space transfer of propellants. This is how Starship will be able to take huge payloads to anywhere in the solar system. They can test unmanned trips around the moon (or wherever) while they work on usability and passenger capability.

[ThexBorg]

WSJ completely forgot about the history of space travel... and launch crashes during development. This is normal to crash test during rocket development.

[williamdrijver]

Goal is to bring costs down enormously. Building massive rockets using relatively cheap materials, and being able to reuse them. Amazing and very exciting to witness how Space-X progresses and completes Elons masterplan!

[laterwell]

though the test failed, we all know that failure is the basis of success, in the near future, it will success definitely, I am fully supporting SpaceX

[vikramganasen]

Make no mistake, Elon will usher in a new space era. Mark my words. Once viability achieved (i;e Landing on moons, mars and bases built) major warring nations will stop aggression with each other, and all effort will not be spared to achieve that too. Peace time is coming in 3 decades for Earth.

[Purplehaze]

Wow. I wasn’t expecting an unbiased content from WSJ. Great job.

[shamicentertainment]

I saw 2023 in the thumbnail and was like "Umm, we can't predict the future why is that in there?", forgetting it's been 2023 for nearly 5 months

[questmarq]

Most of the damage was done from the Launchpad. It became dust and bullets that destroyed the engines and probably caused the malfunction in the stage separation. It would be good to know if anything else went wrong. The failure and restarting of 1 specific booster engine is the most exciting for me. It is not easy to ignite a space engine, let alone shut it down, and restarting it again

[bjs]

Please say "trial and failure". It is not an error/mistake when someone tries to do something.

[petergrifin]

Finally a journalist that has actually done research!! The easiest way to realise how stupid the media is was always to find news on something your an expert in... journalists are not experts in everything.

[SorminaESar]

"You learn from the failure", fighting👍👏👏👏👏👏👏 to be continue for tomorrow🙏

[bhuvaneshs.k]

Boi what a great journey he had and will have in the future

[jaybanzia]

it was always going to fail to make it to space, the point was to collect the data.

[waitingforacentury]

When talking science, talk metric. SpaceX understands that

[samuelfoote]

Hate how everyone cuts out the clapping after the awe. Cause what we learned and how far it got on a test launch was perfect. They just had thermodynamic issues on separation. Prob gasket swelling, NASA has to have under sized gaskets that actually leak fuel on take off and swell up to perfectly seal without locking in.