SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk says a propellant dump caused the destruction of the Starship upper stage on a November test flight, giving him confidence that the vehicle can reach orbit on its next launch. On that Nov. 18 launch, the Starship upper stage, or ship, was nearing the end of its burn to place it on a long suborbital trajectory when contact was lost. Hosts of the SpaceX webcast said it appeared the automated flight termination system was activated, but did not give a reason why, and the company provided few details since. At a recent event at SpaceX’s Starbase test site in Boca Chica, Texas, video of which SpaceX posted on social media Jan. 12, Musk said the failure was linked to venting liquid oxygen propellant near the end of the burn. That venting, he said, was needed only because the vehicle was not carrying any payload. “Flight 2 actually almost made it to orbit,” he said. “If it had a payload, it would have made it to orbit because the reason that it actually didn’t quite make it to orbit was we vented the liquid oxygen, and the liquid oxygen ultimately led to a fire and an explosion.” That venting, he said, would have been unnecessary if the ship had a payload, presumably because it would have been consumed by the Raptor engines on the vehicle in order to reach orbit. He didn’t elaborate on how the venting triggered the fire, or discuss the explosion of the Super Heavy stage shortly after stage separation.
The Starship upper stage separates from the Super Heavy booster on a November 2023 launch. Credit: SpaceX
Musk said that failure mode gave him confidence for the next Starship test flight. “I think we’ve got a really good shot of reaching orbit with Flight 3,” he said.
That third flight is currently projected for February, SpaceX’s Jessica Jensen during a Jan. 9 NASA briefing, pending receipt of an updated launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration. Musk described a more ambitious flight plan for the mission with additional tests of Starship.
“We want to get to orbit and we want to do an in-space engine burn from the header tank” at the top of the vehicle, he said. Doing so would “prove that we can
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