“Next time, we’ll try the pull * up * method.”
Te dom
In just two months, SpaceX has thrown two massive stainless steel prototypes of its Starship spacecraft miles into the air – only to both fall into massive fireballs.
Recently, Starship prototype SN9 could not straighten itself out after a daring “belly flop” maneuver on Tuesday, which resulted in it impacting the ground at a steep angle, an event lovingly referred to as a rapid unplanned disassembly.
Building a 160-foot rocket designed to carry up to 100 passengers to Mars is not easy – a fact of which Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, is painfully aware.
When asked on Twitter “why only ignite 2 engines for landing” to remove any failures, Musk said We accept – that we were “too stupid.”
“Next time,” he said added, “We try the pull * up * method.”
Difficult grade
Just two days later tweet that he will be away from Twitter for a while, ‘Musk returned to the social media website last night. His posts were a distinctive jumble of memes, sarcastic snares and references to the cryptocurrency dogecoin.
The tweets were certainly tongue-in-cheek, but it may also have shown frustration with the repeated setbacks on the Starship project. Musk has long complained about how difficult it is to build a rocket to establish a city on Mars.
“It’s not like it was big idiots who wanted to throw away their rocket all the time,” Musk said. Ars Technica‘s Eric Berger in a 2019 interview, referring to SpaceX engineers trying to install the company’s Raptor engine.
“One of the most difficult engineering problems that man knows is to make a reusable orbital rocket,” he said. “It’s stupidly difficult to have a fully reusable orbital system.”
Still there
But it is a game of high risks and high rewards.
“This would be one of the biggest breakthroughs in the history of mankind,” the billionaire added in 2019.
And regardless, it’s only a matter of time until SpaceX sets up its SN10 prototype. Maybe this test launch will not end in a groundbreaking explosion.
More about Starship: New photos show a half-completed SpaceX Super Heavy Booster