SpaceX’s ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly’ was actually good news for Elon Musk
Starship launched today. The most powerful rocket ever made cleared the tower, flying with twice the thrust of the Saturn V rocket that took humankind to the moon. Then, when it was supposed to separate from its booster stage, the entire rocket spun uncontrollably for a few seconds before exploding into a fireball the size of Elon Musk’s ego. Unexpectedly, everyone at ground control at SpaceX’s Starbase, in Boca Chica, Texas, cheered, screaming and clapping as if the United States had won the World Cup.
Are these people nuts? Why were they clapping? Are SpaceX employees gratuitous clappers? The result of a $3 billion investment disintegrated over the Atlantic, failing to reach orbit, let alone get back to Earth in one piece (two, actually, as its Super Heavy booster was supposed to soft land in the Gulf of Mexico), as it was programmed.
And yet, they had good reason to cheer. This seemingly spectacular failure actually was a resounding success. It would have been much better had it completed all its mission objectives, yes. For sure, they were probably wishing for a 100% win, even while they knew that the statistical deck was stacked against them. Musk himself said a few days ago that it had a 50-50 chance of succeeding:
“I’m not saying it will make it to orbit, but I’m guaranteeing excitement—so it won’t be boring!”
Not exploding on the launching pad was already good. Successfully passing the point of Max q—when the rocket experiences its maximum shaking and vibration—was gold. Reaching the point of stage separation, even if that failed, was icing on the cake, as SpaceX’s live-cast commentators said. As much as I dislike Musk with the intensity of a billion Larry Davids, this was indeed a great step forward for his plans to become Emperor of Mars.
A great start
Talking to CNN, NASA administrator Bill Nelson puts it better: “It looks like they got through the first stage of this big monster rocket. That’s a real accomplishment. We’ll get a report on what happened to the second stage, but I’m very encouraged that they’ve gotten along this far.”
Nelson is saying this because, while Starship may seem just like a big version of SpaceX’s very successful and safe reusable Falcon 9 rockets, that’s very far from the truth. They are wildly different beasts, and Musk has taken a huge gamble with this new design.
First, the engines in Starship are new: It uses Raptor engines burning “methalox,” a mix of cryogenic liquid methane and liquid oxygen, while Falcon rockets use Merlin engines, which use a combination of liquid oxygen and refined petroleum. The company has tested them before, with mixed success.
But SpaceX had never tried to put pedal to the metal to 33 engines at the same time, all the Raptors that power the Super Heavy stage of Starship. The last organization to try something like this was the Soviet Union, when the legendary Sergei Korolev—the father of the Soviet space program—tried a similar feat to plant the red flag on the moon with his N1 rocket in the 1960s, until now the most powerful rocket ever built.
Similarly to Starship, the N1 used 30 engines, rather than the 5 of the Saturn V’s first stage. When one engine failed, another had to be shut down to maintain symmetrical thrust. It never really worked. The N1 failed miserably five times, until it was canceled in 1974, long after the U.S. won the space race. Its second launch was Musk’s worst nightmare when an engine failure made the rocket fall back down to the launch pad seconds after launch, causing the largest non-nuclear explosion in history.
SpaceX’s rocket, however, uses electronic control systems that are capable of modifying the position of the remaining engines to compensate for any deviation in the trajectory caused by the asymmetrical thrust. During today’s launch, 5 engines failed at random spots, but the rocket kept going up without problem, right on the mark. Only the separation failed. This was a huge win for Musk and his team because it demonstrates that, unlike Korolev’s try, their concept works.
“Long way to go”
Like Nelson said, “This is the way SpaceX goes about. They test this stuff. They run it hard. Sometimes it blows up.” That’s the Silicon Valley-like mentality that made SpaceX a success. Now, we have to see if this method works for Starship too. And if it does it on time: The company needs to meet its compromise with NASA to make a special version of Starship—called Starship HLS, for Human Landing System—to take astronauts to the moon’s surface on Artemis III.
Always the braggart, Musk announced in 2021 that Starship would take off in January 2022. That month came and nothing happened. Then, in February 2022, SpaceX announced its intention to launch it in March, with 400 Starlink satellites onboard. That launch happened on April 20. Nelson believes they will get NASA their HLS on time (although maybe that’s because Artemis keeps running into constant delays): “They have a long way to go, but this is a good start.”
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