Several days ago, Starship Flight 8 took off from its launchpad in Texas, slowly ascending through the atmosphere. About six minutes after that, the first stage of the rocket, called Superheavy, landed back at Starbase, where the rocket took off from. Two minutes after this, the second stage, still climbing into space, exploded. The launch before this one, Flight 7, had the same result, with the booster landing and the Starship itself exploding while trying to reach orbit. Why is this, and why has Starship failed so much?
The first reason that makes up a part of why this keeps happening is that SpaceX is simply moving very fast building these rockets. They have been designing and developing Starship at a speed that most companies and governments would never even consider trying to match. When you work at this speed, launching and designing new rockets nearly monthly, when most others would only launch a test rocket after years of simulation and refining, you’re bound to miss some things and have some things explode, which is what has been happening. One of SpaceX’s major competitors, Blue Origin, has been designing and simulating their New Glenn rocket for years before they actually tested it, this last January, and they succeeded because they kept refining it before their first test launch. SpaceX, however, has opted for a “move fast and break things” approach, much faster than Blue Origin’s, and this leads to much more exploding.
Another reason is that Starship is a very, very ambitious design. SpaceX is designing a whole new type of rocket, one with unique qualities, such as its very recognizable flaps along its sides, as well as the landing approach, where it lands using “chopsticks,” very different (and maybe less reliable) than the traditional method of landing on the ground. Blue Origin, comparatively, is taking a much more traditional approach to designing a rocket, one that is much easier to perfect and make sure works, given the roughly 70 years of experience with rockets like it. The closest thing to the Starship, at least the upper stage, is likely the space shuttle, and even the two of them are very different.
Overall, Starship has continued to rack up more explosions, rather than successes, because of both how unique a design it is, and because of the approach that SpaceX, and its CEO, Elon Musk, are taking, a much more risky but faster approach to designing a rocket. Hopefully, in the future SpaceX will iron out the problems and see this massive rocket reach the stars.
RELATED STORIES:
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2025/03/spacex-flight-8-what-now/
https://www.cnn.com/science/live-news/spacex-starship-flight-8-launch-03-06-25/index.html
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