No 'chopsticks' catch this time for SpaceX's Starship rocket
BOCA CHICA, Texas - SpaceX launched its Starship mega-rocket on another uncrewed test flight from South Texas on Tuesday, but despite the presence of the president-elect, couldn’t quite duplicate some of the previous flight’s success.
Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and several other politicians were on hand to watch the giant rocket’s 33 engines fire up as planned at 4 p.m. The launch appeared flawless, but moments after stage separation, an unspecified glitch – either with the rocket or the launch pad – meant the booster would not be making its planned return to the pad.
Instead, the booster made a simulated landing in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, slowing to a stop before dropping into the water.
The Starship spacecraft, meanwhile, continued to space where it circled the earth before making a simulated landing in the Indian Ocean an hour later. Engineers had removed 2,100 heat tiles to learn more about "what the ship can take."
"We gave it a little bit of a haircut," SpaceX commentator Dan Huot quipped.
The mixed results of the flight show that while SpaceX is moving closer to making the world’s most powerful rocket operational, there is still more testing to be done.
"Initially we were good, and then we tripped a commit criteria so we went and did the water landing as everybody saw," Huot explained. "This is a core capability of Starship and what’s going to make it so incredible."
"Testing development flight hardware in a flight environment is what enables our teams to quickly learn and execute design changes and hardware upgrades to improve the probability of success in the future," commentator Kate Tice added, echoing a common SpaceX line.
What is Starship?
The SpaceX Starship sits on the launch pad ahead of its sixth flight test from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, on November 17, 2024. (Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images)
Starship is SpaceX’s reusable spacecraft-and-rocket combo, designed to carry over 100 tons of cargo – and, eventually, people – to space and then fly back to Earth to be launched again.
The Starship spacecraft is launched atop SpaceX’s new Super Heavy booster, a 33-engine gleaming silver monstrosity – also reusable – that is more powerful than even NASA’s Saturn moon rockets of the 1960s. Fully stacked, the Starship combination reaches 397 feet high.
The rocket is being developed to reduce the cost and complexity of launches. NASA plans to use Starship as its lunar lander during the upcoming Artemis missions later this decade, carrying astronauts down to the moon and then back up to the Orion capsule.
SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has long made clear his goal of using Starship to take people to Mars, making humanity a "multiplanetary species."
Starship’s successful fifth test flight
After engine fires and explosions plagued the first test flights, last month’s Starship flight – the fifth – was the most successful one yet. The Starship upper stage successfully orbited Earth and survived reentry, making a pinpoint simulated landing in the Indian Ocean.
More dramatically, the giant first stage booster successfully made a powered return to the launch site. But instead of deploying landing legs like its smaller cousin, the Falcon 9, the rocket hovered next to its launch tower and was caught by a pair of metal arms, dubbed chopsticks.
President Trump and Elon Musk
In his election night victory speech, Donald Trump specifically referenced that Starship flight in his toast of Elon Musk.
"This spaceship came down and I saw those engines firing, and it looked like it was over. It was going to smash," Trump said. "And then I saw the fire pour out from the left side and put it straight, and it came down so gently, and then it wrapped those arms around it, and it held it. And just like you hold your baby at night, your little baby. And it was a beautiful thing to see."
Musk actively supported Trump’s bid for the White House, spending $200 million of his own cash, appearing at campaign rallies, and regularly posting pro-Trump comments and memes on his X social platform. Since the election, Musk has been spending a lot of time with Trump, reportedly advising him on cabinet picks and policy.
Trump has already called on Musk to help run an advisory panel he dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency, named in reference to Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency, Dogecoin.