Yesterday, Starship successfully caught Ship 42 with its mechanical arms. Why did the first-stage booster, which had been caught three times before, instead explode in the Gulf of Mexico this time?
Today, Musk personally provided the technical answer on X: during its return phase, the booster was “slightly low on fuel.” Combined with an anomaly in the GNC guidance system, the safety algorithm decisively abandoned the tower catch and guided it to hover over the sea and self-destruct, thereby keeping the costly launch pad intact. The 171-foot-tall upper-stage spacecraft then made a historic safe return home after 14 orbits around Earth.
Losing a booster to keep the launch tower safe, then catching the first orbital-class spacecraft in history—as spaceflight reusability pushes engineering redundancy to its limits, space-based computing power and global off-grid communications infrastructure are finally coming of age. #SpaceX #Starship #TechMacro
Today, Musk personally provided the technical answer on X: during its return phase, the booster was “slightly low on fuel.” Combined with an anomaly in the GNC guidance system, the safety algorithm decisively abandoned the tower catch and guided it to hover over the sea and self-destruct, thereby keeping the costly launch pad intact. The 171-foot-tall upper-stage spacecraft then made a historic safe return home after 14 orbits around Earth.
Losing a booster to keep the launch tower safe, then catching the first orbital-class spacecraft in history—as spaceflight reusability pushes engineering redundancy to its limits, space-based computing power and global off-grid communications infrastructure are finally coming of age. #SpaceX #Starship #TechMacro