Sorry, doubters: Starship actually had a remarkably successful flight
arstechnica.com
On just its second flight, Starship now is arguably as successful as NASA's SLS rocket.
  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    Before I had even left the launch viewing area in South Padre Island on Saturday morning headlines started to fill my news feed.

    And the upper stage, Starship, had a failure that caused its flight termination system—explosives on board in case a vehicle begins flying off course—to detonate.

    Leading with words like “failure” and “explosion” are kind of like putting the headline “Derek Jeter had a strikeout” on a news story about the 2001 World Series game in which he later hit a walk-off home run.

    Here’s what SpaceX actually accomplished with its second Starship launch on Saturday morning, from a narrow peninsula of land at the southern extremity of Texas.

    Musk and SpaceX learned their lesson and completely redesigned and rebuilt the launch pad to incorporate a sophisticated water-based sound suppression system.

    Afterward I spoke with Phillip Rench, an engineer who worked at SpaceX for five years and for a time directed the company’s Starbase facility near Boca Chica Beach in South Texas.

    The original article contains 524 words, the summary contains 164 words. Saved 69%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!