Elon Muskis the rocket manufacturing company SpaceX on Monday detailed lessons learned from Starship’s second flight and efforts to fix problems that led to its failure.
What happened: Lessons learned during Starship’s second flight test have informed updates made for the next flight, SpaceX said in a statement.
The spacecraft’s second liftoff on November 18 saw a successful stage separation, but the booster suffered an explosion shortly thereafter.
The spacecraft broke up after reaching an altitude of nearly 150 kilometers, arriving in space but failing to complete the test launch objective of a round-trip flight to space with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
Since then, the company has implemented hardware changes on future Starship vehicles to reduce leaks and protect against fires, while devising ways to increase reliability. The company is also implementing some performance upgrades ahead of Flight 3, including introducing a new electronic thrust vector control system for Starship’s upper stage Raptor engines and improving the speed of propellant loading operations ahead of launch.
Upgrades made to the Starbase launch pad after the first test flight destroyed it worked as expected in November and required minimal work after launch, the company said.
SpaceX advertises the Starship as the world’s most powerful launch vehicle ever developed, capable of carrying both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon and Mars.
Because matter: “More spaceships are ready to fly, putting flight hardware into a flight environment to learn as quickly as possible,” the company said Monday.
Earlier this month, Ars Tecnica reported that SpaceX is seeking a waiver to launch Starship “at least” nine times this year, citing the administrator for commercial space transportation at the Federal Aviation Administration Kelvin Coleman.
“They’re looking at, I think, at least nine launches this year. There are many launches. If you’re making changes and doing them one by one, that’s a lot of work. We’re constantly talking to SpaceX around the clock, getting together and trying to figure out how to do this. We have an investment in the company and so we will work with them to get it up and running as soon as possible,” Coleman said.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk justified the expected number of launches by saying: “Building a city on Mars will require many launches.”
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