On Tuesday, the SpaceX Starship prototype called SN9 crashed while attempting to land back on the pad after an otherwise very successful flight. SpaceX said that SN9’s launch and high-altitude flight went great. For the climb, SN9 was under the power of three Raptor engines. The drill is for each one of them to shut down before the vehicle gets to the top of its arc, the apogee, which SpaceX said was reaching apogee—approximately 32,000 feet. At that point, the vehicle transitions to using internal propellent tanks before orienting itself for a controlled descent. It has been done on previous SpaceX vehicles, but not on Tuesday.
“The Starship prototype,” SpaceX said in a statement, “descended under active aerodynamic control, accomplished by independent movement of two forward and two aft flaps on the vehicle. All four flaps are actuated by an onboard flight computer to control Starship’s attitude during flight and enable precise landing at the intended location.”
Falcon 9’s first stage has landed on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship pic.twitter.com/4idBRdW65H
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 4, 2021
The big problem, came when it was time for the flip maneuver. SpaceX explained that during that attempted maneuver, “!one of the Raptor engines did not relight and caused SN9 to land at high speed and experience a RUD.” An “RUD” is short for “rapid unscheduled disassembly.” Which is pretty funny because no one got hurt.
SpaceX takes a practical and philosophical approach to this business. In the statement, it said, “These test flights are all about improving our understanding and development of a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo on long-duration, interplanetary flights and help humanity return to the Moon, and travel to Mars and beyond.”
