One vacuum engine went out on starship but the 3 sea level engines gimbaled to compensate and continue on to released all 22 starlink simulators, then land vertical in the ocean as if at the tower.
this post was submitted on 23 May 2026
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Also, they had to 'glide' in upper atmosphere for additional ~60s to hit the landing zone. I think they almost ran out of fuel due to engine failure
Yeah they also lost a sea level raptor on the booster towards the end of the accent. That's honestly not a big deal, losing 1/28 engines at a point in the flight when they're already probably throttling down a bunch.
But still, they've got some kinks to work out with the raptor 3.
That said, did you see how much faster it left the launch pad? They've seriously increased the thrust with these new raptors.
Scott Manley made video about this. Turns out with raptor 2 they were slow starting on purpose, while now they went full throttle immediately.
Yep, it looks like that new much larger downcomer may really be the thing to thank, now they can actually feed all those engines fast enough.
It blew an engine and crashed into the sea.
That’s honestly not a big deal,
Fucking Jesus.
These idiots are yelping and cheering in the background while rockets burn billions of taxpayer dollars.
Well it did a simulated landing in the sea. (And then exploded)
We know that was the plan all along and that it landed on target because there was a camera buoy sitting in the ocean waiting to record the landing. Which it did.
Yeah they blew an engine, but that's kinda what redundancy is all about.
Do you know how many times the Saturn V had to make early shutdowns on one of its engines? It's easier to say how many times it didn't have early shutdowns: 0. On every single launch they had to shut off at least 1 engine early as the combustion became unstable; this is just part of the game.
IPO theatrics
yeah it was outright visible that the documentary was especially well-done because a potential IPO
?? This is the 12th test
exactly
Fuck anyone that supports that pedo
i'm not a fan of musk at all; however this is in the technology community because it's a good technological breakthrough.
And, it shouldn't need to be said, Elon Musk has exactly zero to do with this other than paying.
This is a conversation between engineers and physics.
Paying? Like Musk is paying for anything lol.
Taxpayers have paid for this.
He is just a punchable face.
Exactly zero except he's the owner and supporting spaceX directly contributes to his bank account.
No thanks
Supporting SpaceX financially contributes to his bank account, posting on social media does nothing.
The engineers that did this are great, I don't care about Elon Musk... I'll choose a different space company to launch my satellites.
That ignored my comment entirely. But even if you don't pay him through satellites, hyping this failure still contributes to his bank account.
I hope the world can survive the $0.38 worth of advertising that my comment adds to his trillion dollar bank account.
Elon Musk is not paying, the US taxpayer is paying.
That doesn't change the point that the people who designed, built and operated the spacecraft in question here are the ones who own the accomplishment, regardless of ownership or funding.
On the side note, it looked like their heat shield performed better than ever. Not only it shown low damage during splashdown, it also was exposed to heating in upper atmosphere for around minute more than normal due to course correction
another successful starship launch
Lol, that would imply that they're has been any successful launch before