SpaceX Booster Failed on Its 23rd Landing

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The booster landed with a speed that was far higher than normal. This resulted in damage that eventually broke one of three landing legs.

SpaceX had a run of 267 consecutive successful landings.

11 thoughts on “SpaceX Booster Failed on Its 23rd Landing”

  1. I would imagine that we are being just a tad too aggressive on SpaceX? I applaud this re-usability even if for just one only time. Just imagine how far advanced the Apollo program would have been if they had dared to land the first stage instead of throwing one away for each launch? The FAA needs to be removed from investigating such minor mishaps as no public safety interests are involved here. The landing is completely devoid of any public human occupant or bystander and landed well inside the designated landing zone.

    Give credit where credit is due, SpaceX is the only successful reusable rocket operator on this planet! Going into space is insanely difficult and SpaceX accesses it nearly every day of the year.

  2. The FAA originally was tasked to investigate all aircraft accidents. Mainly because any accident can put the lives of people on the plane and on the ground at risk. With the growth of the space launch business the FAA is now tasked to investingate space incidents.

    Apparently the FAA has forgotten that they were investigating all accidents to prevent the death of people. The two prominent issues space X had this year (2nd Stage failure and the landing failure) did not put any lives at risk At most they should find out what happened and then determine if there is any chance the failure could put any people in risk if happened under different conditions in the future. This means you don’t have to ground the affected rocket if no lives are at list. But instead if the analysis says it could people at risk in the future, then yes ground the rocket and fix the issue.

  3. The FAA originally was tasked to investigate all aircraft accidents. Mainly because any accident can put the lives of people on the plane and on the ground at risk. With the growth of the space launch business the FAA is now tasked to investingate space incidents.

    Apparently the FAA has forgotten that they were investigating all accidents to prevent the death of people. The two prominent issues space X had this year (2nd Stage failure and the landing failure did not put any lives at risk At most they should find out what happened and then determine if there is any chance the failure could put any people in fisk if happened under different conditions in the future. This means you don’t have to ground the affected rocket if no lives are at list. But instead if the analysis says it could people at risk in the future, then yes ground the rocket and ifs the issue.

  4. Impressive but it also shows how far we are from safe space travel. Imagine if a plane crash every 267 fly. Still a long way to 1 crash every 1-10 millions launches. Hope we can get there in a few decades.

    • No, as the article clearly describes, it’s just part of iterative development. It shows that SpaceX is still very actively improving the reliability of F9 by pushing it to failure. Doing this risked nothing. There are no people or payloads involved. F9 is not as safe as commercial airliners and reusable rocket tech will take years to get there, but the quickest path to that is by deliberately pushing the tech to fail.

      • A fundamental issue here is that achieving orbit using chemical rocketry is right at the edge of what’s physically possible. This means that you can’t have significant structural margins and still be light enough to make orbit. Not using conventional materials, anyway.

        And structural margins are central to the way we ordinarily make things reliable.

        As long as SpaceX can confine the failures to landings of unmanned boosters, it’s just a cost calculation, not a safety issue. Well, and an FAA freaking out issue, too…

        U

      • The problem being that doing that causes the FAA to freak out and shut you down. They’re simply not in an iterative development mindset.

        Chemical rocketry to orbit is right at the bare edge of what is possible, given the energy density of fuels and the strength to weight ratios of affordable materials. Ultimately we need to find some other way of getting things off the planet. Either nuclear rocketry, or something non-rocket, like a Launch Loop or mass driver.

        I think we’re at the point where the next space billionaire isn’t going to be a rocket guy, it’s going to be whoever takes a non-rocket approach from the napkin stage to working hardware. Dynamic structures are probably the way to go, since while a mass driver is sure to work, the expense for one that uses low enough acceleration to be survivable is scary high. 1,250 km of electromagnetic accelerator won’t be cheap.

        • The cost of land is prohibitively expensive If you put it above ground.

          Is this another reason musk started a tunneling company?

          • The cost of tunneling is nothing to sneeze at compared to the cost of land above ground, you know.

            Assuming a 1,250 km long mass driver, (Assuming 5gs acceleration…) with the terminus located, traditionally, at the top of Pike’s Peak, it would probably be starting somewhere a bit South of Reno, Nevada. The land route in between is VERY thinly populated, so a surface installation wouldn’t be prohibitive.

            There would, unavoidably, be a lot of tunneling involved, though, since your mass driver can’t follow the terrain, it has to be one continuous sweep from end to end, getting straighter as the capsule accelerates. And there are a lot of mountains between Reno and Pike’s Peak.

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