SpaceX recently reached an important milestone in the development of the Starship rocket. After the vehicle’s fifth launch, the Super Heavy first stage successfully returned to Earth in the loving embrace of the company’s mechazilla launch tower. It almost didn’t work, though. According to a few SpaceX engineers, the booster was a mere second away from aborting the landing.
This detail comes from an unusual source, even for a company whose CEO regularly posts announcements five levels deep in social media replies. Elon Musk recently streamed himself playing Diablo 4, which is not unusual. However, this time, he had three unnamed SpaceX engineers on the stream telling him about the recent Starship test. One of the engineers told Musk that “scary sh*t” happened during the test that almost ruined the landing.
The engineers explained that a misconfigured spin gas abort nearly caused the booster to veer away from the tower. “We were one second away from that tripping and telling the rocket to abort and try to crash into the ground next to the tower… like, erroneously tell a healthy rocket to not try that catch,” said the engineer.
If the abort had been triggered, the rocket would have maneuvered aggressively away from the tower. The vehicle’s aim would have been to crash land on the ground nearby, which could have limited damage to the launch infrastructure.
Musk, apparently unaware of the specifics of the Oct. 13 landing, replied simply, “wow” as his necromancer pulverized demons. Another engineer on the stream noted that the team at SpaceX almost delayed the launch because there was concern that the myriad “aborts and commit criteria” could cause the booster to fail even if all systems were working normally. The group also talked about the damage sustained by Super Heavy during the landing, including some failed spot welds that luckily did not compromise the structure.
The engineers also spoke on plans for the next Starship launch. Musk, continuing to play Diablo, listened as the SpaceX workers explained their goal to arrive at a “reasonable balance of speed and risk mitigation.” The team apparently has a plan to address the damaged welds, which will better secure a protective cover called the chine skin.
SpaceX has not confirmed a date for the sixth Starship test flight. The company hopes to conduct that test later this year. It’s uncertain if SpaceX will attempt to catch Super Heavy again, but it intends to try to recover the Starship upper stage for the first time.