Oops. It looks like SpaceX needs to build another Starship.

On Saturday, SpaceX conducted its second-ever flight test of its Starship prototype interplanetary spaceship atop a Super Heavy booster rocket. And as multiple news outlets reported, it ended in disaster:

토요일에 SpaceX는 Super Heavy 부스터 로켓 위에서 Starship 프로토타입 행성 간 우주선의 두 번째 비행 테스트를 실시했습니다. 그리고 여러 언론 매체에서 보도한 대로 이 사건은 재앙으로 끝났습니다.

• "Starship test launch ends in explosions" (CBS).

  "우주선 시험 발사는 폭발로 끝났다"(CBS).

• "Starship launch failed minutes after reaching space" (Reuters).

• "Starship achieves liftoff and separation, but 'mishap' results in loss of rocket" (NBC).

  "스타쉽은 이륙과 분리를 달성하지만 '사고'로 인해 로켓이 손실됩니다"(NBC).

Starship blew up. So did Super Heavy.

After launching from its pad near Boca Chica, Texas, at 8:02 a.m. ET on Saturday, Nov.18, SpaceX's booster exploded midflight about three and a half minutes after takeoff. Less than five minutes later, the Starship experienced its own "rapid unscheduled disassembly," apparently in response to an onboard self-destruct command.

But that doesn't mean the mission was a failure. Far from it.

하지만 그렇다고 해서 임무가 실패했다는 뜻은 아닙니다. 그것과는 거리가 멀다.

The rest of the story

Yes, there were some big, Technicolor explosions, delivered in full Dolby surround sound. But SpaceX's Starship test flight last weekend also scored multiple successes:

• New launch pad technology muffled sound vibrations, and minimized damage to the pad. This greatly improved over April's test, when Super Heavy more or less destroyed its own pad in the process of launching from it.

• All 33 Raptor engines on the Super Heavy Booster lit and stayed lit throughout the first stage's flight. This improved over April's test flight performance, when three engines flamed out.

  Super Heavy Booster에 장착된 33개의 Raptor 엔진은 모두 불이 들어왔고 첫 번째 단계 비행 내내 불이 켜진 상태를 유지했습니다. 이는 3개의 엔진이 꺼졌던 4월의 시험 비행 성능보다 개선되었습니다.

• SpaceX proved the concept of "hot-stage separation," in which Starship's six engines lit while Super Heavy was still "on." Starship then powered away from Super Heavy while the latter turned off 30 of its 33 engines, and executed its patented flip-and-boostback maneuver to position itself for relanding back on Earth.

• Starship itself then rocketed past the Karman line to space, getting to about 90 miles above the Earth before self-destructing.

And with test flight 2 in the books, SpaceX is already getting ready for test flight No. 3. As CEO Elon Musk quickly confirmed, SpaceX will be ready to improve on last week's performance in less than one month, FAA permitting:

그리고 2번 시험 비행을 통해 SpaceX는 이미 3번 시험 비행을 준비하고 있습니다. CEO Elon Musk가 재빠르게 확인한 것처럼 SpaceX는 FAA가 허용하는 한 달 이내에 지난주 성능을 개선할 준비가 되어 있을 것입니다.

Countdown to 100% success

Of course, that's the real rub. The fact that Starship and Super Heavy weren't 100% successful last week means the Federal Aviation Administration will want to do another "mishap" investigation before allowing SpaceX to try again. And it took the FAA seven months after test flight 1 to OK test flight 2. If it has to wait seven more months for test flight No. 3 -- and for each test flight thereafter -- then things could start to get tricky for SpaceX as it races to get Starship ready to perform a moon landing for NASA under the latter's Project Artemis.

Consider: Test flight 1 aimed to fly for 90 minutes before both halves of the Starship-Super Heavy combo returned to Earth -- but it actually flew fewer than four minutes. Test flight 2 doubled that flight time to eight minutes before rapid unscheduled disassembly.

Now, mathematically speaking, if SpaceX keeps doubling Starship's lifespan with each flight, but the FAA interposes seven-month-long waits between flights, then it might take SpaceX four more test flights to reach 100% success for Starship and Superheavy 28 months from now. This implies a 100% successful Starship system might not arrive before early 2026 -- too late for SpaceX to facilitate NASA's Artemis 3 mission to land astronauts on the moon planned for December 2025.

이제 수학적으로 말하면 SpaceX가 비행할 때마다 Starship의 수명을 계속 두 배로 늘리지만 FAA가 비행 사이에 7개월의 대기 시간을 삽입한다면 지금부터 28개월 후에 SpaceX가 Starship 및 Superheavy의 100% 성공에 도달하려면 SpaceX의 테스트 비행이 4번 더 필요할 수 있습니다. . 이는 100% 성공적인 우주선 시스템이 2026년 초 이전에 도착하지 못할 수도 있음을 의미합니다. SpaceX가 2025년 12월로 계획된 달에 우주 비행사를 착륙시키려는 NASA의 Artemis 3 임무를 촉진하기에는 너무 늦었습니다.

The timeline gets even more cramped when you recall that, even after Starship is proven safe to fly cargo, SpaceX will want to test-fly Starship multiple times before putting astronauts on the spaceship, to ensure it's safe for humans.

Good news for SpaceX -- and bad news for everyone else

So there's risk to NASA's Project Artemis timeline here. There's also some risk to SpaceX, which may have to wait a bit longer to win additional contracts for additional moon landings, if Artemis is delayed while waiting for Starship to achieve human-rating certification. But the good news for SpaceX -- and the bad news for everyone else who builds rockets -- is that SpaceX is getting closer and closer to success.

SpaceX에게는 좋은 소식이고 다른 모든 사람들에게는 나쁜 소식입니다. 따라서 NASA의 Artemis 프로젝트 일정에 위험이 있습니다. Starship이 인간 등급 인증을 받기를 기다리는 동안 Artemis가 지연될 경우 추가 달 착륙에 대한 추가 계약을 체결하기 위해 조금 더 기다려야 할 수 있는 SpaceX에도 몇 가지 위험이 있습니다. 그러나 SpaceX에게 좋은 소식과 로켓을 만드는 다른 모든 사람들에게 나쁜 소식은 SpaceX가 성공에 점점 더 가까워지고 있다는 것입니다.

Assuming Starship continues to make progress, we're getting closer to the day when SpaceX will possess: (1) the world's largest, most powerful rocket that (2) is fully reusable and (3) therefore doesn't need to be built from scratch for each launch, enabling SpaceX to (4) conduct space launches of both cargo and astronauts for as little as $2 million to $10 million per launch.

Countdown to 100% success

Of course, that's the real rub. The fact that Starship and Super Heavy weren't 100% successful last week means the Federal Aviation Administration will want to do another "mishap" investigation before allowing SpaceX to try again. And it took the FAA seven months after test flight 1 to OK test flight 2. If it has to wait seven more months for test flight No. 3 -- and for each test flight thereafter -- then things could start to get tricky for SpaceX as it races to get Starship ready to perform a moon landing for NASA under the latter's Project Artemis.

Consider: Test flight 1 aimed to fly for 90 minutes before both halves of the Starship-Super Heavy combo returned to Earth -- but it actually flew fewer than four minutes. Test flight 2 doubled that flight time to eight minutes before rapid unscheduled disassembly.

Now, mathematically speaking, if SpaceX keeps doubling Starship's lifespan with each flight, but the FAA interposes seven-month-long waits between flights, then it might take SpaceX four more test flights to reach 100% success for Starship and Superheavy 28 months from now. This implies a 100% successful Starship system might not arrive before early 2026 -- too late for SpaceX to facilitate NASA's Artemis 3 mission to land astronauts on the moon planned for December 2025.

이제 수학적으로 말하면 SpaceX가 비행할 때마다 Starship의 수명을 계속 두 배로 늘리지만 FAA가 비행 사이에 7개월의 대기 시간을 삽입한다면 지금부터 28개월 후에 SpaceX가 Starship 및 Superheavy의 100% 성공에 도달하려면 SpaceX의 테스트 비행이 4번 더 필요할 수 있습니다. . 이는 100% 성공적인 우주선 시스템이 2026년 초 이전에 도착하지 못할 수도 있음을 의미합니다. SpaceX가 2025년 12월로 계획된 달에 우주 비행사를 착륙시키려는 NASA의 Artemis 3 임무를 촉진하기에는 너무 늦었습니다.

The timeline gets even more cramped when you recall that, even after Starship is proven safe to fly cargo, SpaceX will want to test-fly Starship multiple times before putting astronauts on the spaceship, to ensure it's safe for humans.

Good news for SpaceX -- and bad news for everyone else

So there's risk to NASA's Project Artemis timeline here. There's also some risk to SpaceX, which may have to wait a bit longer to win additional contracts for additional moon landings, if Artemis is delayed while waiting for Starship to achieve human-rating certification. But the good news for SpaceX -- and the bad news for everyone else who builds rockets -- is that SpaceX is getting closer and closer to success.

SpaceX에게는 좋은 소식이고 다른 모든 사람들에게는 나쁜 소식입니다. 따라서 NASA의 Artemis 프로젝트 일정에 위험이 있습니다. Starship이 인간 등급 인증을 받기를 기다리는 동안 Artemis가 지연될 경우 추가 달 착륙에 대한 추가 계약을 체결하기 위해 조금 더 기다려야 할 수 있는 SpaceX에도 몇 가지 위험이 있습니다. 그러나 SpaceX에게 좋은 소식과 로켓을 만드는 다른 모든 사람들에게 나쁜 소식은 SpaceX가 성공에 점점 더 가까워지고 있다는 것입니다.

Assuming Starship continues to make progress, we're getting closer to the day when SpaceX will possess: (1) the world's largest, most powerful rocket that (2) is fully reusable and (3) therefore doesn't need to be built from scratch for each launch, enabling SpaceX to (4) conduct space launches of both cargo and astronauts for as little as $2 million to $10 million per launch.

When everyone else on Earth is still trying to launch rockets for prices measured in the tens and hundreds of millions -- and billions -- of dollars per launch, that's going to make SpaceX the undisputed cheapest rocket launcher on Earth, and potentially make every other rocket and every other rocket company on the planet obsolete.

지구상의 모든 사람들이 여전히 발사당 수천만, 수억 달러, 수십억 달러에 달하는 가격으로 로켓을 발사하려고 노력하고 있다면 SpaceX는 의심의 여지가 없는 지구상에서 가장 저렴한 로켓 발사기가 될 것이며 잠재적으로 다른 모든 로켓 발사기보다 더 저렴해질 것입니다. 로켓과 지구상의 다른 모든 로켓 회사는 쓸모가 없습니다.