this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2025
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SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft exploded on Thursday minutes after lifting off from Texas, dooming an attempt to deploy mock satellites in the second consecutive failure this year for Elon Musk’s Mars rocket program.

Several videos on social media showed fiery debris streaking through the dusk skies near south Florida and the Bahamas after Starship’s breakup in space, which occurred shortly after it began to spin uncontrollably with its engines cut off, a SpaceX livestream of the mission showed.

The failure comes just more than a month after the company’s seventh Starship flight also ended in an explosive failure. The back-to-back mishaps occurred in early mission phases that SpaceX has easily surpassed previously, indicating serious setbacks for a program Musk has sought to speed up this year.

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[–] IHeartBadCode@fedia.io 173 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Remember when the FAA grounded him till he got this fix and then Musk told the FAA head to retire or be fired?

I think it's wild that "better times" is now when corruption wasn't so naked.

[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 64 points 5 days ago (6 children)
[–] MsPenguinette@lemmy.world 33 points 5 days ago (2 children)

That article is a wild. Feels like we are in a story with terrible foreshadowing and retcons

[–] psycho_driver@lemmy.world 14 points 5 days ago

I think we're in the Matrix where the machines have found a superior alternate fuel source.

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[–] WalnutLum@lemmy.ml 11 points 5 days ago

I mean SpaceX has had a much longer history of telling federal agencies (especially the EPA) to go fuck themselves, launching anyway, and having absolutely fuck all for repercussions.

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[–] RattlerSix@lemmy.world 117 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Has he tried firing half the SpaceX employees, slicing half the budget and making everyone still there send an email detailing what they did this week?

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[–] Heikki@lemm.ee 62 points 5 days ago (1 children)

The FAA was investigating SpaceX from the last explosion and grounded all spacex flight until after an investigation. Then, the nazi-in-chief fired the FAA leader to get his way.

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[–] blady_blah@lemmy.world 67 points 5 days ago (11 children)

It pisses me off that I'm rooting against Space X, a company with an unarguably cool mission and product. Fuck Musk.

[–] b161@lemmy.blahaj.zone 30 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Going to space under capitalism makes no sense.

Why should space exploration need or want a profit motive?

Create an anarcho-communist society where we firstly house, feed, and educate everyone. Explore space for the pure purpose of exploration in conditions where we can all collaborate without the need of competition and destruction.

[–] EsmereldaFritzmonster@lemmings.world 17 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I have a family member that works as an engineer building parts for various spacecraft. They get excited about the possibility of finding a renewable energy source and just in general what science can gain and learn from space that will make life better on earth.

Do with that what you will, I'm neutral, I'm just providing a different perspective that I think is relevant.

[–] meyotch@slrpnk.net 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I think that a lot of rank-and-file professional scientists share that motivation. I know that deep down I am still a wide eyed child who got into science for those very reasons.

I find that trait less common once you get to director/general manager type roles. There’s a selection process that favors less idealistic (aka sociopathic) mindsets.

I personally think the innovation we need desperately is to figure out how to stop putting machiavelian monsters into positions of power.

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[–] frustrated_phagocytosis@fedia.io 79 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Ughhhh just get in the rocket, rocket boy!!!

[–] jonne@infosec.pub 49 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Yeah, Musk is just not micro managing enough. If he was on board he'd be able to fix any issues that come up in real time.

[–] Joeffect@lemmy.world 22 points 5 days ago (1 children)

It's because he spends all his time being a top ranked gamer, don't you know...

[–] jonne@infosec.pub 13 points 5 days ago (1 children)

He pays some guy to do it, which is even sadder.

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[–] meathorse@lemmy.world 25 points 4 days ago

Right, they've perfected the rocket, now we just need to load Elon onto the next flight.

[–] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 46 points 5 days ago

Maybe the internal GPS was looking for the Gulf of Mexico and just gave up?

[–] SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 22 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Remember that Elon said we would land on Mars by 2024?

We haven't even started thinking about a Mars misson lmao

[–] MS06Borjarnon@lemmy.world 9 points 5 days ago (2 children)

That was always absurd, on the face of it. Heck, I don't even see the appeal of going to Mars.

[–] SmokeytheBeard1@lemm.ee 16 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Obama era had everyone optimistic about the future.

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[–] Revan343@lemmy.ca 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Heck, I don't even see the appeal of going to Mars

There's no people there

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[–] Goodmorningsunshine@lemmy.world 28 points 5 days ago (8 children)

Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon. It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. And it performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people. Because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth.

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[–] KulunkelBoom@lemm.ee 19 points 5 days ago (1 children)

America is footing this bill. This is no more musk's "Mars program" than it is MY mars program. Matter of fact, seeing as I pay taxes and he doesn't, it's more mine that his.

It's time to remove musk's U.S. subsidies for cars, rockets, and whatever else he's fucking up.

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[–] HalfSalesman@lemm.ee 16 points 5 days ago (4 children)

I say this as someone who loathes Musk, its not a big deal that this exploded.

But the success or failures of the program should also not be meaningfully attributed to Musk anyway. He owns the company but hes not an engineer.

[–] FabledAepitaph@lemmy.world 14 points 4 days ago (3 children)

I personally want Musk's space program to fail because scientific advances and achievements need to belong to the people, not some corporate asshole. Publically funded science is the only way to go. Also, NASA seemed to have mastered the rocket back in the 60s--SpaceX can't even do that.

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[–] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 11 points 5 days ago

I think it can be attributed to Musk because he's the driving force behind pushing the "move fast and break things" mentality into rocket science. They haven't figured out why the last one blew up and they go ahead and launch another one which looks like it blew up for the same reasons.

That might work with non-critical software, but when you're talking about large rockets it's bound to get people killed eventually. At the very least they could've built a launch site for testing where the rockets aren't going over populated areas. But naw, build it in Texas and fire untested rockets over Caribbean countries, because there's not enough white people in those countries for Musk to give a shit.

[–] FreeFacts@sopuli.xyz 6 points 5 days ago

He titled himself as the chief engineer of SpaceX. And this is no joke.

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[–] Eddbopkins@lemmy.world 12 points 4 days ago

Hmm maybe the FAA should not have cleared the flight since the rocket in January wasn't fully investigated to completion. You rush complex engineering and science and things go wrong.

[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 20 points 5 days ago

Hope he's on the next flight

[–] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 9 points 4 days ago

How many american tax dollars were wasted on this DOGE???

[–] hydrashok@sh.itjust.works 25 points 5 days ago

Hey guys, can we hear again how low Earth orbit is dumb and we should just go to Mars? Asking for a friend.

/s

[–] merdaverse@lemmy.world 16 points 5 days ago (1 children)

SpaceX can still pivot to a fireworks company and let decades old soviet rockets take people to the ISS. I'm sure that DOGE will cut the wasteful government grants this company gets.

[–] dev_null@lemmy.ml 19 points 5 days ago (1 children)

To be fair, only their crazy concept rocket keeps falling tests. The actual in use rockets have literally the best success/safety rate in history. Just a shame a Nazi owns the company.

[–] merdaverse@lemmy.world 8 points 5 days ago

Fair enough. The engineering is pretty impressive. It would be even more impressive if it was owned by the public rather than a MEGAlomaniac high on ketamine

[–] WalnutLum@lemmy.ml 16 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Looking forward to SpaceX fans continuing to talk about how much SpaceX is insulated from musk's stupidity thanks to Shotwell.

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[–] regrub@lemmy.world 20 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (4 children)

I wonder if the reason for it failing this time was sabotage by SpaceX engineers.

[–] jonne@infosec.pub 33 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Sabotage, or the fact that the best rocket scientists probably don't want to work for a Nazi on ketamine?

[–] JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 18 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Hey last time that happened we ended up with the atomic bomb.

[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 23 points 5 days ago

The bomb wasn't successfully developed by the ones working for the Nazi on ketamine...

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[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 25 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I assume when Musk decided he wanted it to move faster his disruption undermined the process, meaning he sabotaged it.

[–] regrub@lemmy.world 14 points 5 days ago (2 children)

From the anecdotes I've heard by ppl who worked for him, that would not be surprising.

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[–] Mortoc@lemmy.world 23 points 5 days ago (3 children)

I feel so bad for SpaceX engineers. If you grew up dreaming of space, you learn the math and science, and end up with that piece of shit as the figurehead for all your work.

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[–] pennomi@lemmy.world 18 points 5 days ago (5 children)

Ugh, I don’t actually hate the hardware rich testing strategy SpaceX uses, but you’re supposed to learn from your failures before launching the next rocket.

This looked like almost exactly the same issue - fire in the skirt area that catastrophically destroyed the engines.

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[–] Nomecks@lemmy.ca 16 points 5 days ago

Sorry Elon, you're just going to have to live in the hell you're creating.

[–] 1984@lemmy.today 11 points 5 days ago

Musk "speeding up" the program. Lol.

[–] fluxion@lemmy.world 12 points 5 days ago

And we need at least like 7 consecutive launches like this to fuel a moon mission. No wonder he's talking about Mars again, more time to grift off taxpayer money and not be on the hook to actually deliver any time soon.

Worst fucking timeline.

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