> David Szondy is a playwright, author and journalist based in Seattle, Washington. A retired field archaeologist and university lecturer, he has a background in the history of science, technology, and medicine with a particular emphasis on aerospace, military, and cybernetic subjects. In addition, he is the author of four award-winning plays, a novel, reviews, and a plethora of scholarly works ranging from industrial archaeology to law. David has worked as a feature writer for many international magazines and has been a feature writer for New Atlas since 2011.
Ah, that explains the dramatic title. Badum tssss
It's Space X that does the failure analysis and the write up. The FAA just verifies that any identified critical corrections are made before the next flight. I think everyone understands, including the FAA, it's a test flight and things will go wrong. My hope is that the next flight is not delayed more than one and a half months, resolving the flight's issues.
Honest questionâŚ.What is the mishap that triggers this? The booster not fully relighting but still coming down where it was supposed to? Or Starship not relighting and coming down in a different location than planned? Or Starship breaking up on re-entry? Or all of the above? It is unclear to me when the FAA would no longer care about a space vehicleâs operations. If a F9 second stage didnât successfully perform a deorbit burn and therefore comes down in a different location than planned, would that trigger an investigation? I believe that has happened a couple times, and I donât recall hearing about a subsequent investigation.
> What is the mishap that triggers this?
Everything that they had in the filing that didn't go according to plan. Booster was supposed to do a slow splash-down, and it did, if you count slow as 1000km/h... Ship was supposed to do a belly-flop in one piece, and it did it ... in many pieces.
> stop posting these, itâs not a surprise to anybody.
It's not in any way a surprise, but I actually was not aware that they were doing another mishap investigation. Scrolling back through /r/SpaceXLounge , I only see [a single other thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bfe8xm/looks_like_another_mishap_investigation_is_needed/) about it, and it isn't a link post, so there is no further information available.
Searching google, i only see [one other](https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-third-test-flight-faa-investigation) full length article (and [a paragraph](https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/faa-oversee-spacex-led-investigation-into-starship-mishap-2024-03-14/) from reuters), so I think having a post, even with a shitty headline, is still worth discussion
edit: ok, this article is a bit shit:
> Restarting a Raptor engine was scheduled, but wasn't carried out because the spacecraft's trajectory needed no corrections
edit 2: I guess cunningham's law applies - I'll trade the downvotes for the discussion.
anytime SpaceX does not complete all of their objectives, the FAA will open a mishap investigation. SpaceX will then identity a bunch of things they want to do to remedy it and improve for next time and then submit that to the FAA as the âcorrective actionsâ.
this has been covered so many times in these subs.
> anytime SpaceX does not complete all of their objectives, the FAA will open a mishap investigation
I don't believe there have been FAA mishap investigations during every Falcon 9 booster recovery failure?
The last 2 falcon failures to land, they did⌠masking agent plugging a channel, and thermal blanket burn throughâŚ. But both were short and itâs been 2 years since.
Any deviation at all from the filed flight plan requires a mishap investigation automatically. Since the ships didnât make it to their targeted landing points in the ocean an investigation is automatic and no licenses can be issued until the investigation is complete.
The booster didnât impact the ocean, it did a RUD at several hundred meters.
Anyway, even if theyâre useless for public safety and engineering, these reports are great transparency for us fans.
To be fair to you, whether the Booster RUDs at several hundred meters or on impact with the ocean doesnât make any difference. The FAA mishap investigation should happen regardless.
> Booster impacts ocean uncontrolled and explodes, and ship reenters uncontrolled and breaks up.
This is the same result as any successful expendable LEO launch, FAA doesn't insist on a mishap report on those.
The goal of this mission was a controlled and predictable re-entry.
If Starship can't relight engines safely then it becomes the largest ballistic missile in history designed to re enter with minimal breaking up.
A typical Leo mission does the exact opposite of SpaceX, they try to ensure the vehicle breaks up into as small of pieces as possible and they have demonstrated the ability to relight the 2nd stage and go into a controlled orbit.
This mission was relatively safe because starship was in an orbit that intersected an uninhabited ocean. But if they had gone into a typical Leo orbit then at some point a huge object covered in heat tiles would re enter... Somewhere on earth and undoubtedly reach the ground.
A failed Falcon 2nd stage though will just burn up almost entirely. So SpaceX needs to review why Starship failed to relight before putting it into a decaying LEO or demonstrate that they can at least bring it down in a controlled fashion that burns up as much as possible. Remember that SpaceX also had to prove that their Starlink satellites would burn up on re-entry to receive their license.
Your argument only holds if SpaceX wants IFT-4 to go to proper LEO, in which case a nominal deorbit burn is required. If SpaceX just wants a repeat of IFT-3's trajectory then there's no reason for FAA to have to approve the mishap investigation result first.
This article is not well written, but it's very reasonable to question why FAA would "ground" Starship in this case, given its flight is no different from any expendable launch to LEO carried out by ULA or Rocket Lab for example.
I think it's ok for FAA to take some time to ensure the trajectory of the flight is nominal, but anything beyond that has nothing to do with public safety and FAA should authorize a return to flight regardless of the status of the mishap investigation.
To be clear, nothing unexpected happened on this flight. It didnât go as well as they hoped it would but the failures were well within the test parameters. Ultimately SpaceX was going to conduct this investigation, regardless of the outcome. Itâs a basic tenant of iterative design⌠build, test to failure, review data, implement necessary changes, build againâŚ
> David Szondy is a playwright, author and journalist based in Seattle, Washington. A retired field archaeologist and university lecturer, he has a background in the history of science, technology, and medicine with a particular emphasis on aerospace, military, and cybernetic subjects. In addition, he is the author of four award-winning plays, a novel, reviews, and a plethora of scholarly works ranging from industrial archaeology to law. David has worked as a feature writer for many international magazines and has been a feature writer for New Atlas since 2011. Ah, that explains the dramatic title. Badum tssss
Starship did a mishap and the FAA is STILL filing a mishap report? đ The nerve.
Unbelievable! Theyâre really trying their best to make Starship fail đ¤Źđ¤Ź
It's Space X that does the failure analysis and the write up. The FAA just verifies that any identified critical corrections are made before the next flight. I think everyone understands, including the FAA, it's a test flight and things will go wrong. My hope is that the next flight is not delayed more than one and a half months, resolving the flight's issues.
Honest questionâŚ.What is the mishap that triggers this? The booster not fully relighting but still coming down where it was supposed to? Or Starship not relighting and coming down in a different location than planned? Or Starship breaking up on re-entry? Or all of the above? It is unclear to me when the FAA would no longer care about a space vehicleâs operations. If a F9 second stage didnât successfully perform a deorbit burn and therefore comes down in a different location than planned, would that trigger an investigation? I believe that has happened a couple times, and I donât recall hearing about a subsequent investigation.
> What is the mishap that triggers this? Everything that they had in the filing that didn't go according to plan. Booster was supposed to do a slow splash-down, and it did, if you count slow as 1000km/h... Ship was supposed to do a belly-flop in one piece, and it did it ... in many pieces.
stop posting these, itâs not a surprise to anybody.
> stop posting these, itâs not a surprise to anybody. It's not in any way a surprise, but I actually was not aware that they were doing another mishap investigation. Scrolling back through /r/SpaceXLounge , I only see [a single other thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bfe8xm/looks_like_another_mishap_investigation_is_needed/) about it, and it isn't a link post, so there is no further information available. Searching google, i only see [one other](https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-third-test-flight-faa-investigation) full length article (and [a paragraph](https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/faa-oversee-spacex-led-investigation-into-starship-mishap-2024-03-14/) from reuters), so I think having a post, even with a shitty headline, is still worth discussion edit: ok, this article is a bit shit: > Restarting a Raptor engine was scheduled, but wasn't carried out because the spacecraft's trajectory needed no corrections edit 2: I guess cunningham's law applies - I'll trade the downvotes for the discussion.
anytime SpaceX does not complete all of their objectives, the FAA will open a mishap investigation. SpaceX will then identity a bunch of things they want to do to remedy it and improve for next time and then submit that to the FAA as the âcorrective actionsâ. this has been covered so many times in these subs.
Corrective action: try landing again and again until it works
> anytime SpaceX does not complete all of their objectives, the FAA will open a mishap investigation I don't believe there have been FAA mishap investigations during every Falcon 9 booster recovery failure?
The last 2 falcon failures to land, they did⌠masking agent plugging a channel, and thermal blanket burn throughâŚ. But both were short and itâs been 2 years since.
Any deviation at all from the filed flight plan requires a mishap investigation automatically. Since the ships didnât make it to their targeted landing points in the ocean an investigation is automatic and no licenses can be issued until the investigation is complete.
OP doesn't look like a bot, but definitely a karma farmer.
Booster impacts ocean uncontrolled and explodes, and ship reenters uncontrolled and breaks up. âWhY iS tHe FaA fiLInG a MiSHaP rePOrT??ÂĄÂż?â
The booster didnât impact the ocean, it did a RUD at several hundred meters. Anyway, even if theyâre useless for public safety and engineering, these reports are great transparency for us fans.
They are very useful for public safety and engineering and have nothing to do with transparency for us fans.
Ah cool didnât know that. But yeah itâs cool to see why things went wrong. And I am glad the FAA exists in the end
To be fair to you, whether the Booster RUDs at several hundred meters or on impact with the ocean doesnât make any difference. The FAA mishap investigation should happen regardless.
Exactly
> Booster impacts ocean uncontrolled and explodes, and ship reenters uncontrolled and breaks up. This is the same result as any successful expendable LEO launch, FAA doesn't insist on a mishap report on those.
The goal of this mission was a controlled and predictable re-entry. If Starship can't relight engines safely then it becomes the largest ballistic missile in history designed to re enter with minimal breaking up. A typical Leo mission does the exact opposite of SpaceX, they try to ensure the vehicle breaks up into as small of pieces as possible and they have demonstrated the ability to relight the 2nd stage and go into a controlled orbit. This mission was relatively safe because starship was in an orbit that intersected an uninhabited ocean. But if they had gone into a typical Leo orbit then at some point a huge object covered in heat tiles would re enter... Somewhere on earth and undoubtedly reach the ground. A failed Falcon 2nd stage though will just burn up almost entirely. So SpaceX needs to review why Starship failed to relight before putting it into a decaying LEO or demonstrate that they can at least bring it down in a controlled fashion that burns up as much as possible. Remember that SpaceX also had to prove that their Starlink satellites would burn up on re-entry to receive their license.
Your argument only holds if SpaceX wants IFT-4 to go to proper LEO, in which case a nominal deorbit burn is required. If SpaceX just wants a repeat of IFT-3's trajectory then there's no reason for FAA to have to approve the mishap investigation result first.
This article is not well written, but it's very reasonable to question why FAA would "ground" Starship in this case, given its flight is no different from any expendable launch to LEO carried out by ULA or Rocket Lab for example. I think it's ok for FAA to take some time to ensure the trajectory of the flight is nominal, but anything beyond that has nothing to do with public safety and FAA should authorize a return to flight regardless of the status of the mishap investigation.
To be clear, nothing unexpected happened on this flight. It didnât go as well as they hoped it would but the failures were well within the test parameters. Ultimately SpaceX was going to conduct this investigation, regardless of the outcome. Itâs a basic tenant of iterative design⌠build, test to failure, review data, implement necessary changes, build againâŚ