SpaceX launches private Cygnus cargo spacecraft to the ISS (video) (2024)

FAQs

What was the cause of the Starship failure? ›

On Starship's inaugural launch last April, several of the booster's 33 methane-fueled engines failed and the booster did not separate from the spacecraft, causing the entire vehicle to explode and crash into the gulf four minutes after liftoff.

When stacked on top of each other, Starship and Super Heavy stand 394 feet tall. That's nearly 100 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty and 31 feet taller than the Saturn V, the next-tallest rocket ever built.

Payload research did a report in Feb 2024, and estimated 2024 Starship build costs : Each integrated stack costing $90 M ($63 M for Super Heavy, $27 M for Starship).

Owned by Elon Musk, SpaceX is one of the world's most valuable start-ups. The space company provides launch services and owns the valuable satellite internet start-up Starlink.

Starship is a two-stage super heavy-lift launch vehicle under development by SpaceX. As of July 2024, it is the most massive and most powerful vehicle ever to fly. Starship is intended to lower launch costs significantly via economies of scale.

The second flight, in November 2023, achieved stage separation, a significant advance, but the booster exploded during its planned landing on the Gulf of Mexico. Eight minutes later, at 93 miles high, the Starship upper stage caught fire and detonated when the craft vented excess liquid oxygen.

SpaceX has once again launched the most powerful rocket in history into the sky, and this time, the mission seems to have passed most of its key milestones. Starship took off without a hitch this morning, separated from its booster, and cruised through space for a while before SpaceX lost contact with it.

It takes a lot of energy to leave the Earth and rockets can accomplish that in two ways: either by using a few very large and powerful engines, or a large number of smaller ones. Starship employs the latter.

Starship's Raptor engines burn liquid oxygen and liquid methane, neither of which, fortunately, is toxic to the environment. Still, dumping garbage into the ocean is not the most respectable behavior, although the world's space agencies and launch operators have been doing that for decades.

The company didn't provide pricing info, but NASA pays $55 million per seat.

How much does it cost to refuel Starship? ›

SpaceX on a path to eventually reduce the cost of a single flight of a fully reusable Starship rocket to less than $10 million. The cost of fuel is about $1M. Where's the other $9M coming from? at $90M per current disposable flight, that's vehicle cost at 100 reuses is $1M per flight in operating capital amortization.

Payloads are small, with a maximum mass of 660 pounds, meaning that each pound costs about $11,000 to launch. While the cost per pound isn't great, smaller rockets launching smaller payloads means we can get experiments into space for a considerably lower total cost.

SpaceX stock does not trade on public stock exchanges. SpaceX stock is considered a private security and you need to be an accredited investor to purchase shares.

Musk currently has a nearly 13% stake in Tesla. Prior to selling TSLA shares to purchase Twitter, now X, for $44 billion in late 2022, Musk owned around 22% of Tesla.

WASHINGTON — SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk says a propellant dump caused the destruction of the Starship upper stage on a November test flight, giving him confidence that the vehicle can reach orbit on its next launch.

Many SpaceX Starship heat tiles fell off during the last orbital launch. The number of heat tiles that fell off were so high that one group of people have found some that washed up from the ocean after a storm.

On May 24, SpaceX released a blog post stating the results from flight 3. According to SpaceX, during the boostback burn, 6 engines began to shut down, causing an early boostback shutdown. The vehicle prevented these engines from performing the landing burn, leaving only 7 engines.

The… craft had been due to attempt to relight its Raptor engines – which has never been done in space before – for a controlled re-entry to Earth's atmosphere starting at almost 27,000 kilometres per hour. But this re-light part of the mission was skipped by the company, and the craft was subsequently lost.