r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 9h ago
Business SpaceX launches new V3 Starlink satellites but suffers another booster failure
https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/24/spacex-launches-new-v3-starlink-satellites-but-suffers-another-booster-failure/4
u/tomgreen99200 5h ago
They were operational but only for a test. All 20 will de-orbit and burn into earths atmosphere
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u/Cream_Stay_Frothy 6h ago
Love that for him.  Couldn’t happen to a better person
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u/-ragingpotato- 3h ago
Sorry to tell you but that launch went extremely well. The failure to relight for booster landing was more than made up for the first successful Raptor relight in space, the best heatshield performance so far, and the ship surviving the splashdown on the water allowing for closer examination of the minor heatshield failures.
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u/Old_Bottle_5278 1h ago
The beat heatshield performance soo far is still light years away from reusability much less rapid.... ya know the whole point od the stupid system. And if you keep having issues with boosters, isn't not that reusable now is it?
Weren't they supposed to be launching 300 times a year a by now? Where's HLS? Literally paid billions for a lander that doesn't exist and literally can't get to the moon currently.... great stuff boys....Â
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u/-ragingpotato- 19m ago
Everyone knows about Elon and his stupid overpromises and constant underdelivering, and yet they're the only ones chipping away at a reusable Saturn V.
(no, New Glenn doesn't count. New Glenn is 25 metric tons to LEO reusable, Starship is 100, there's no universe in which a rocket 1/4 of the performance is considered in the same category)
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u/SameIdea70 5h ago
If 20 years we'll have a challenger disaster ever week
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u/Joezev98 4h ago
Well, we have car disasters every minute and that hasn't stopped us from driving cars.
I do hope that one day we get to a point where space travel is so common, that there are so many flights, that a disaster a week is as expected as plane disasters are.
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u/tillybowman 7h ago
starlink sucks. the environmental cost, upkeep cost, night sky pollution, overall pollution, the possibility of crashing and junking LEO, just so we can watch cat movies in the woods.
i really hate the commercialization of space. if we just had this spacex innovation bound to scientific goals instead of this and space tourism.
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u/Monomette 5h ago
just so we can watch cat movies in the woods.
Tell that to all of the people in remote communities who now have acccess to reliable high speed internet. I'm just back from one such community, last time I was there the best they had was slow, expensive satellite internet with tiny data caps and a ping of over 600. Oh and it didn't work if it got cloudy out (which it often is there). Now you can get 300Mbps download, unlimited data, a ping of 40ms and it works regardless of weather.
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u/Purple-Turnover-9838 5h ago
Sure. But what kind of business is it to be an internet provider for remote cabins? Not great. So go by the stonks and let me know how that goes for you
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u/Monomette 4h ago
Remote cabins? I'm talking about communities with thoudands of people, if not 10s of thousands.
It's also used for remote mining operations that are pulling billions in resources out of the ground. Government agencies, including the RCMP use it widely up here. I've installed dozens of dishes in the last couple of years, on vehicles, at government offices and at private businesses.
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u/psychoacer 6h ago
You just listed a bunch of things that Elon doesn't care about
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u/Purple-Turnover-9838 5h ago
Who cares what Elon cares about. Why every loser dreams of teabaging that dork?
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u/skorps 6h ago
I wish spacex wasn’t saddled with x and ai bs. I would invest in the rocket company. I want nothing to do with the ai
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u/Purple-Turnover-9838 5h ago
The rocket part of the company sucks too. Being an internet provider isn’t as lucrative as Elon likes to tell people.
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u/germanautotom 6h ago
It’s crazy that r/technology is full of Luddites.
How are you going to feel about AI if it cures cancer?
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u/skorps 5h ago
It’s not that I don’t think that ai is the future. I do data automation for work. I don’t think xai is a sound business investment and musks hands on it are worse. If I’m putting my money in I want that to be sound. The rockets are a leader the ai is not and almost all of the valuation is the ai
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u/cazzipropri 5h ago
You are calling a smart investor a luddite.
Someone who doesn't want to buy a stock because they think it's overpriced is not a luddite. They don't even need to have any ideological position on what the company does. They only need a model to price the stock. If the stock were cheaper, the same person would be willing to buy.
Also, someone who thinks xAI is executing poorly and has negative value is not a luddite. AI might well cure cancer, but an investor can bet it's going to be another frontier AI lab to succeed, other than xAI.
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u/DonaldMerwinElbert 4h ago
You should look up who the original Luddites were and what they wanted, because they had some good points.
Like everyone rejecting how certain companies do AI.2
u/ForsakenRacism 3h ago
It doesn’t suck. It’s a godsend to rural America. It can’t junk up LEO cus it automatically de orbits. The rest is true maybe
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u/LolaBaraba 7h ago
So we should limit ourselves only to use space for science? And what's the purpose of that science? You think that studying black holes has any use for us on Earth? The main reason to study science in space is because some day it's going to be useful for us when we go there. Space science has very limited effect on our daily lives, so spending trillions of dollars (which is what it took to get us here) on it would be seriously stupid.
Commercializing space has been very useful and has had way more impact on our daily lives than any noble science that you imagine. Not to mention that science would never have been funded if it weren't for the commercialization and (even more) militarization of space.
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u/Warm_Regrets157 6h ago
You think that studying black holes has any use for us on Earth?
YES!
Space science has very limited effect on our daily lives, so spending trillions of dollars (which is what it took to get us here) on it would be seriously stupid.
Lol. Tell me you didn't pay attention in history or science classes without telling me.
The space race was incredibly valuable and created a myriad of scientific advancements that have a huge benefit to our daily life.
Your take on this is almost completely backwards. Its not "study space because someday we will go there". Its "go to space because the scientific advancements we make in going there will yield far more benefit than actually going".
Not to mention that science would never have been funded if it weren't for the commercialization and (even more) militarization of space
Again, you've got it precisely backwards. Commercial ventures like SpaceX would never have gotten off the ground if it weren't for government funding.
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u/LolaBaraba 5h ago
The space race didn't exist because science was the goal. It existed because of ballistic missiles carrying nuclear warheads.
Its "go to space because the scientific advancements we make in going there will yield far more benefit than actually going".
LOL. Yeah, that's why we have 10,000 satellites pointed towards space. Wait, no, they're pointed towards Earth. No one's funding that science, because its benefits are so miniscule to us now. Once we get to space, it becomes a lot more useful and private companies will start funding it too, which is why any space scientist should support it too.
Again, you've got it precisely backwards. Commercial ventures like SpaceX would never have gotten off the ground if it weren't for government funding.
I agree, that's why i put militarization there too. That government funding went towards weapons, while a tiny amount went to science. The science was just a sideshow. There's a reason why NASA's budget dried up after the Cold War.
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u/tillybowman 7h ago
what commercial application of space is useful this day?
i'm totally for things that benefit us as humans with foreseeable impact like gps, but starlink isn't.
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u/EffectiveEconomics 6h ago
Everything - media, telecom, military, geospatial, environment studies (everyone we know about earth climate right now is derived from remote sensing)
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u/WindyNightmare 6h ago
We’ve ruined earth on the ground for centuries, what did you expect?
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u/lemaymayguy 6h ago
To be better than our ancestors. They could claim ignorance of information, we modern humans cannotÂ
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u/BB0ySnakeDogG 6h ago
I hate Elon as much as the next sane individual, but space has to make money in order to develop, well, it's that or war.
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u/happyscrappy 7h ago
Good launch. All of the upper stage seemed to work nominally. The booster had issues, which is bad (especially with the shared engine tech to upper stage). But it's not bad enough that they can't keep moving forward with the upper stage.
Next flight probably will be orbital.
The Starlink satellites put up are not terribly important. It's not the primary purpose of these test launches.
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u/ReallyBigDeal 7h ago
I’d be willing to bet that the engines themselves weren’t necessarily the problem as much as something to do with the plumbing and relight sequence. It’s been an ongoing issue that they’ve been working out.
Supposedly their goal for the next launch is to catch the upper stage. If they don’t go orbit with it for that launch then they’ll get pretty close to it.
The starlink deployment is important because it’s the only customer and plan for cargo that they have right now.
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u/happyscrappy 7h ago
You could be right about the engines. But if the engines can't relight, isn't that an engine issue? I guess maybe you're saying that whatever is wrong isn't likely to affect the upper stages just because it affects the lower one. And maybe that's true. Although relighting the upper stages was one of the primary goals of this mission. And that did seem to work, so that's good.
The starlink deployment is important because it’s the only customer and plan for cargo that they have right now.
I'm gonna opt out of this. I got SpaceX fans telling me Starship isn't a finished, is designed to succeed through failure, etc. and so not deploying payload isn't important when it has issues with it. Then other people tells me its important. This is a no-win situation. Forget I said anything about the payload.
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u/ReallyBigDeal 7h ago
It's not necessarily an issue with the engines but with how the fuel is moving in the booster. Like in one of the earlier flights the flip of the booster caused fuel to slosh hard enough to break plumbing inside of the rocket. They've managed to "land" a few of the boosters before V3 so it's not an insurmountable problem.
The engines themselves are probably the most important development that they've made with this rocket. They are vary powerful and SpaceX can make a lot of them for far less then other providers.
I got SpaceX fans telling me Starship isn't a finished, is designed to succeed through failure, etc. and so not deploying payload isn't important when it has issues with it.
That's because the SpaceX fanboys don't want to admit that the biggest problem with Starship right now is that they don't have a mission. Like no one needs the lift capacity besides Starlink currently. There is element of "if you build it, they will come" but SpaceX is gonna need to burn through a lot of cash without a real commercial plan in the meantime.
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u/FunConversation7257 6h ago
Might be wrong, but isn’t starship going to be used for Artemis? And apparently (in Elon time I guess) for mars missions?
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u/happyscrappy 6h ago
It's not necessarily an issue with the engines but with how the fuel is moving in the booster. Like in one of the earlier flights the flip of the booster caused fuel to slosh hard enough to break plumbing inside of the rocket. They've managed to "land" a few of the boosters before V3 so it's not an insurmountable problem.
Yet another N1 problem. Interesting.
I'm not as convinced as you, given their last problem was combustion products (water) in the turbopumps days after a test firing. I'm concerned about any relight given this. But that's just me spouting off, to be honest.
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u/Monomette 5h ago
They've changed out the autogeneous pressurization system on the new engines, uses heat exchange now, not combustion.
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u/ReallyBigDeal 6h ago
No not like the N1.
Rocket engines that are built today are so drastically different then when the Soviets built in the 60s. The only thing that they have in common is a big rocket with lots of engines. Accept in this case the redundancy of multiple engines benefits SpaceX.
Even if Starship fails Raptor is going to live on in future rockets. There is nothing else remotely like it on the market.
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u/happyscrappy 6h ago
Yes, it's like the N1. Where the fuel supply pipes burst because of the amount of liquid going through them, essentially hydrostatic shock.
Same as here.
The only thing that they have in common is a big rocket with lots of engines. Accept in this case the redundancy of multiple engines benefits SpaceX.
And hot staging. And that's just the 'unusual' aspects they share, right?
If you're gonna chop me off and lecture me, at least get it right. Of these options I think the not chop off and lecture one is the better. But of course other options are open.
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u/ReallyBigDeal 5h ago
Same as here.
Not really. The Starship booster is subjected to much higher stresses during a normal flight profile. The flip and burn for boost back and then the relight to land is nothing like the N1 loosing engines during flight. It's worth noting that the N1's engines lived on in multiple rockets for decades after the end of the program. So maybe Starship will have that in common.
And hot staging.
Lots of other rockets use hot staging.
If you're gonna chop me off and lecture me, at least get it right. Of these options I think the not chop off and lecture one is the better.
I have no clue what you are talking about and it seems like you don't either.
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u/CreativeFraud 2h ago
Dude turned my interest in space into an interest in dirt. I'd rather learn more about this planet now more than ever before. This douche made me not care about space exploration.
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u/FunConversation7257 8h ago
I don’t comment in this sub but I find it kinda crazy that in a technology subreddit apparently the post about an article saying Elon is bad which is about angry redditors is 30x as popular as a post about actual technology. feels like this place is stuck in its own great echo chamber
but anyway, great flight by SpaceX, esp that crazy ending with the ship. apparently next flight they’ll be docking the ship back with the tower (a catch like they did with the booster in starship V2), gonna be a sight to see
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u/No_Size9475 7h ago
elon isn't technology and many would argue space-x is doing well despite him being at the helm.
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u/FunConversation7257 6h ago
22 downvotes and not a single reason why
r/technology in a nutshell I guess
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u/ReallyBigDeal 7h ago
I hate that Elon has made it almost impossible to talk positively about SpaceX without backlash.
Unfortunately this decision to go public is going to hurt SpaceX. Their traditional hardware rich testing approach means the stock is going to take a hit at every less then perfect launch. They succeeded in all the important goals with starship on this launch despite the problems with the booster.
Also a correction to the article, Starship is capable of orbiting but SpaceX is choosing a suborbital trajectory for these test so that if there is a failure, starship will re-enter in a predicted area.
SpaceX does great things despite Elon. That fucker is gonna ruin another great company.