SpaceX’s Latest Starship Explosion Marks Two Consecutive Failures | The new version of Starship will be tested again in four to six weeks. A third consecutive failure could indicate fundamental problems with the updated design.

WIRED has done top-notch reporting and exposed DOGE abuses in detail well ahead of legacy media. It’s only $10 per year to subscribe and support high-quality journalism when we need it most.

Extract:

>**SpaceX’s Starship launcher** spun out of control minutes after liftoff Thursday, showering fiery debris over the Bahamas and dealing another setback to [Elon Musk’s](https://www.wired.com/tag/elon-musk/) rocket program after a failure under similar circumstances less than two months ago…

>SpaceX has contracts with NASA worth approximately $4 billion to design and develop a human-rated Moon lander based on the Starship design. The Starship lander is a central piece of NASA’s architecture for the [Artemis program](https://www.wired.com/tag/artemis/), which aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface later this decade. For Starship to fly to the Moon, SpaceX must refill it with super-cold propellants in low-Earth orbit, something no one has done at this scale before.

>Musk sees Starship as the interplanetary backbone for transporting cargo and people to Mars, one of his most consistent long-term goals. This, too, requires orbital refueling. Musk recently suggested SpaceX could be ready to demonstrate ship-to-ship orbital refueling in 2026, [a year later than the 2025 goal](https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/01/heres-what-nasa-would-like-to-see-spacex-accomplish-with-starship-this-year/) NASA officials discussed in December.

>Starship will also launch SpaceX’s next-generation Starlink Internet satellites. Before Thursday’s launch, ground crews loaded four Starlink mock-ups inside Starship’s payload bay to test the rocket’s deployment mechanism. Officials were eager to assess the performance of Starship Block 2’s heat shield before committing to an attempt to recover the ship intact (like SpaceX is already doing with the Super Heavy booster) on a future mission. But the premature ending of this test flight means those objectives must wait.

Most of SpaceX’s success has been grifted off of NASA when they were the first mover in the space. They will struggle and fail unless DOGE/Trump manages to turn NASA into a client state for SpaceX CMV.

It would be genuinely impressive if they are able to meet any of the Artemis deadlines now.