The only thing more combustible than an Elon Musk tweet is one of his SpaceX rockets, with this week’s second Starship test launch ending prematurely and explosively.

This was only the second launch to include both the SpaceX Starship’s heavy-lifting lower stage and the upper flight stage. The first test launch also ended in an explosion when the stages failed to separate.

While to an outside observer these launches might appear disastrous, engineers have been able to gather troves of data they can use to refine Starship’s design. The latest launch included a new “hot-staging” procedure to resolve the cause of the first test flight’s failure, for example. The fix worked and the stages separated, so now engineers have another problem to solve.

SpaceX described the end of the latest flight as a “rapid unscheduled disassembly”, showing that knack for near-comedic understatement the space program has become known for.

The company currently has contracts for flights to the International Space Station and its Starship system is a front-runner to carry astronauts back to the moon in 2025 as part of NASA’s Artemis missions.

References

Space.com SpaceX Starship megarocket launches on 2nd-ever test flight, explodes in 'rapid unscheduled disassembly'