this post was submitted on 28 May 2025
272 points (97.9% liked)

News

29592 readers
2880 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

SpaceX mission control lost contact with the rocket after it leaked fuel and spun out of control, despite already flying halfway around the world

SpaceX mission control lost contact with its latest Starship rocket on Tuesday, as it leaked fuel, spun out of control, and made an uncontrolled re-entry after flying halfway around the world, likely disintegrating over the Indian Ocean, officials said.

“Just to confirm, we did lose contact with the ship officially a couple of minutes ago. So that brings an end to the ninth flight test,” said SpaceX’s Dan Huot during a live feed.

Starship, the futuristic rocket on which Elon Musk’s ambitions for multiplanetary travel are riding, roared into space from Texas on its ninth uncrewed test launch and flew further than the last two attempts that ended in explosive failure.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] courval@lemmy.world 3 points 5 hours ago

I'm sure SpaceX workers are all super inspired and motivated to make a shit ass cunt neo nazi billionaire achieve his megalomaniac space goals.. I heard they're even putting the extra hour for free.

[–] barneypiccolo@lemm.ee 7 points 23 hours ago

"Uh, yeah, it was supposed to do that. We learn a lot from billion dollar failures."

[–] WalnutLum@lemmy.ml 28 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Best part of this is that they just won the contract for launch services even though they still haven't proven the thing can fly without blowing up yet.

[–] yogurt@lemm.ee 3 points 8 hours ago

Launch services isn't a contract to launch anything, it's just NASA collecting information about every rocket. Rockets that blow up just get listed as Category I High Risk, allowed for Class D payloads that are cheap and replaceable.

[–] JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

Well, they still have the smaller rockets that usually don't blow up.

[–] ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 34 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I thought it said SpaceX lost a contract and got excited for a moment

[–] Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world 2 points 19 hours ago

Yeah. I don't like having this response because I feel like anything that increases our reach and activity in space is a positive step. It's unfortunate that spacex has musk's shitty fingerprints all over it.

[–] kassiopaea@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 day ago

aw man, same

[–] Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee 58 points 1 day ago (16 children)

I remember a NASA engineer saying that if NASA had half the failures that SpaceX has had in its early days they would have been disbanded as an organization and their funding pulled completely.

Yet this private org somehow gets bailed out again and again and again and again and again all while not only wasting massive tax payer money, but also causing a hell of a lot of waste. SpaceX is the waste fraud and abuse that should be trashed, not the national park service.

[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 1 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

thats why he moved to texas, less regulations there.

[–] Wooki@lemmy.world 1 points 35 minutes ago* (last edited 34 minutes ago)

Less workplace rights and employee protections

load more comments (15 replies)
[–] hildegarde@lemmy.blahaj.zone 80 points 1 day ago (18 children)

Just for comparison, on their 9th test flight the Apollo program they had already successfully reached orbit 5 times.

The 9th test flight of the Soyuz was their 7th time reaching orbit.

Elon's 9th attempt is his second time reaching the bottom of the Indian ocean. Shows the level of proficiency in spacex.

[–] BastingChemina@slrpnk.net 0 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

As a comparison too SpaceX can launch Starship at least 6 more times before reaching the cost of a single Saturn V launch, I an not even talking about development cost.

Starship also did reach orbital velocity on several launches.

The goals are different.

[–] hildegarde@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 hour ago

There hasn't been a single one of elon's companies that delivered on promised prices.

Falcon 9 is more expensive than promised. His tunnels weren't cheaper. His cars are more expensive than promised. Cybertruck is over $100k when he promised under $40k at the launch.

Focus on what his companies can deliver. That is real. His fantasy rockets that would be superior in all ways do not exist.

[–] peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 44 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It concerns me from a standpoint that is similar to Oceangate - the engineers are probably aware something is going wrong, but money is getting the final say. Then the people on one of these things end up dying, and it won't be Musk.

I'm also concerned because this lax approach to engineering is becoming more apparent in the private sector. Engineers have a very difficult job -traditionally balancing budget, schedule, and quality. But we also are vital in ensuring regulatory compliance, safety, disposal, process, efficiency etc.

Engineer salaries, however, have stagnated like the rest of American workers. It's true we still get paid better, but compared to how much the salary got you in the 80s-90s, we get much less.

Private sector engineers are largely not PEs as we're shielded by our employers. We are more worried about being laid off than fucking up a project to the point lives get risked.

Part of this is why I chose to no longer work on systems that can cause injuries/ harm to a user. If I'm doing that, I can assume I'm not alone. If those of us consciously avoiding it because of fears of hurting users, it might mean that the ones working on the systems aren't motivated by safety of the user.

[–] hildegarde@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The one good thing from oceangate was the fact that the CEO trusted his own life to his invention. He was in the sub when it imploded.

As stupid as he is, musk is unfortunately smart enough to know not to risk his own life in his own rockets.

[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 2 points 20 hours ago

he was use defective airplane parts as part of the hull, carbonfiber, instead of steel or titanium subs. he went supercheap, since his rides are 150k/per person. while the one james cameron was in was the titanium sub, which is 6-10mil per ride.

[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 1 points 20 hours ago

Oceangate, stockton basically cut corners on everything. hence he got killed by his owned hubris.

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 42 points 1 day ago (1 children)

And while both of those programs weren't starting from zero, like Apollo learned from Mercury and Gemini, SpaceX should have learned from all of them.

[–] hildegarde@lemmy.blahaj.zone 21 points 1 day ago (1 children)

spacex is also not starting from zero. They previously made the falcon 9.

[–] JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

They don't seem to be using what they learned from that, though.

[–] thann@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The Saturn V's 9th flight was the third time it took humans to the moon...

[–] hildegarde@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

~~Apollo 9~~ Apollo 8 went to the moon but they had multiple test flights prior to that numbering. Those are a more reasonable point of comparison.

Edit: I misremembered the number.

[–] MumboJumbo@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Apollo 9 did not go to the moon. It was earth orbit rendezvous practice with the command module and the lunar lander module. Apollo 8 flew to and around the moon. Apollo 10 flew to the moon and lowered the lander (but not to the surface) and rendezvoused with the command module. Apollo 11 was the first to land on the moon.

load more comments (14 replies)
[–] lemmylump@lemmy.world 36 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Next time put that Nazi fuck Elon in it.

[–] redsand@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It seems like destiny for that to be how dies. Killed by his own hubris like Mr. Expired carbon fiber submarine.

[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 1 points 20 hours ago

i wonder if he would even go into one of his rockets anymore.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] malin@thelemmy.club 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Damn, I thought it said "loses contract."

Governments are still going to throw money at anything this guy does. Useful idiots couldn't have been more useful a few years ago.

Musk reaction video:

I guess you have to call a place on solid ground Starbase when everything you build to carry building supplies into space to build a Starbase fails.

[–] lefty7283@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago

ship loses attitude control and burns up on reentry

Welcome back, starship flight 3

[–] thann@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Elons not a nazi, because nazis are good at making rockets

[–] Akasazh@feddit.nl 5 points 1 day ago

They are actually more alike than you suggest:

https://youtu.be/OdBh54MoZRE?

load more comments
view more: next ›