Falcon 9 Rocket Launch Failed: Elon Musk Messed Up, But He's Still Great
On the night of July 12, 2024, the Falcon 9 rocket failed to launch. For the first time in 9 years! What went wrong, what were the consequences, and why SpaceX still deserves a standing ovation, says Alexander Baulin, leading manager of MTS Digital and a space fan.
What's happened
During the launch of the communications satellites in the Starlink 9-3 mission, the second stage failed to perform the second ignition. As a result, the devices remained in low orbit. Now the company is investigating whether it is possible to save at least some of the 20 satellites being launched and raise them to the planned orbit using their own engines.
The stream shows an abnormal amount of frost on the second stage, this could be caused by a fuel leak:
Let the hype begin
With SpaceX rockets pumping into space non-stop, even one failure is considered a disaster. Here's a headline from CBS: SpaceX Falcon 9 second stage engine suffers catastrophic in-flight failure during Starlink launch.
In fact, journalists are hyping up the situation. This is the first accident in the last 326 launches. Since 2016, when the rocket exploded during fueling at the launch site, there have been no complaints about the carrier, although there have been some controversial situations.
Even after the unsuccessful launch of the Zuma satellite, there have been 306 launches without incidents — unprecedented for the world space industry. In the second case, the reasons are unknown, the military could have messed up something with the separation system. It turns out that Falcon 9 is currently showing record reliability — 99.7%. Even if you count the first accident in distant 2015 and take into account all 354 launches, you get 99.4%.
The next most reliable launch vehicle is the Russian Soyuz. It also has an impressive, but still lower, indicator of 99.2% (if you count the accident-free series).
The most reliable rocket of our time
It doesn't matter whether NASA helped Elon Musk or not (it did) and what investments he received. SpaceX turned its existing capabilities into the most reliable rocket of our time – this is precisely the merit of management, and it deserves an ovation.
It's just a shame that most of the launches are spent putting thousands of Starlink communications satellites into orbit. They provide communications in remote regions, but they block the sky for astronomers and fill the Earth with garbage – more about this here.
That's all for today, but I'll be back soon with new posts about space.
