Breaking Things

There's always something you can learn from failure. Sometimes failure looks like your rocket blowing up after crashing into the ocean — but it's a learning opportunity nonetheless.

In the case of SpaceX, that means retrieving the watery remains of said rocket, Starship, to determine what went wrong during the less-than-perfect performance of its latest suborbital test flight. And so SpaceX employees traveled to the waters off the western coast of Australia, where the rocket's upper stage splashed down, to collect the debris.

These were the findings of SpaceX-focused content creator Interstellar Gateway, which gathered footage of the crews dredging up some of the spacecraft's hardware, including heat shield tiles and various tanks.

But there could be more than meets the eye. Based on Interstellar Gateway's sleuthing, the next retrieval mission could bring back the entire spacecraft in one piece.

"This was the first flight we've seen a vessel rigged specifically for towing... leading us to the realization that they may be attempting to return Starship back to port," Interstellar Gateway told Gizmodo. "Upon our investigation during their port operations, we noticed all of the needed lines and rigging materials needed to pull Starship back, as well as a staging area prepped with a crane, ready to remove Starship from the water."

Explosive Progress

SpaceX stunned the world with its fifth orbital flight test of Starship in October. After reaching space, the rocket's lower stage, the Super Heavy booster, made a controlled descent down to the Earth's surface, guiding itself back to its launch tower where it was caught midair by a pair of mechanical arms — an astonishingly precise feat of engineering.

The rocket couldn't repeat the feat, however, during its latest test in November. Just four minutes into the flight, SpaceX had to call off the booster catch, forcing the rocket to make a rough splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, where it immediately exploded into flames.

By contrast, the upper stage, the Starship spacecraft itself, demonstrated it could relight one of its engines in space and made a much softer, controlled splashdown in the ocean. Still, it did catch fire and fall apart after the landing, though nowhere near as dramatically as with the booster.

Safe and Sound

Besides the reusability factor, there's a huge incentive for SpaceX to recover the Starship spacecraft in one piece.

"There is only so much data SpaceX can get from Starship via StarLink transmissions as it has always sank shortly after splashdown," Interstellar Gateway told Giz. "Similar to the valuable data being used from the first caught and intact booster, there are tons of structural and out of view faults that can be found from an intact Starship returning to land."

With any luck, that'll soon be the case. The next Starship launch is reportedly slated for no earlier than January 11 next year — so keep an eye out.

More on Starship: Video Shows Robot Welding SpaceX Starship

The post SpaceX Spotted Scooping Pieces of Starship Out of Ocean After Impact appeared first on Futurism.

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SpaceX Spotted Scooping Pieces of Starship Out of Ocean After Impact