Musk's SpaceX reeling as 'upgraded design' keeps exploding: report

Tom Boggioni
March 8, 2025 

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A view shows debris streaking through the sky, after SpaceX's Starship spacecraft tumbled and exploded in space, in Big Sampson Kay, Bahamas, March 6, 2025, in this screen grab obtained from social media video. \@_ericloosen_/via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY.

Thursday explosion by another one of Elon Musk's Starship rockets in the space of two months is raising eyebrows and doubts about his SpaceX venture which appears to be moving in reverse when it should be reaching for the stars.

The explosion, or as SpaceX called it: "a rapid unscheduled disassembly," lit up the sky off Florida days ago, showering "space debris" over the water while also contributing to doubts about a scheduled trip to land astronauts on the moon as soon in 2027.

According to a report from the New York Times, the explosions "are a step backward in SpaceX’s development process, as the flights could not even repeat the successes of earlier test flights, and they perhaps show that the company’s engineers are not as infallible as fans of the company sometimes like to think."r

According to Daniel Dumbacher, a former NASA official who is now a professor of engineering practice at Purdue University, "There’s this persona that has built up around SpaceX, but you’re starting to see that they’re human, too."

As the Times' Kenneth Chang is reporting, there is a growing concern since the two latest launches "... which both failed less than 10 minutes after liftoff, were an upgraded design."

"Discouragingly, they were less successful than an older version of Starship that flew last year. Three previous test flights successfully coasted halfway around the world, survived re-entry through the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean, and then simulated landings in the waters off the west coast of Australia," Chang reported before noting, "In addition, the failures of the seventh and eighth flights occurred at about the same part of the flight, and both appeared to originate near the engines of the second-stage spacecraft. That suggests that SpaceX did not successfully diagnose and solve the problem. It could point to a significant design flaw in the upgraded Starship."

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