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SpaceX SN11 - another Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly.
SpaceX launched SN11 at 8am their time (midnight AEDT), in heavy fog at the site. Why they felt the need to do it in fog I can't say. Anyway, it launched and flew to its test altitude perfectly. There was on board video streamed back. As has been the pattern in the past, problems emerged during the landing flip and engine restart. From the video it appeared that only one engine restarted, then signal was lost (or they cut the stream).. I don't know whether they hit the self destruct or it simply impacted the ground - as we could not see anything. Some ground cameras caught flying debris near their location, well away from the landing pad. Perhaps this was expected, hence the launch in fog, no video of yet another Starship blowing up.
So another failure at this critical point, seems to be a pattern. It will be interesting to see what Elon says, but a fundamental redesign might be required. This is getting expensive. We know they skipped building SNs 12, 13, and 14, and went to the redesigned SN15, which is in final assembly now. How long can Elon keep throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at a concept which is apparently flawed. I get sick of watching them destroyed.
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