SpaceX's 'Days Since Starship Exploded' counter made it to 48...

[Rick]

SpaceX's 'Days Since Starship Exploded' counter made it to 48. It's back to zero again now

SpaceX's latest attempt to fly its Starship has again ended in a rapid unscheduled disassembly.

The Thursday mission, the eighth flight of the vehicle NASA has contracted to use for 2027 demo of a crewed Moon landing, aimed to nail an hour-long transatmospheric journey to the Indian Ocean that the previous launch could not achieve.

SpaceX attributed that mission's failure to "harmonic response" several times stronger than the launcher-for-hire company had ever seen in testing. Those forces caused a leak in the propulsion system, causing a fire, and an explosion that saw chunks of Starship rain down over the Atlantic.

More: https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/07/spacex_starship_mission_fail/

[Rick]

Out on the Net there are various spectacular photos of the debris burning up (mostly) over the Bahamas.

[Rick]

SpaceX's Starship explodes in second failure for Musk's Mars program
Back-to-back mishaps indicate big setbacks for program to launch satellites and send humans to the moon and Mars

SpaceX's Starship spacecraft exploded on Thursday minutes after lifting off from Texas, dooming an attempt to deploy mock satellites in the second consecutive failure this year for Elon Musk's Mars rocket program.

Several videos on social media showed fiery debris streaking through the dusk skies near south Florida and the Bahamas after Starship's breakup in space, which occurred shortly after it began to spin uncontrollably with its engines cut off, a SpaceX livestream of the mission showed.

More (including video): https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/06/spacex-starship-explodes-musk

[Rick]

Neither Elon Musk Nor Anybody Else Will Ever Colonize Mars

Mars does not have a magnetosphere. Any discussion of humans ever settling the red planet can stop right there, but of course it never does. Do you have a low-cost plan for, uh, creating a gigantic active dynamo at Mars's dead core? No? Well. It's fine. I'm sure you have some other workable, sustainable plan for shielding live Mars inhabitants from deadly solar and cosmic radiation, forever. No? Huh. Well then let's discuss something else equally realistic, like your plan to build a condo complex in Middle Earth.

More: https://defector.com/neither-elon-musk-nor-anybody-else-will-ever-colonize-mars