On January 16, SpaceX conceded that the latest prototype of its enormous Starship spacecraft had “experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn” — a tongue-in-cheek admission that the massive rocket had exploded mid-flight.
Countless videos circulating online showed a massive stream of reentering pieces of the Starship rocket blazing across the evening sky over the West Indian islands of Turks and Caicos. It was a dazzling sight to behold as the destruction streaked across the sky, like something from science fiction.
“Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!” a gleeful Musk wrote at the time.
But it wasn’t all fun and games. Residents of Turks and Caicos, for instance, soon found scraps of burnt rubber and other rocket pieces littering the Caribbean islands’ otherwise pristine beaches.
The incident, which was almost perfectly repeated on February 24, even forced airlines to quickly adjust their flight paths to avoid the terrifying field of burning metal.
And now, eleven months later, the Wall Street Journal has obtained Federal Aviation Administration documents revealing that three aircraft — a JetBlue passenger plane, an Iberia Airlines flight, and a private jet, carrying a total of 450 people total — were in far greater danger than SpaceX and government officials let on at the time.
The reporting also highlights the possibility that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s extremely close relationship and ample influence in Washington, DC, may have played a role in FAA officials looking the other way as the company’s Starship rockets kept exploding during tests.
While all three planes landed safely on January 16, if any one of them had been struck by a piece of Starship debris, it could’ve been a major disaster.
Air traffic controllers had to scramble to ensure the planes were far away from the debris field, leading to an increase in their workload, a “potential extreme safety risk,” according to an FAA report obtained by the WSJ.
Air traffic controllers were left bewildered.
“I don’t know if you guys were advised, but there was a rocket launch and apparently the rocket exploded and there was debris in the area between us and Miami which basically covers our entire airspace,” one controller in the area said. “So I need to keep all the aircraft clear of that area because of the debris.”
SpaceX failed to inform the agency through its official hotline that its Starship had exploded, per the documents. The hotline is designed to alert officials at the FAA so they can act in time and keep pilots away from danger.
Previously determined no-fly debris zones were activated four minutes after SpaceX lost contact with its Starship vehicle. The Elon Musk-led firm didn’t confirm with the FAA that it had lost the craft until 15 minutes later.
SpaceX has since denied that anybody was ever in danger in an excoriating statement posted to Musk’s social media platform X.
“Yet another misleading ‘story’ the company’s official account wrote, echoing the voice of its mercurial CEO, who has an extremely troubled relationship with the news industry. “The reporters were clearly spoon-fed incomplete and misleading information from detractors with ulterior motives.”
“SpaceX is committed to responsibly using airspace during launches and reentries, prioritizing public safety to protect people on the ground, at sea, and in the air,” the statement reads.
The FAA suspended a safety review in August, even though its own policies call for addressing safety risks, per the WSJ, arguing that safety recommendations were already being implemented.
Meanwhile, SpaceX continues to make improvements to its Starship super heavy launch platform through an unusual iterative design approach that has already led to over a dozen massive explosions.
How future tests will fare — or if the public will ever be in danger — remains to be seen.
The company’s most recent, eleventh full-scale test took place on October 13. The rocket harmlessly splashed down in the Indian Ocean after successfully reaching orbit.
A new and even more powerful version is expected to launch sometime early next year.
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