SpaceX’s Chinese rivals had a theory about Starship rocket explosion, and Elon Musk has confirmed it

Name: SpaceX Starship, world’s largest rocket, explodes minutes after lift-off on first test flight
Uploaded: 2023-05-09T06:00:14.000Z
Duration: 1 min 55 s
Description: SpaceX Starship, world’s largest rocket, explodes minutes after lift-off on first test flight

Starship’s ‘intelligent control’ appears to have gone offline when it was needed most, according to analysis by Chinese scientists developing similar rocket

Chinese team says it relied mostly on video for analysis because SpaceX’s telemetry appeared to be wrong

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SpaceX’s next-generation Starship spacecraft atop its powerful Super Heavy rocket lifts off from the company’s launchpad on an uncrewed test flight before exploding near Brownsville, US, on April 20, 2023. Photo: EPA-EFE

Stephen Chenin Beijing

Published: 2:00pm, 9 May 2023Updated: 5:37pm, 9 May 2023

SpaceX’s Starship rocket suffered a catastrophic spin during its first test flight on April 20, exploding and breaking apart just 239 seconds after lift-off.

Before SpaceX released an official statement on the cause of the failure, a Chinese rival of the company claimed that the intelligent flight control system of the rocket could have failed when it was needed most.

According to the Beijing Aerospace System Engineering Institute, if the smart thrust vector control system had worked as planned, the Starship rocket could have reached space, even with multiple engine failures. The system is designed to detect and diagnose problems in real time, allowing for faster and more accurate responses to emergencies.

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SpaceX Starship, world’s largest rocket, explodes minutes after lift-off on first test flight

The Beijing institute is the overall design unit for China’s Long March rockets. An analysis of the Starship launch conducted by the institute was released by official newspaper China Space News on April 27 on its WeChat social media account.

On April 29, Elon Musk confirmed this theory in a Twitter Spaces discussion about the first Starship launch.

The Starship lost thrust vector control at T+85 seconds (85 seconds after the scheduled launch), he said.

“If we had maintained thrust vector control and throttled up, which we should have … then we would have made it to staging,” Musk added.