What The Heck Is Happening With Starship?

SpaceX have done it again! They've managed to blow up (or a "Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly", like they would call it) another one of their Starships in the rocket's 8th test flight. Unfortunately for SpaceX, this test was a lot similar to Flight 7 but for all the wrong reasons.

Here's an analysis of what is actually happening here, and is Starship really worth it?

A recap of Flight 8

The launch was nominal at 5:30PM CST on March 6 with both the Ship and Super Heavy performing nominally till T+00:02:40, when they separated. After that, Super Heavy headed back to Starbase for landing, while Starship kept flying southeast towards the Atlantic ocean.

The plan was to deploy 4 Starlink dummy satellites into a suborbital trajectory about 17.5 minutes after liftoff and then perform a controlled landing in the Indian ocean off the coast of Western Australia about 50 minutes later.

However, at about T+00:08:04, several of Starship's Raptor engines failed, causing the vehicle to tumble. At about T+ 9 minutes, SpaceX lost contact with it, after which is presumable exploded high in the atmosphere, putting on a show for people in the Bahamas.

Here's a video of it posted on X-

RIP Starship 8! Great view from the Bahamas. @SpaceX #spacex #starship8 pic.twitter.com/8p2Dcx5gbz

— Stefanie Waldek (@StefanieWaldek) March 6, 2025

The cause of the engine failure has not yet been determined, with SpaceX saying they are analyzing the data to determine the exact cause.

Is Starship worth it?

Till today, Starship has flown a total of 8 times, out of which 4 were failures and 4 were successful.

Flight 5 was an important one with the Super Heavy returning to the launch site and being caught by the chopstick arms of the launch tower for the very first time. This feat was repeated twice again, in Flights 7 and 8, while damage to the launch tower during the launch of Flight 6 prevented another attempt.

Super Heavy approaching the launch tower during Flight-5.
Credit: Wikipedia.

Here's where it all comes crashing down...

With every launch, the number of issues keep increasing. While the company says that they are "learning" with every launch, the failures are becoming hard to ignore. Comparable rockets like the Saturn V, which was used for the Apollo missions, didn't have a single failure. Also, it had a maximum payload capacity of around 141,000 kg to LEO (Low Earth Orbit), while the current version of Starship's max. capacity is just 100,000 kg.

The Apollo 11 Saturn V blasting off.
Credit: Wikipedia.

A lesser known fact is that Elon Musk publicly stated that, due to issues with the current engines, Starship can take only 40-50 tons (1 ton = 1000 kg) to LEO. SpaceX's own Falcon Heavy has taken higher payloads to LEO and that too at a fraction of the cost.

The total expenditure of the Starship program last year amounted to around $5 billion. Factoring in the R&D costs provided by SpaceX, we can estimate that they spent $2 billion on launching Starships alone last year. With just 4 launches last year, the cost amounts to more than $500 million per launch, which is far from the "official number" of $100 million per launch.

To cap matters, we have the reliability issues. With multiple engines failing mid-flight, and any booster not having flown more than once, the larger question of reusability is still up for debate.

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On that happy note, I'd like to end this post. Comment your opinions on this situation down below!

Cheers,
Aarav Iyer