ICYMI: Elon Musk's SpaceX suffered another failure and exploded in southern Texas on Wednesday night after experiencing "a major anomaly” at about 11 pm local time on the test launch while preparing for the tenth flight test at Starbase.
Luckily, no one was hurt or injured.— Amee Vanderpool (@girlsreallyrule.bsky.social) June 19, 2025 at 5:38 PM
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SpaceX Starship rocket explodes
ABC: A Spacex Starship rocket being tested in Texas exploded Wednesday night, after the craft "experienced a major anomaly" while on the test stand preparing for the tenth flight test at the firm's Starbase facility.— Olga Nesterova (@onestpress.onestnetwork.com) June 19, 2025 at 5:19 AM
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“SpaceX is happy to introduce its newest consultant, Michael Bay.”
— In Two Weeks Hat (@kenwhite.bsky.social) June 19, 2025 at 2:09 PM
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At this point it feels like the “major anomaly” for SpaceX are the rare times it *doesn’t* explode?
— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) June 19, 2025 at 11:55 AM
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SpaceX has their tails between their legs. No bravado as usual after they mess up.
Though this "There is no commonality between the COPVs used on Starship and SpaceX’s Falcon rockets" tee shirt has me asking questions answered by the shirt
www.spacex.com/updates/#sta…— Rude Law Dog (@esghound.com) June 19, 2025 at 4:24 PM
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SpaceX is short for SpaceXplode
— Thor Benson (@thorbenson.bsky.social) June 19, 2025 at 1:05 AM
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Anyone still defending SpaceX as a serious organisation is neck-deep in tech-bro Kool-Aid.
It’s no longer a company, it’s a cult propped up by hype, hubris, and government handouts.— Dr Farbod (@emergencybod.medsky.social) June 19, 2025 at 6:37 PM
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Stop saying Starship had another failed launch!
It actually exploded before launch so it actually just failed to stand upright.— Jack (@jackinpogform.bsky.social) June 19, 2025 at 2:31 PM
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i don’t even think spacex is making rocket, i think they did a pivot to fireworks
— Emma Bolden (@emmabolden.bsky.social) June 19, 2025 at 3:01 PM
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that’s not fair, parts of it traveled hundreds of feet
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) June 19, 2025 at 9:14 PM
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Maybe NASA should consider contracting with Acme Rocket Company for their heavy lift vehicle. The company always came through for Wiley Coyote, right?
— Gyrogeerloose (@gyrogeerloose.bsky.social) June 19, 2025 at 1:51 PM
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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wants to send a cargo ship to Mars by the end of next year. Here’s why that plan likely won’t pan out.
— CNN (@cnn.com) June 19, 2025 at 7:02 PM
War for Ukraine Day 1,211: Another Drone Swarm in the Small Hours
Trivia Man
“Safing operations”.
Interesting term ive never seen, i bet i know what it means
Sister Golden Bear
No wonder Trump put him in charge of Golden Dome, Elon is really good at blowing up rockets. /s
Shalimar
20 years from now they will be blowing up in space.
You have to give Musk credit though. There have been numerous rocket and shuttle explosions over the last 7 decades. Only SpaceX has managed to destroy the launch pad too on multiple occasions.
Jackie
KAABOOOM!!!
Jay
Honda did a successful launch and landing the other day.
No kaboom.
Shalimar
If Elon wasn’t marketing himself as the brilliant inventor of automated self-driving cars, I would bet money these tests would be manned. This is not someone who cares if a few dozen NPCs die.
Shalimar
@Jay: Honda also makes trucks whose side panels don’t fall off. They seem to have mastered basic competence. Elon is still testing.
moonbat
The ‘Our newest consultant Michael Bay” comment had me howling. Thanks for mining that one out of the feed, AL. (laughing emoji goes here)
Kayla Rudbek
@Jay: they can bring back the commercial “follow the leader, he’s on a Honda”
ascap_scab
My sign for next month.
Who is Major Anomaly and why does he still work at SpaceX?
Omnes Omnibus
I like the pretty lights.
Parfigliano
Pity the Ketamine Kid wasn’t on it.
Ten Bears
With the big Mump breakup and threats of canceled contracts et al, I can’t help but wonder if he’s collecting insurance on them. Nobody ever looks past the rockets blowing up, or buildings falling down
Jackie
@Omnes Omnibus: Yep!
Sister Inspired Revolver of Freedom
Bavovna!😁
YY_Sima Qian
Speaking of Mars:
Harrison Wesley
@ascap_scab: I believe he and Captain Morgan are both now working for SecDef Hegseth.
Alex
Relax y’all. This was planned…really.
cmorenc
Here’s hoping the SpaceX malfunctions will slow Elon down from actually launching a cargo ship to Mars, until Trump is out of office in 2028. That cargo ship, whether it landed successfully or crashed, would forever compromise our ability to decipher whether Mars has (or at least had) at least primitive form(s) of life.
John Revolta
The rockets blow up, in the air, on the ground
“I get paid either way”, says Elmo the Clown
Shalimar
Iran has halted Israel’s quest for a cure for cancer just weeks before it finally came to fruition.
Iran attack destroys $50m ‘crown jewel’ of Israeli science in devastating blow
rikyrah
Good riddance
rikyrah
@Shalimar:
Play stupid games
Win stupid prizes
Splitting Image
The amusing thing is that SpaceX was (until fairly recently) the one part of Musk’s empire that seemed to be working fairly well. I can’t count the number of discussions of his other tire fire companies that involved someone pointing out that SpaceX was reasonably well-run, even if Tesla and Twitter weren’t, probably because the people running it were able to keep the idiot away from the decision-making.
I guess that Musk is taking a more hands-on role in SpaceX these days.
Spanky
CNN headline:
I didn’t read the article, so I can’t tell you what’s the best time for a rocket to blow up.
Splitting Image
@Spanky:
When Musk is aboard?
Chetan Murthy
I wonder if there’s been a well-sourced explanation for why the pre-Starship SpaceX (e.g. Falcon 9) seems to have been a well-run place, and yet Starship seems to be an ongoing (ahem) dumpster fire.
Jay
@Spanky:
It was staged for a “static test”. Blew up on the launch pad, blew up the the launch pad, blew up the tank farm.
It wasn’t even a launch attempt.
Jay
@Chetan Murthy:
Starship is a clone of a failed Soviet multi engine rocket program.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket)
YY_Sima Qian
@Chetan Murthy: Tesla was well run (well, at least after Shanghai Gigafactory came on line) before the Cybertruck. Now it is stagnant.
JWR
Just tonight from NBC:
So now it’s onto what, full review by the Ninth Circuit?
Jay
Did you know that in Chimpanzee societies, resource hoarding overlords are often beaten to death and then their bodies are eaten as a sign of disrespect?
Follow me for more financial advice.
bjacques
@rikyrah: yep. Israel bombed a hospital in Iran.
Warblewarble
@bjacques: Israel will bomb hospitals , where and when Israel pleases. Gaza has seen it hospitals attacked over and over.
Jay
@bjacques:
As of April, 2025, Israel has bombed Gazan and West Bank hospitals 906 times.
Glory b
https://www.planetearthandbeyond.co/p/starship-was-doomed-from-the-beginning?sort=community
chris green
Hey, don’t forget how many saturn v’s blew up (*)!
* none
Jay
Bibi will do anything to stay out of jail.
TACO Don is taking notes.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@YY_Sima Qian: I do recall reading somewhere that Tesla Motors and SpaceX had layers of administrative “insulation” shielding the people actually doing the work from the whims of Elmo. Cybertruck and Starship seem to be the results of that insulation layer being stripped away.
MattF
A review of Musk’s engineering from an actual expert.
Warblewarble
@Jay: Netanyahu says “bombing hospitals is the act of a criminal regime”.
sab
@MattF: So Musk is basically burning up huge amounts of US taxpayers money to improve his short term public relations with so far no effort to fix what they are doing wrong design wise.
Very Trumpy of him.
Jay
@Warblewarble:
Well he would know, kinda an expert on that, a little behind Putin.
Baud
bjacques
@Jay: I was keeping it simple, but yeah. Anyway, a research facility, even if it had cures for all cancers and the Elixir Of Immortality, doesn’t compare to a hospital full of living people.
Baud
Because I oppose fascists, I cheer Musk’s failures. But I’m sad that the U.S. is so enmeshed with fascism that I have fewer opportunities to cheer for successes. Especially when it comes to something as cool as space.
eclare
@Baud:
Jimmy Kimmel also highlighted how often FFOTUS uses a two week timeline in his monologue last night.
Shalimar
@Chetan Murthy: I don’t know if there has been any deterioration in SpaceX management over the last few years too, but part of the explanation is that they had stable rockets for 15 years that didn’t need further testing. SpaceX famously had a lot of rockets blow up from 2006-2008 when they were first getting started. This is apparently just the way they do testing.
Jay
@sab:
All they did, was fuel the rocket up.
And do a software systems check.
Immediate “blue screen” and boom.
Baud
@eclare:
Forty-seven: The Fortnight Fascist
p.a.
SpaceX so fecked up they were a day early for their Juneteenth fireworks display.
Princess
Oh it “likely won’t work out,” CNN? Ya think?
Princess
@bjacques: And Iran bombed a hospital in Israel. But it’s only bad when Israel does it, right? Iran has been escalating threats to eradicate Israel since 2023, boasting of how its new missiles can easily hit Israel. Iran is not Gaza.
Don’t mistake me. I think every choice Netanyahu and his government has made since Oct 7 has been bad and wrong. But Iran is not a shrinking flower here.
Baud
Screw you haters, AI is awesome.
eclare
@Baud:
Amazing.
MattF
@Baud: Diving giraffes predate any AI cat-slop.
Baud
@Princess:
My understanding is that Iran’s biggest threat is from their own people. Iran has a lot of young people people who are displeased with the regime. The current war can either create a wave of nationalism that strengthens the regime or make the regime look weak and invite open rebellion.
Ironically, Netanyahu’s dilemma is that the last thing he wants is for the current Iranian regime to topple. Like with Hamas, he likes having an unsavory enemy he can use as a foil.
Baud
Interesting Reddit thread on spotting attempts at online manipulation.
MattF
@Baud: Has Reddit become more relevant? I’ve started reading a variety of subs, so I’m recency-biased.
Baud
@MattF:
IMHO, the site design has gotten worse, both over the years and recently. When there’s good subreddits and good posts, I find those really good, better than Bluesky. But there’s also a lot of trolls and bots throughout the site.
I don’t know how “relevant” it is in the grand scheme of things, when it comes to US politics.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Dove into that rabbit hole briefly and was struck by the irony of this:
First r/world, next THE world. It might become necessary to shut this shit down. All of it. I’m only half kidding…
Matt McIrvin
@Splitting Image: Starship always seemed to me to be the “keep Elon occupied” program to keep him away from Falcon/Dragon. But then NASA committed to actually using a derivative of it as part of the Artemis program, which was just a bad idea. And now Musk has returned the favor by gutting NASA and leaving a shell of itself.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
We seem to have difficulty toughening up to the new reality.
HeleninEire
It is a sign of these ridiculous times that the only one of those posts that is, well, ridiculous, is CNN’s.
The other posts are perfectly on target.
The “plan likely won’t pan out.” Really, CNN?
p.a.
The “Iranian youth are the hope for normalization” has been an ongoing meme for more than a generation. What we see from the MSM is, it seems, “blue state” (relatively speaking) Iran. The places easy to get to and that contain Western amenities. But much like here in the greatest civilization evah, there seems to be a Podunk-Iran that gives the regime the support and manpower- the clubs and batons- necessary to keep power.
Also too, nationalism pretty much always prevails. See Goering, Nuremberg. (Don’t think that is an apocryphal quote.)
mappy!
@Baud: It’s a tell. Conceit. …Bombast, tell, bombast. Rinse, repeat.
I guess it helps to know that the media has a 24/7 cycle that needs to be fed with something new, minute by minute. It’s a vacuum that sucks everything in. It sucks.
Cliosfanboy
(DELETED BY USER–DUPLICATE)
YY_Sima Qian
Maybe the Russians aren’t the only ones who suck at base security:
Attacked w/ fire extinguishers & crowbars.
Cliosfanboy
@Spanky: The 4th of July??
lowtechcyclist
@eclare:
Six months was the Friedman Unit. I’m gonna call two weeks the Fuckhead Unit.
Shalimar
@lowtechcyclist: TACO unit. 2 weeks is how long it takes for the chicken to get rancid.
Cliosfanboy
@Shalimar: OOOOH, I LIKE!!!!!! Perfect… Especially as “rancid chicken” fits trump.
YY_Sima Qian
Probably bluster, but… (click through the link for the video):
YY_Sima Qian
@YY_Sima Qian: Forgot the paste the link to the article.
mappy!
@lowtechcyclist: The unit is delay.
Everything he says and does is built on a delay cycle. For anything he doesn’t want to do, push it off. Wait until the press forgets about it. Look at his legal strategies. Appeal. Delay, Appeal. Bills? Delay paying. Don’t pay. Delay is something he has used consistently.
ED …And he doesn’t want his fingerprints on anything…
eclare
@mappy!:
Yep. Another tactic of his is deny.
lowtechcyclist
@Princess:
Well that’s exactly it, isn’t it? After decades of being the neighborhood bully with the West Bank and Gaza, Israel just started a fight with someone in their weight class.
That doesn’t make Iran good, but it’s damned hard to feel the least bit of sympathy for Israel.
lowtechcyclist
@Shalimar:
Bingo! You nailed it. I gracefully concede.
ETA: Though in Trump’s case, the chicken has been rancid for years, if not decades.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: Bush didn’t even go to war with Iran during the period when he was blustering about it as a major player in an Axis of Evil. I know some of his dudes wanted to.
The Iranian government are not good guys, never have been. But they’re rational players and it’s a dumb idea to pick a fight with them.
different-church-lady
@Jay: Man, static electricity can do that?
Matt McIrvin
@Chetan Murthy: I can guess. I think Elon was relatively hands-off before. Same story with Tesla. Now he’s running them all like he has Twitter/X, and for a little while, the United States government.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: There’s been an update on Iranian leader Ali Shamkhani. He was thought to be killed in one of Israeli strikes last Friday. Reports now are that he survived and is recovering from his injuries.
Shamkhani became famous a few days ago when Bernie Sanders claimed that Israel had assassinated Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator and named Shamkhani as the one.
Fun Ali Shamkhani Fact: In addition to his role as advisor to Supreme Leader Khameini, Shamkhani serves on Iran’s Expediency Discernment Council which probably sounds better in the original Persian.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: I think Rumsfeld and Cheney would have started a war with Iran if their war in Iraq had turned out the way they thought it would.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: I saw a photo of John Bolton in sad face w/ the caption:”It’s finally happening & he is not part of it!”
Uncle Cosmo
@Jay: No it isn’t.
The only thing Starship/Superheavy has in common with the N1 is lots of engines in the first stage. With the benefit of non-Soviet technology and >50 years R&D, Superheavy (that first stage) seems to be doing its part fairly competently (after a few failures). It’s when the Starship (second stage) attempts to light up at altitude, above nearly all the atmosphere, that problems (yet to be solved) creep in.
(Pro tip: Resist the urge to shoot your mouth off when you don’t know what you’re talking about, and you’ll preserve your credibility when speaking of things you do. That does requires enough self-knowledge to know when you really don’t know what you’re talking about, but hey, no advice is perfect…)
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: Bolton would have loved to be in on a war with Iran. Mike Pompeo too.
terraformer
Nationalize SpaceX already, FFS
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: Saw the news about Ali Shamkhani earlier today.
cmorenc
@Matt McIrvin:
We are the side now that lacks rational players. Although in the shorter-term, Netanyahu is very shrewd at assessing his leverage on the US, and what behavior that leverage facilitates his ability to take consequential unilateral action that serves his ultra-zionist vision for Israel and emeshes the US in the conflict in ways contrary to our own objectives or national interest.
YY_Sima Qian
France starting to pivot:
Ruckus
@Spanky:
The only good time is one of two things.
1 You want it to blow up because it is actually a weapon.
2 You are done with it and the entire assembly is poisonous to human beings and the poison will be consumed in the fire and completely destroyed.
Other than one or two you likely do NOT want it to blow up. And others do not normally blow up unless the organization wants them to, as in it is a weapon. His blow up
justnot even getting off the ground.I was in the USN over half a century ago, stationed on a ship that had guided missiles as a weapon. And none of them blew up until they hit the target. I see a small issue with space x in that it seems to be a missile destruction company, rather than a missile launch company. And much bigger, far more expensive missiles, which are in theory, not supposed to blow up.
Ruckus
@lowtechcyclist:
It’s decades. It seems he wasn’t born rancid, and his siblings never seemed to be rancid, it’s just how he’s aged – right into rancid. Now it started, If I recall correctly a long time ago but he wasn’t born that way. I don’t think. Now he started aging very early on so one can see in the direction of at least a premise that he was born this way.
Ruckus
@MattF:
And, as someone who worked for decades designing and building production tooling out of metals (without any of the myriad issues that space vehicles have) I have at least a small concept of the engineering concepts and limitations of what spacex is attempting to do, which is billions of times more risky, difficult and dangerous than what I did.
Now my question is about our government that is not doing the level of space work they used to do. Is the reason that they aren’t that we do not really have the technology to do this well and there really isn’t a lot of reason to do it any more, other than continued learning, which consists mostly of learning what we can’t do in other parts of this universe? This planet supports animal life. How many other planets within any kind of reasonable distance supports or could support animal life? BTW I’m not holding my breath waiting for an answer.
Jay
@Uncle Cosmo:
Back to being our resident drunk asshole Uncle again, I see.
Ruckus
@Shalimar:
They seem to have mastered basic competence.
Long ago actually. They understand the do and don’ts as well as anyone and better than a few.
But.
Manufacturing has come a very long way, and in relative terms, in not all that much time. What we make and how well we can make it has changed a lot in the lifetime of people still breathing today. That doesn’t mean that everything manufactured will be worth buying but it does mean that the possibilities are far better today that less than even half a century ago. All aspects of manufacturing can/have improved. I know because I used to manufacture tooling for the plastics industry to make things. And that world has changed significantly. The tools are better and because of that the products made can be/are better. The knowledge learned in the last 50-75 years has changed how tools and the things that are made by those tools and how accurate they can be made and that is a noticeable amount better. Which means that the products made by those tools can be a noticeable amount better. And very often are.
Quaker in a Basement
@Shalimar: “They call him a genius because he builds rockets that blow up. I prefer people who don’t blow stuff up.”
Gloria DryGarden
@Jay: chimpanzees are smarter than we are?
Quaker in a Basement
@ascap_scab: He’s on General Mayhem’s team. Irreplaceable.
WaterGirl
@Quaker in a Basement: Not sure why your comments went in to spam, but i released them.