Early last year, Elon Musk stood on a stage near the coast of Southern Texas with a 400-foot-tall stainless steel rocket made by his company, SpaceX, jutting up into the night sky behind him. That rocket was supposed to be the first of a powerful new class of space vehicles, known as Starship, that SpaceX was preparing to blast into orbit, part of an ambitious plan to eventually reach Mars.
But that particular rocket never made it to orbit. After months of sitting outside on the SpaceX launch pad as workers cut old railroad ties for use as a support structure, sawdust collected on the booster rocket’s engines and mushrooms began to spread throughout them, according to two SpaceX employees. The harsh coastal weather also took its toll on the rocket, causing damage that made it even more unfit to fly.
Within a few weeks of Musk’s speech, SpaceX relocated the rocket’s two parts—a ship designed to transport people and cargo and an engine-filled booster designed to lift the ship off Earth—from the launchpad to a kind of cemetery for retired rockets on the company’s property, known as the Rocket Garden.
The scrapping of the rocket, details of which haven’t been previously reported, was part of a broader pattern of poor planning and technical mistakes at SpaceX that have contributed to delays on Starship—SpaceX’s most important new project in years—according to current and former SpaceX employees.
The company’s constant tinkering with the designs has required building and rebuilding the large-scale prototypes, often because design changes have made parts incompatible. The constant changes have worsened burnout among SpaceX technicians, who frequently work 12 hour days, six days a week, in months long sprints to complete projects, say current and former employees. The prevalence of preventable mistakes, like the fungus-infested engines, has further hurt morale by spoiling their work, they say.
Still, after years of promises from Musk that Starship’s first orbital launch was just around the corner, SpaceX may finally be close to getting it off the ground. Over the weekend, Musk tweeted that SpaceX will attempt the first launch of Starship in March if remaining tests go as planned. But that date, too, could slip, Musk hinted in another tweet on Saturday: “Success is far from certain, but excitement is guaranteed.”
A successful launch of Starship—the largest and only fully reusable rocket in the industry— would be a huge technical achievement for SpaceX and the space industry at large. For SpaceX, the most highly valued U.S. startup, Starship is key to fulfilling a $3 billion contract with NASA to land astronauts on the moon by 2025. The company also needs the rocket to launch bigger satellites designed to expand and improve its Starlink internet service. And ultimately, Musk hopes Starship will help him realize his dream of colonizing Mars.
But the difficulties SpaceX has experienced on the Starship project show how, even after more than two decades in business, the company has struggled to avoid costly mistakes that could further delay its ability to turn a profit. In the absence of those profits, SpaceX has required vast infusions of capital from private investors to fuel its audacious plans, raising a total of $9 billion since its founding in 2002.
So far, investors have been patient with SpaceX, which with its Falcon rockets pioneered the use of partially reusable spacecraft that make getting to space faster and cheaper. The investors are particularly excited about Starlink, which currently has a million subscribers, according to SpaceX. A SpaceX funding round in May valued the company at $127 billion.
SpaceX didn’t respond to a request for comment sent to the company's press email address.
A Door Mishap
SpaceX started sketching out ideas for what would eventually become Starship from its headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., before breaking ground on an orbital launch facility in Boca Chica, Texas, in 2014. In 2018, the team built its first prototype, a three-legged, single-engine structure known as Starhopper that initially resembled a small rocket. But a windstorm damaged the nose cone, which SpaceX replaced with a small dome, the shape of which prompted some space enthusiasts to describe Starhopper as a flying water tower.
While some engineers have relocated to Starbase to work on Starship, the distance between Starship’s main engineering team in Hawthorne and the people building the rocket in Texas has created communications breakdowns, according to current and former employees.
For example, seemingly small mistakes have derailed significant updates to Starship’s design. An early design of Starship stored satellites behind a clamshell-like door, which would open to release them into space, according to a 2020 Starship user guide released by the company. By 2022, though, SpaceX had scrapped the clamshell door in favor of a complex, futuristic design that resembled a Pez dispenser, in which satellites stacked on top of each other moved closer to a door as the units ahead of them deployed.
But getting the complicated new design to work in the real world ended up being a huge undertaking for technicians on the ground, one former employee said. Last May, when the team went to install the door for the first time, it was too small for the opening, the person said. Soon after, a photo of that challenging installation process, which showed the small door hanging out of alignment, spread online.
In the case of the booster rocket with the fungus-infested engines, it couldn’t be learned why SpaceX management decided to build the structure on the launch site in the first place.
But SpaceX technicians warned their managers building the rocket out in the open for six months was a bad idea. Among the technicians’ concerns was that it wasn’t safe for them outside in the elements, where high winds caused swaying of the boom lifts that supported them while they worked high above the ground. The managers didn’t heed their warnings, one employee said.
Among those who supported building Starship prototypes out in the open, there was a wide belief that the rocket needed to be robust enough to withstand the most difficult environments, one employee said.
The disconnect between the engineers who design Starship and the technicians who execute the designs has persisted through 28 different ship designs and 10 different booster designs, in which engineers have altered and updated everything from the material the rocket is made out of to the precise location of the fins that will enable Starship to return to Earth’s atmosphere on its descent from space.
For some employees, the issues have raised questions about SpaceX’s ability to run the Starship program at scale. Musk told Ars Technica in 2020 that he wants to build one or two Starships a week, creating a fleet of 1,000 ships to voyage to Mars. More recently, he said he expects SpaceX to build just five full Starships in 2023.
Starship relies on economies of scale to drastically reduce the cost of going to space, a core part of Musk’s promise to investors when it comes to expanding the Starlink satellite network. SpaceX’s existing Falcon rocket can carry between 20 and 60 satellites into space at a time, whereas Starship is expected to be able to carry as many as 100 on each launch—and eventually as many as 400, by one company estimate. SpaceX has already deployed 3,500 of its first-generation Starlink satellites on its Falcon rockets.
The second-generation Starlink satellite—which is 22 feet long and nearly 5 times the weight of its predecessor—is too big to fit on a Falcon rocket. The larger size of the satellite, which is currently under development, allows larger solar panels that can run more-powerful equipment, which will support higher internet speeds as SpaceX expands its subscriber base.
The larger satellites are also the basis for a SpaceX partnership with T-Mobile to provide emergency satellite internet services to cellphone users who are out of range of terrestrial wireless service. The partnership, announced in August, could roll the product out to users as soon as late 2023, the companies said at the time.
In the meantime, SpaceX has designed a smaller but less efficient version of the second-generation satellite—known as the V2 Mini—which can fit on the smaller Falcon rocket. It does not appear to have been launched yet.
Static Fire Test
SpaceX is also designing Starship to transport as many as 100 people per launch, a major step up from the seven humans who can fit inside Dragon, the spacecraft NASA currently uses in conjunction with Falcon rockets to transport astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station. Under a contract with NASA, SpaceX is on the hook for two missions to bring astronauts to the moon as early as 2025 and 2027, respectively. SpaceX also has sold seats to space tourists on at least two private-party trips around the moon, the first scheduled for 2023.
How long it actually takes to get Starship operational will depend on what SpaceX finds out over the next few months of testing. On January 24, the company passed a major milestone—known as a wet dress rehearsal—in which it filled Starship with fuel to simulate the launch countdown without firing the engines.
The next major milestone will be the first time SpaceX tests all 33 of Starship’s engines at once—known as a static fire test. After that, SpaceX will still need to get a license from the FAA before conducting its first launch. The results of that launch will determine what updates SpaceX makes to subsequent Starship prototypes.
But nothing is guaranteed. The last time SpaceX conducted a static fire test was in November, when it lit 14 of the rocket’s 33 engines. That test destroyed the concrete pad, sending debris flying through the air. The incident occurred after another disastrous engine test in September, in which the engines sparked a wildfire in the nearby Las Palomas Wildlife Management Area that burned 68 acres.
And in October, a routine operation took a dangerous turn, putting the rocket at risk of crumpling while filled with liquid oxygen as people worked nearby, The Information has previously reported.
As part of the Starship launch, SpaceX plans to test its communication capabilities through the launch, flight and controlled landing of the booster and spacecraft, which are crucial for Starship’s reusability. After the launch, the booster will separate from the spacecraft and return to Earth, landing either in the Gulf of Mexico or at Starbase, SpaceX said in a July filing with the Federal Communications Commission. The spacecraft will reach an altitude of around 250 kilometers before coming back to Earth and splashing into the Pacific Ocean, the company said.
For SpaceX technicians on the ground, a successful orbital launch won’t represent the finish line. In mid-January, SpaceX once again ordered technicians to work grueling shifts, this time to build surplus nose cones in anticipation of the five rockets Musk wants to build over the next few months, two SpaceX employees said.
Once completed, the nose cones will await installation on updated versions of Starship—unless the rocket’s design changes again and they no longer fit.
Correction: SpaceX has designed a smaller version of its second generation satellite, called the V2 Mini but it does not appear to have launched yet. An earlier version of this story incorrectly said it had launched in December.
Becky Peterson is a reporter at The Information based in New York City covering Tesla, SpaceX and all things Elon Musk. Contact her at becky.peterson@theinformation.com.
[Editor's note: Space X has announced that the current planned flight date for the record-breaking Starship Super Heavy Orbital Launch, sporting 33 raptor engines, is Monday, April 17. The backup dates are April 18 – 21. The Starship will be boosted for a total of three minutes, using its accumulation of engines. The Super Heavy Booster will land in the Gulf of Mexico as the Starship continues its ascent into and through space, eventually descending back to earth and landing in the Pacific Ocean, near Hawaii.]
