Tens of thousands of Tesla owners have had the suspension or steering of their vehicles — even in practically brand new ones — fail in recent years. Newly obtained documents show how Tesla engineers internally called these incidents “flaws” and “failures.”
Nonetheless, some of the documents suggest technicians were told to tell consumers that these failures weren’t due to faulty parts, but the result of drivers “abusing” their vehicles, which highlights the EV maker and its CEO Elon Musk’s infamous way of handling customer complaints.
Starship’s ITF-2 launch already got well above the Karman line.
Well, the booster exploded below the Karman line (EDIT: Yep, 90km max alt. and detonation, Karman line is 100km), and the orbiter blew up or tore itself apart above the Karman line.
And no, the orbiter did not self destruct as part of some kind of intentional action or design by SpaceX.
It was seen on camera disintegrating before SpaceX even realized they had lost contact with it.
They probably did not engage a self destruct system on the orbiter while they were still claiming it was at a nominal trajectory when they hadnt even realized it had already disintegrated, taking multiple minutes to even realize they’d lost contact with it as pieces of it were already burning and tumbling in the upper atmosphere.
My prediction for 3 is that again at least part of the craft will blow up below the Karman line.
The full static test fires they recently did damaged the craft because the test stand wasn’t designed for that the amount of force, nor for the duration they’re currently testing with it, and because for some baffling reason they are not using a flame trench or proper diversion channels.
My guess is that, combined with the defects and flaws seen from the first two launches, these full power static fire tests will have damaged the craft more than they are able to repair properly in time to follow Musk’s recklessly fast launch timetable, and the whole thing will blow up or have significant trajectory problems from multiple non catastrophic engine failures before the hot staging, and/or when the booster tries to do the belly flop maneuver, the fuel tank(s) or lines will rupture as happened last time, and if the abort system engages properly it’ll then basically fall to the ground, or if it doesn’t, it’ll detonate spectacularly in midair again.