Elon Musk’s SpaceX releases explosive video of its rocket failures
Billionaire says it was a ‘long road’ before the firm successfully landed a booster

SpaceX has released a video showing a series of landing failures from its rocket launches - many of which had explosive results.
While the aerospace company is now perfecting the process, the short video reveals it suffered multiple failures over several years before successfully landing the booster stage of one of its Falcon 9 rockets.
Elon Musk, the South African billionaire behind the firm, tweeted: “long road to reusability of [the] Falcon 9 primary boost stage”.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
He adds that costs will drop by a factor of 100 when the “upper stage” and “fairing” of Falcon 9 rockets can be saved.
The company’s has completed “dozens of tests” since its inception in 2002, says Business Insider, but “many of their attempts to launch and land these towering, fuel-filled machines ended in fiery explosions”.
“Today, SpaceX has more or less perfected launching Falcon 9 rockets,” the website adds. The firm recovered its first booster section - “the most expensive part of the rocket” - in April last year.
Reusing rockets has saved the company a significant amount of money and has allowed it to send a rocket into orbit “every three weeks”, says Yahoo News.
Along with the Falcon 9 rocket, the site says, SpaceX is developing a larger vessel to help send heavier payloads into space.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
June 28 editorial cartoons
Cartoons Saturday's political cartoons include stupid wars, a critical media, and mask standards
-
Thai fish pie with crispy turmeric potatoes recipe
The Week Recommends Tasty twist on the Lancashire hot pot is given a golden glow
-
Palestine Action: protesters or terrorists?
Talking Point Damaging RAF equipment at Brize Norton blurs line between activism and sabotage, but proscription is a drastic step
-
Another Starship blast sets back Musk's Mars hopes
Speed Read Nobody was killed in the explosion, which occurred in south Texas
-
What Elon Musk's Grok AI controversy reveals about chatbots
In the Spotlight The spread of misinformation is a reminder of how imperfect chatbots really are
-
Elon Musk's SpaceX has created a new city in Texas
Under The Radar Starbase is home to SpaceX's rocket launch site
-
Test flight of orbital rocket from Europe explodes
Speed Read Isar Aerospace conducted the first test flight of the Spectrum orbital rocket, which crashed after takeoff
-
Musk vs. Altman: The fight over OpenAI
Feature Elon Musk has launched a $97.4 billion takeover bid for OpenAI
-
Elon Musk's DOGE website has gotten off to a bad start
In the Spotlight The site was reportedly able to be edited by anyone when it first came online
-
What Trump's 'tech bros' want
The Explainer Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos had 'prime seats' at the president's inauguration. What are they looking to gain from Trump 2.0?
-
Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and the billionaire space race
The Explainer Tesla CEO and Amazon founder vie for dominance of satellite launch market and could influence Nasa plans to return to Moon