Earlier this week, SpaceX suffered a major setback again in its Starship development program with the total loss of Ship 36. In good news, the potential failure of the COPV that is in Starship will not affect Falcon 9’s historic launch cadence.
Wednesday evening, SpaceX attempted a six-engine static fire of its Ship 36 Starship upper stage. However, prior to the ignition of the engines, the vehicle exploded on the test stand, causing fires and damage to the Massey’s test site near the company’s Starbase facility. Ship 36 was intended for use on Starship Flight 10, but that will now have to be replaced by the less complete Ship 37.
Thursday, SpaceX posted to its updates blog a statement on the explosion, stating that the failure likely came from the COPV, or Composite Overwrapped Pressure Vessel, in the nose cone of Ship 36. SpaceX also shared that teams are actively working on cleanup and repairs to Massey’s, which will likely contribute to a significant delay in Flight 10’s timeline.
One question that was raised between Wednesday evening and Thursday was the effect of this anomaly on the Falcon 9‘s ability to keep launching. Both vehicles rely on COPVs to store nitrogen that keeps the vehicle pressurized. It was known how similar these two COPV designs were, as SpaceX has a history with problematic COPVs (i.e., the AMOS-6 incident).
However, SpaceX shared in the statement that there should be no effect as there is “no commonality between the COPVs used on Starship and SpaceX’s Falcon rockets.”
Falcon 9 launches continue tomorrow
This is good as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 has been on a tear this year, launching a rocket nearly every two and a half days. This historic launch rate continues tomorrow with two launches from each coast.
First will be another Starlink mission, this one from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Carrying 27 satellites, it will use the fan-favorite B1069 booster for its 25th mission. So far in 2025, Starlink launches have accounted for nearly 75% of SpaceX’s 75 Falcon 9 launches.
Later in the day, SpaceX will attempt to launch its Transporter-14 mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. These rideshare missions are the cheapest rides in space, although you better hope to be all going to the same orbit as it removes the option for custom orbits for payload operators.
SpaceX could launch at least two, maybe three more missions by the end of the first half of 2025. This would put them at a potential 80 launches for the year, well on their way to beating the 134 launches SpaceX achieved in 2024.
