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SpaceX just blew up a Starship tank on purpose and Elon Musk says the results are in
Before dawn on January 10th, SpaceX technicians and engineers intentionally blew up a miniature Starship tank in order to test recently-upgraded manufacturing and assembly methods, likely to be used to build the first Starships bound for flight tests and orbit.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk quickly weighed in on Twitter later the same day, revealing some crucial details about the Starship tank test and effectively confirming that it was a success. While somewhat unintuitive, this is the second time SpaceX has intentionally destroyed largely completed Starship hardware in order to determine the limits of the company’s current methods of production and assembly.
Most notably, on November 20th, SpaceX is believed to have intentionally overpressurized the Starship Mk1 prototype in a very similar – albeit larger-scale – test, destroying the vehicle and sending its top tank dome flying hundreds of feet into the air. It’s generally believed that SpaceX (or perhaps even just Musk) decided that Starship Mk1 was not fit to fly, leading the company to switch gears and deem the prototype a “manufacturing pathfinder” rather than the first Starship to fly – which Musk had explicitly stated just a few months prior.
Bopper (Baby StarPopper) this morning after the overpressure event at SpaceX Boca Chica. ??@NASASpaceflight https://t.co/nCG7E9XtKM pic.twitter.com/PRTDQvvlRh— Mary (@BocaChicaGal) January 10, 2020
Dome to barrel weld made it to 7.1 bar, which is pretty good as ~6 bar is needed for orbital flight. With more precise parts & better welding conditions, we should reach ~8.5 bar, which is the 1.4 factor of safety needed for crewed flight.— Buff Mage (@elonmusk) January 10, 2020
Instead, Starship Mk1 suffered irreparable damage during its pressurization test and was rapidly scrapped in the weeks following, although several segments were thankfully salvaged – perhaps for use on future prototypes. Along those lines, it can arguably be said that the results from the mini Starship tank’s Jan. 10 pop test have paved the way for SpaceX to build the first truly flightworthy Starship prototypes – potentially all the way up to the first spaceworthy vehicles.
Hours after the test, Musk revealed that the Starship test tank failed almost exactly where and how SpaceX expected it would, bursting when the weld joining the upper dome and tank wall failed. Critically, the tank reached a maximum sustained pressure of 7.1 bar (103 psi), some 18% over the operating pressure (6 bar/87 psi) Musk says Starship prototypes will need to be declared fully capable of orbital test flights. In other words, given the tank’s size, it survived an incredible ~20,000 metric tons (45 million lbf) of force spread out over its surface area, equivalent to about 20% the weight of an entire US Navy aircraft carrier.
Musk also revealed that SpaceX will require Starships to survive a minimum of 140% of that operating pressure before the company will allow the spacecraft to launch humans.
Some have less than generously taken to smugly noting that several modern spaceflight and engineering standards require that launch vehicle tankage be rated to survive no less than 125% of their operating pressure, while this test tank would be rated for less than 118% under identical conditions. However, this ignores several significant points of interest. First and foremost, the Starship test tank intentionally destroyed on January 10th was assembled from almost nothing – going from first weld to a completed pressurization test – in less than three weeks (20 days).
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Second, all visible welding and assembly work was performed outside in the South Texas elements with only a minor degree of protection from the coastal winds and environment. Although some obvious tweaks were made to the specific methods used to assembly the prototype tank, it also appears that most of the welding was done by hand. For the most part, in other words, the methods used to build this improved test article were largely unchanged compared to Starship Mk1, which is believed to have failed around 3-5 bar (40-75 psi).
Additionally, it appears that almost all aspects of this test tank have smaller structural margins, meaning that the tank walls and domes are likely using steel stock that is substantially thinner than what was used on Starship Mk1. Nevertheless, thanks to the addition of continuous (single-weld) steel rings, a tweaked dome layout, and slightly refined welding, this test tank has performed anywhere from 20% to 200+% better than Starship Mk1 – again, all while coming together from scratch in a period of less than three weeks.
As Musk notes, with relatively minor improvements to welding conditions and the manufacturing precision of Starship rings and domes, SpaceX can likely ensure that Starships (and thus Super Heavy boosters) will be able to survive pressures greater than 8.5 bar (125 psi), thus guaranteeing a safety margin of at least 40%. Even a minor improvement of ~6% would give vehicles a safety margin of 125%, enough – in the eyes of engineering standards committees – to reasonably certify Starships for orbital test flights.
All things considered, it’s safe to assume that SpaceX is going to begin building and assembling Starship SN01 (formerly Mk3) hardware almost immediately. Given that this test tank took just 20 days to assemble, it’s safe to say that the upgraded prototype’s tank section could be completed in just a handful of weeks. Stay tuned for progress reports.
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SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.
The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.
SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters
Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.
SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.
With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.
Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.
Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.
Elon Musk shed two new bits of detail on Starship following its 13th test launch, which was an overwhelming success.
SpaceX launched Starship for the 13th time last Friday after two delays: one on Monday when several Raptor engines did not ignite, and another on Thursday due to unfavorable weather conditions in Starbase, Texas.
The launch was overwhelmingly successful. SpaceX was able to complete a necessary test of the heat shield tiles by increasing the acceleration of Starship from launch throughout the flight; 20 Starlink v3 satellites were released with no issue; the Super Heavy Booster landed safely in the Gulf of America, Ship successfully reignited engines while in space; and it also splashed down without incident in the Indian Ocean.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
Nevertheless, more details are coming out about Starship, and Musk is doing the talking.
Starship Will Be Retrieved in the Ocean
Musk revealed on Tuesday night that Starship would be recovered by a ship in the Indian Ocean. SpaceX routinely tries to recover Starship after splashdown in an effort to find out more about the flight by examining the spacecraft afterward.
We’re sending a ship out to recover Starship https://t.co/fUqUZTITO9
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 28, 2026
This helps engineers find out more about why things might have happened, allows them to examine any potential damage or anomalies that might have occurred, and increases the chances of an even more successful flight next time thanks to the additional information recovered.
Ship Could Have Been Caught by Tower Arms, Musk claims
Musk has already indicated that SpaceX will plan to attempt a catch of Starship with the 14th test flight. While this would be a major accomplishment, it would be an expected next step, considering the fact that the Super Heavy Booster has already been caught by the chopsticks on numerous occasions.
The ship landing was precise, meaning that it would have been caught by the tower arms https://t.co/6nbNrRfX9P
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 29, 2026
A ship catch would be a great indication of where SpaceX stands in terms of reusability and launch cadence. A successful catch with relatively no incidents would be a good sign that SpaceX is nearing a more frequent launch of Starship, but also that the reusability of the massive rocket would be something many would expect in the near future.
It is a necessity to make life multiplanetary.
Elon Musk has updated his timeline for when humans will walk on Mars and for when ships will simply get there.
The objective of getting to Mars has been one of Musk’s biggest goals since becoming a serial entrepreneur and realizing that time on Earth is limited. Musk has said several times he hopes to die on Mars, and not by impact.
Musk now believes that people will be on Mars in “roughly 5 to 7 years.” He said that a Mars lander will get there “a few years sooner.”
People on Mars in roughly 5 to 7 years.
Mars lander a few years sooner.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 29, 2026
The response from Musk comes after NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said that SpaceX’s biggest priority is the Moon and not Mars. Because of this, Isaacman conceded that he believes nuclear power and propulsion investments will provide “potentially the pathway with the fewest miracles required to put four people on Mars in the next 10 to 15 years.”
Of course, this is what NASA can do through taxpayer funding and nuclear investments, he added.
Musk’s grand ambitions are much more optimistic than most, and it is certainly a double-edged sword. This is not the first time timelines for Mars have been somewhat lofty, especially to those normal thinkers like you and me, not super geniuses like Musk.
In fact, the SpaceX and Tesla frontman has said on at least a dozen occasions that we could be on Mars in the coming years. Musk said 2020 would be the big year as early as 2009. In 2020, he was “highly confident” of a landing in 2026, and had even said 2024 in a best-case scenario.
The point is, the range has varied, and it’s anyone’s guess when we’ll get there. This latest adjustment to the timeline is typical of Musk, and while the Moon has seemingly taken priority over Mars, it is still worth mentioning that the ultimate goal is to make life multiplanetary, and it starts potentially with the Red Planet.
SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites
Elon Musk sheds two new bits of detail on Starship after 13th test launch
