updates
Starship Flight 2 reaches space, then breaks up
On February 26, 2024, SpaceX said the November 18, 2023 flight finished a full booster burn and hot-staging, then lost the booster and the ship.
Topics: space-civilization starship
This page is an original Muskularity summary. It does not republish SpaceX’s full post. Figures are the company’s statements on the cited date unless another primary link is named.
Summary
Flight 2 lifted off at 7:02 a.m. CT on November 18, 2023. All 33 booster engines completed a full-duration burn for the first time, and hot-staging separated the ship. Boostback commanded 13 engines. Several shut down, one failed energetically, and the booster broke up a bit past three and a half minutes, near 90 kilometers over the Gulf. SpaceX’s likely cause is filter blockage in the liquid-oxygen feed, starving turbopumps until one engine failed in a way that destroyed the vehicle. Later boosters got different filtration hardware and refined operations.
The ship lit all six engines and flew a normal ascent until about seven minutes, when a planned dump of extra liquid oxygen began. That extra load was there to imitate a payload mission and had to be gone before reentry. A leak in the aft section during the dump led to a fire. The flight-safety system then saw a rule violation and fired, breaking the vehicle up. At the end the ship was near 150 kilometers and about 24,000 km/h. SpaceX called it the first Starship to reach outer space. Changes named for later ships: leak reduction, fire protection, and the already planned switch from hydraulic engine steering to an electric system. The water-cooled flame deflector added after Flight 1 was said to have worked, with little pad repair needed. Flight 3 would also introduce electronic thrust-vector control on the ship’s Raptors and faster propellant loading.
Key facts
| Fact | Label |
|---|---|
| Liftoff November 18, 2023, 7:02 a.m. CT | Company flight report |
| First full-duration booster burn and first hot-staging of a vehicle this size | Company flight result |
| Booster breakup past 3.5 minutes near 90 km; ship near 150 km and 24,000 km/h | Company flight result |
| Likely booster cause: oxygen-filter blockage | Company investigation finding |
Why it matters
Flight 2 is the test that showed hot-staging and a completed booster burn, and it set the filter problem that Flight 3 only partly cleared. The flame deflector line is the hardware later fought over in the September 2024 licensing post.
On this site
Sources
- SpaceX update, February 26, 2024 — Grade A, company flight report
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