Elon Musk’s Starship grounded again: SpaceX scraps Texas launch for second time in 2 days

For the second time in as many days, SpaceX has called off the launch of its massive Starship rocket in Texas. The company was forced to stand down once again on Monday (Aug 25) evening, this time due to bad weather. This comes less than 24 hours after a separate launch attempt was scrubbed because of a liquid oxygen leak. Starship, stacked on its Super Heavy booster, towers 397 feet (121 meters) is a behemoth, taller than the Statue of Liberty. It is central to Elon Musk's vision of reusable rockets capable of carrying people to the Moon and Mars. The 403-foot behemoth was supposed to blast off from Starbase in Texas at 7.30 pm local time (0030 GMT) for its tenth test flight.

Why did SpaceX cancel Starship's latest launch attempt?

On X, the company said that it was “Standing down from today’s flight test attempt due to weather.” It added that the “Starship team is determining the next best available opportunity to fly”.

SpaceX's string of failures grows

The latest delay piles onto a string of high-profile failures. Starship's upper stage has exploded in all three of its test flights this year, with debris falling over Caribbean islands in two cases and one stage breaking apart after reaching space. Another blew up on the ground during a June static fire test. So far, the rocket hasn't managed to deliver a payload to orbit or return its upper stage intact. However, Musk remains unfazed. Replying to a user on X on Sunday, Musk predicted, “In about 6 or 7 years, there will be days where Starship launches more than 24 times in 24 hours.”

Starship: Humanity's dream of reaching Mars

US President Donald Trump's former DOGE chief, Elon Musk, as per AFP, has pegged SpaceX's entire future to the entirely reusable rocket, planning to eventually phase out the workhorse Falcon rockets in favour of Starship. NASA, too, has tapped it for its first crewed lunar mission since Apollo, tentatively set for 2027.
Despite the setbacks, SpaceX is sticking to its "fail fast, learn fast" approach, pushing ahead with test after test. The company has managed to successfully catch Starship's massive lower stage booster with "chopstick" launch tower arms three times.

Still, critics are starting to wonder if Musk's most ambitious gamble is wobbling."I think there is a lot of pressure on this mission," space analyst Dallas Kasaboski told AFP. "We've had so many tests and it hasn't proven itself reliable -- the successes have not exceeded the failures." Others, like Will Lockett, a former engineer turned commentator, have gone further, questioning whether the whole Starship concept is "fundamentally flawed".