The Silicon Graybeard

In the World of the High Tech Redneck, the Graybeard is the old guy who earned his gray by making all the mistakes, and tries to keep the young 'uns from repeating them. Silicon Graybeard is my term for an old hardware engineer; a circuit designer. The focus of this blog is on doing things, from radio to home machine shops and making all kinds of things, along with comments from a retired radio engineer, that run from tech, science or space news to economics; from firearms to world events.

Wednesday, May 27, 2026

FAA Grounds Starship

It took them a while to get to it, but the FAA has imposed a "Do Not Launch" order onto SpaceX for Starship Version 3 due to the failure of the Super Heavy booster to perform it's intended flight during Friday's first test flight.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) just declared the May 22 Starship V3 launch a mishap and is requiring an investigation before the huge vehicle can take to the skies again.

"A return to flight of the Starship-Super Heavy vehicle is based on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety," FAA officials wrote in an update today (May 27).

Super Heavy was intended to perform a soft splashdown in the Gulf of America instead of returning to the new launch pad it had left minutes earlier, but instead was unable to perform the engine burns needed for this controlled return and ended up "experiencing a hard splashdown" in the Gulf, as SpaceX wrote in their mission update.

Following stage separation, the Super Heavy booster performed a directional flip maneuver and attempted its boostback burn. It was unable to light all planned engines and performed a partial boostback burn that ended early. Super Heavy attempted to reignite its engines for the landing burn before experiencing a hard splashdown in the Gulf of America.

Doesn't "hard splashdown" sound nicer than "disintegrated when it hit the water at Mach 1"?

As I write, this Space.com news story says it was published six hours ago. I don't expect this launch prohibition to last very long, given the relative rates that SpaceX works at and similar holds that have been put in place before. You may remember the FAA grounded the world's busiest rocket workhorse, Falcon 9, this past February. That was resolved in just four days. I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if this issue was solved already and it takes longer to communicate the fix to the FAA than to implement it.