During SpaceX’s dramatic fifth orbital test flight of its heavy-lift Starship spacecraft on October 13, the Elon Musk-led space company came closer to disaster than we knew at the time.
And we only know it now because, while playing the videogame Diablo IV last week, you could hear the billionaire CEO getting briefed on the test flight from an unidentified SpaceX engineer, as pointed out by Reuters reporter Joey Roulette on X-formerly-Twitter.
Musk seemingly shared the three-minute clip to show off his gaming skills — but ended up giving viewers a hair-raising account of what sounds like a near-catastrophe at his space company.
“I want to be really upfront about scary shit that happened,” the engineer told Musk while he was playing the video game.
“We had a misconfigured stem gas support that didn’t have quite the right ramp-up time for bringing up stem pressure, and we were one second away from that tripping and telling the rocket to abort and try to crash into the ground next to the tower,” he added.
During the test flight, SpaceX pulled off an incredible feat, catching Starship’s gigantic Super Heavy booster using a tower with “chopsticks” arms. But now it sounds like the entire thing almost went up in flames during the booster’s descent.
“Wow,” Musk says, while pulverizing evil skeletons onscreen. “Yikes.”
In the same clip, the engineer also revealed that a “cover that ripped off” during the Super Heavy’s descent “was right on top of a bunch of the single point failure valves that must work during the landing burn.”
“We have a plan to address that,” the engineer added.
The extent of the detail of the conversation is baffling, even revealing details about the company’s upcoming sixth test flight and internal company pressures.
“We’re not taking as much time as we ideally want to have a very luxurious, like, ‘really study everything,'” another engineer chimed in. “But given that it’s the first launch in a long time, maybe ever, that we’ve not been FAA-driven, we’re trying to do a reasonable balance of seed and risk mitigation on the boosters specifically.”
“Ok,” a distracted-sounding Musk replied.
The exchange is a bizarre demonstration of the working dynamic between the mercurial executive and those unfortunate enough to report to him. The details revealed in the clip include some seriously perilous events that could’ve cost the company millions — yet Musk decided to play a round of a hack-and-slash game while getting the briefing.
Needless to say, a top boss communicating with staff while distracted by a videogame isn’t the kind of professionalism you’d expect from the CEO of the most valuable space company.
“Did you just share Starship data lmaooo,” a user on X responded to Musk’s video.
“Yeah,” Musk answered, adding a laughing emoji.
More on the launch: This Close-Up Video of SpaceX’s Starship Booster Being Caught by a Tower Will Melt Your Puny Earthling Brains
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