SpaceX Starship Launch Scrubbed at T-40 Seconds While Crypto Billionaire Books Mars Seat
SpaceX came agonisingly close to launching the twelfth Starship test flight on Friday before a ground equipment failure forced a scrub with less than a minute on the clock.
The countdown had been going reasonably well. Weather concerns cleared up, propellant loading finished, and everything pointed toward a clean attempt from what is a brand new launchpad with a brand new vehicle iteration. Then the T-40 second hold arrived, and stayed.
Repeated attempts to recycle the countdown kept running into trouble. Sensors on the quick-disconnect arm threw up warnings, and the pad's water diverter system also caused headaches. Eventually, Elon Musk confirmed the core problem on X: a hydraulic pin that should have retracted the tower arm simply refused to cooperate. The launch was scrubbed.
Musk floated the possibility of a second attempt the same day, with a window opening at 5:30pm CT. Whether the hydraulics play ball remains to be seen.
In fairness, getting to T-40 on a first launch attempt from a new pad isn't nothing. These things break. The more frustrating reality is that once propellant loading is complete, you're on a clock. Cryogenic fuel doesn't wait around while engineers argue with a stubborn hydraulic pin.
Still, the pressure is mounting. SpaceX's recent IPO filing boldly states the company expects Starship to begin delivering payloads to orbit in the second half of 2026. That window opens in a matter of weeks. Starship has yet to complete a single orbital flight.
NASA is also watching closely. The agency needs a working Starship to put boots on the Moon, and right now the vehicle is still flying suborbital test trajectories. There's a significant gap between where the rocket is and where it needs to be.
On the more colourful end of the news cycle, SpaceX chose the scrub attempt as the moment to announce that Chun Wang, the crypto billionaire who commanded the Fram2 private spaceflight mission last year, has signed up for a future Mars flyby mission.
Which is a fine ambition. Though it's worth remembering that Yusaku Maezawa's dearMoon lunar tourism project was announced in 2018 with considerable fanfare and quietly cancelled in 2024 without anyone going anywhere near the Moon. Starship hadn't reached orbit then either.
Musk's performance-based SpaceX shares apparently vest when a permanent Mars colony of at least one million people is established. At the current rate of progress, he may want to extend his planning horizon.