SpaceX Starship Flight 8 Breakdown & Our JWST 3D Printing Adventure!

On this episode of the podcast we’re breaking down what happened with Starship Flight 8 and what the future holds for the SpaceX teams. Not only that, we’ll be talking about how progress is more of an adventure than a straight line. We’ll close out with how we can relate to a bumpy road of progress with our own 3D Printing of the James Webb Space Telescope in the AG3D Lab. So buckle up - and let’s dive into this week’s episode. Thanks for joining us!

Keywords: 
Starship flight eight, SpaceX, super heavy booster, max Q, hot stage separation, Mechazilla, orbital burn, engine failure, development cycle, block two, block three, iterative approach, 3D printing, James Webb Space Telescope, Artemis mission.

Sources:

https://spacenews.com/spacex-completes-investigation-into-starship-flight-7-mishap/

www.nasaspaceflight.com/2025/03/spacex-catches-booster-15-but-once-again-loses/

spaceflightnow.com/2025/03/03/launch-preview-spacex-to-launch-starship-flight-8/

 

https://x.com/ELGR3CO/status/1897807237986373895

 

Flight 8 Breakup overhead https://x.com/ELGR3CO/status/1897804953147613284

 

Flight Broadcast https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1897784121692229860

Timestamps:

00:00 Starship Flight 8 Overview

01:54 Launch Details and Partial Success

03:35 Analysis of Flight 8 of Starship

05:16 Challenges and Future Steps

06:14 The 3D Printing Adventure of JWST

08:21 Conclusion

Here's to building a fantastic future - and continued progress in Space (and humanity)!  Spread Love, Spread Science

Alex G. Orphanos

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AG3D Printing (ag3d-printing.com to learn more & start 3D printing today!)

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#spacecraft #technology #aerospace #spacetechnology #engineer #stem #artemis #astronaut

 

 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome back to Today In Space.I'm your space science podcast

(00:04):
host from the East Coast, Alex Gorfanos, and today we're
breaking down what happened withstarship flight eight and what
the future holds for the SpaceXteams. Not only that, we'll be
talking about how progress ismore of an adventure than it is
a straight line. And we'll closethings out with how we can
relate to the bumpy road ofprogress with our own 3d
printing of the James Webb SpaceTelescope in the 80 printing

(00:27):
lab. So buckle up and let's divein to this week's episode.
Thanks for joining us. You
on March, 6, 6:30pm, EasternTime at Starbase Texas, the next

(01:07):
starship stack roared into thesky after liftoff with super
heavy booster 15 and starship 34the world's most powerful rocket
is a true engineering marvel,and the technicians and
engineers that work to bring itto life for each attempt are
managing true Herculean taskdoing so their hard work can't

(01:28):
be understated every time one ofthese rockets take off, the
people who work on starship arebuilding the future and living
day in and day out to make itpossible and constantly pushing
their bodies and minds to thelimit. Just wanted to give them
all a shout out, because thesefailures weigh the most on them,
and we just wanted to say, keepgoing. We appreciate your grit

(01:50):
and determination to make eachtest flight possible. So thank
you. But back to the launch.Starship and super heavy took
off into the atmosphere and madeit through max Q, which is the
maximum aerodynamic pressurethat is on the vehicle. It then
performed the hot stageseparation with success, and
after successful separation, thesuper heavy booster made its way
back to the launch pad for acatch with mechazilla, which,

(02:14):
having survived the forces ofliftoff without damage, was
actually go for catch.Meanwhile, starship 34 ignited
all of its engines to begin along burn to orbit. Super heavy
booster 15 continue itscontrolled fall back to the pad
and relit only 11 out of 13engines, but still managed to

(02:35):
make the right adjustments formechazillas chopsticks to grab
the booster 15 out of the airfor a soft catch with the third
successful heavy booster catch,the focus was back on starship
34 starship almost completed itsorbital burn when an energetic
event occurred, and four enginescut out early because they lost
two of the engines involved withattitude control. Ship 34

(02:58):
tumbled out of control andeventually broke up over the
skies of the Bahamas, Jamaicaand the Turks and Caicos Isles.
It could be seen from a distanceoff the coast of Florida as
well. So what happened? Well,basically the same thing as
flight seven, if we're beingcritical of the milestones for
the starship development,starship lifted off the pad. The
super heavy booster was caught,and they lost starship in orbit.

(03:19):
But more granularly, we can'tunderstate the catching of super
heavy booster like that. That'sa good thing. This means that
one of the hardest aspects ofstarship is becoming more
consistent, and it succeededwith only 11 out of 13 engines
firing, originally to slow itdown before catch and then the
three were used to tweak theposition for mechazilla to catch

(03:40):
it. And that was successful. Andthat's great, but what is a
mission if the payload doesn'tmake it to orbit, it's not a
success, that's for sure. Sincestarship is still in
development, it's hard for me tocall it a flat out failure,
because that's not what they'redoing, but it does show how
starship is stuck in adevelopmental cycle full of
bumps. Now, from what we know,flight eight was the second test

(04:03):
of the block two ship, and theytried to repeat the flight seven
flight profile, because theyweren't successful there getting
to orbit. And that makes a lotof sense from a scientific
standpoint, right? You don'twant to change too many things,
because then you don't know ifyou actually solved the problem
with any of those changes, andyou might not even know what
change fixed the problem. Andthey stated from their flight

(04:23):
seven investigation that therewas a vibrational acoustic load
that caused a leak inside andfire inside of starship that led
to the failure for flight seven.So SpaceX stepping up the
structures and the fuel linesand performed a longer static
fire of starship before he evengot stacked on top of the super
heavy booster to rule out ifthey had fixed it. And from that

(04:44):
it seemed like they had a fix.And vibrational loads are
nothing new to space travel,right? So any any payload that
needs to go to space has tosurvive the von Mises stresses
is what they called of launch,right? And it just seems like
block two starship can'tsurvive. Five, the super heavy
booster on its way to orbit.It's so massive that it's
causing something to vibrate toomuch, and then dual lines

(05:07):
rupture or leak, and it catchesfire and starship is lost. So
what does the SpaceX team needto do? From what we know, which
is not a lot, since we don'twork at SpaceX and that
information isn't justavailable, they could move on to
block three, design of starship,you know, maybe the flight
profile needs to be adjusted sothat you can get more data out
of the block too, if you decideto stick with that before moving
on to block three. There arealso a few holds at T minus 40.

(05:30):
This time around, they even destacked starship and then put it
back on the path the day after,and still had a hold at T minus
40. So were the wind conditionstoo harsh, and that actually
made starship vibrate too much.And to me, if chip three
provides more benefits for theproblems and at hand, then do
that and it, it also feels likethere could be maybe more

(05:51):
patience in the schedule ofdevelopment. And if law, if
launch conditions don't playwell, scrub it. It's not ideal.
But also losing starship inorbit is less ideal, especially
after two in a row, those teamsneed to figure out how to get
out of this progress loop thatthey're in. But that's progress,
especially rapid progress fromthe iterative approach. And we

(06:12):
use the iterative approach tobring ideas into reality with 3d
printing at 80 labs, while wework on many ideas throughout
the year. One that struggled forprogress was our James Webb
Space Telescope model from theoriginal NASA design, originally
designing that didn't take verylong. It was pretty
straightforward, actually. Butonce we started 3d printing the
model and trying to make itwork, it just kept hitting snag

(06:36):
after snag. Our first modelswere designed in pieces so that
we could assemble James WebbSpace Telescope. But we found
out quickly that the one to onedesign, from what NASA had as a
design to what we could 3d printat that small scale, just didn't
really work, and so the assemblybecame much harder, and some of
the quality of some of the partsjust weren't up to par because

(06:56):
of how small we were printingJames Webb Space Telescope. And
eventually, after many printsand some upgrades we had done to
make sure that we D print infull color with our Prusa i
three mark 3s plus MMU printer,fancy way of calling it a multi
color printer, we pushed aprint, J, w, s, t, in one piece.
Get rid of all of the assemblyfor the most part, and just

(07:19):
print the color in place whereit should be all at once, which
was very ambitious, just likestarship. We started the process
at the beginning of 2024 for thefull color, and it basically
took us a year to figure out howto adjust things to three print,
JWST in one piece and multicolor consistently. We were so
close so many times, but we hadto keep tweaking to adjust for

(07:44):
all the little subtleties of 3dprinting and the ways that could
cause a failure for the print sothat we could finally make it
consistently enough for it to bea product that we can just
continuously print and not add abunch of costs or processes that
we didn't consider or didn'tpractice for and that journey
was not only long, but difficultand challenging. And many times

(08:07):
I just thought that there was noway that I'd be able to get
through this and make thishappen. But luckily, I kept
pushing through that, and I hadbreakthroughs during the trials,
which pushed me further until Imet the next challenge, and once
I had beat enough of thosechallenges, we were successful.
And that's where SpaceX is rightnow. They are in the bumpy off

(08:29):
road adventure of progress, andthe team has lots of fight left
in them, so I'm not worriedabout that, and I'm sure
there'll be more long andchallenging days and nights
ahead of them, but the end goalof building a revolutionary
human space system and sendhumans across the solar system
like starship is worth fightingfor, for them, and when the goal
is so large and grand that itoutweighs the risk and challenge

(08:53):
of the day to day, you'd besurprised how far you can take
yourself on that adventure. Sowe wish the SpaceX teams all the
luck in their adventure to bringprogress to starship and that it
can eventually be used to landthe Artemis, three astronauts
for NASA on the moon and thenmove on to Mars and beyond. So
thanks for joining us on TodayIn Space, for this starship
flight eight breakdown. You canfollow us on social media. At

(09:14):
Today In Space on Tiktok, atToday In Space pod on Instagram
and x and Today In Space podcaston Facebook. We're also on
LinkedIn and blue sky as well.Don't forget, you can support
the podcast, obviously, byliking, subscribing, following,
sharing with others. But you canalso pick up one of our JWST
models on Etsy at 80 3dprinting.etsy.com, or on our

(09:35):
replicator [e-mail], if you strapped for
cash, no problem, share it withanother space nerd friend like
yourself, and also look for thestarship pen that we have
available in the store as wellif you're a big fan of starship.
But until next time, be well.Stay focused and continue to
look up and be curious. We'll bespreading love and science over

(09:55):
here. In the meantime, we'll seeyou next time.