"Raptor Turbopump Failed?" SpaceX revealed New Raptor 3 Problem during Booster 20 Landing

Engines have been a massive headache for SpaceX stretching from Flight 12's drama right up to Flight 13's nail-biting pre-launch hurdles. Now though, SpaceX has earned the right to be proud as most of those terrifying gremlins are officially solved. However, a few stubborn landing quirks still need ironing out to achieve absolute perfection. Let's do a quick deep dive into what actually happened to the Super Heavy engines and Starship Let's do a quick deep dive into what actually happened to the Super Heavy engines in particular and Starship in general during this most recent high-stakes flight. Flight 13 was arguably SpaceX's ultimate mic drop answer to its anxious fans and the broader aerospace community after months of rampant speculation, and it totally promises to unlock even bigger, cooler prospects moving forward. So as a massive show of support for SpaceX and our channel, please hit subscribe if you haven't already to stay looped in on unexpected space news that none of us can predict. The rock-solid foundation for that futuristic utopia always lies in relentless progress, and one of the absolute main characters in this flight is the engine. I'm going to get straight to the point because in this industry, we always have to find ways to hustle past problems instead of crying over spilled liquid oxygen. As I've talked about ad nauseum, the engine was the biggest disaster on flight 12, especially on the booster side, which triggered a massive post-flight mishap investigation. The FAA ultimately concluded the root cause was severe heat effects on propulsion system components during ascent alongside some wonky engine alarm system settings. After the aggressive V-20 hot fire tests, it looked like the headache was cured, but the universe decided to laugh by throwing a curveball and aborting the very first launch attempt. Right above the final July 24th launch window, SpaceX candidly revealed a moody little issue with the turbopumps. Clearly, SpaceX rolled into flight 13 carrying some serious baggage and anxiety regarding the Super Heavy's Raptor engines, especially since they didn't even get a final static fire to ease nerves. Therefore, despite a bunch of clever engineering upgrades, some distinctly weird behavior regarding the booster engines popped up again this time around. Specifically, the drama centered entirely around the landing burn sequence. After completing its controlled freefall phase at an altitude of approximately 3 kilometers right at T plus 6 minutes and 26 seconds, the engines fired up to slam on the cosmic brakes. Normally, boosters are supposed to wake up 13 middle and inner ring engines to decelerate rapidly. Once the vehicle stabilizes, 10 middle ring engines are supposed to shut down, leaving just three inner ring workhorses active for the final approach. However, from the absolute start of the landing burn all the way through the next 6 seconds, the exact number and position of the active engines looked pretty sketchy. Initially, only 10 engine gimbals activated, while three engines sitting in the middle ring, two clumped together and one directly opposite, refused to wake up, and they didn't fire at all later either. Less than a second after that, two more engines, one in the middle ring and one in the inner ring, suddenly choked and shut down. Finally, the remaining three middle ring engines cut out, leaving a lonely squad of just five engines running, two in the inner ring and three in the middle. The fact that three engines completely ghosted the command led to wild speculation that they were malfunctioning, preventing SpaceX from throwing enough power at the deceleration phase. Clearly, activating the full complement of engines was necessary, because before cutting to the engine diagram, telemetry showed V-20's descent speed was still screaming along at over 2,000 kilometers per hour at an altitude of roughly 7.5 kilometers. That velocity might have dipped slightly by the time the landing burn actually triggered, but I firmly believe SpaceX should have fired up more engines for optimal braking. Furthermore, the fact that two engines operated for less than a second right after ignition raises serious suspicions that this wasn't some intentional chess move, but rather a low-key failure. As a result, the entire landing burn essentially limped along with just five active engines. This definitely slashed the overall effectiveness of the maneuver, making it feel like final second flight control wasn't quite dialed in. Flawless vehicle control is an absolute non-negotiable requirement for nailing a booster catch with the Mechazilla arms. SpaceX has already pulled it off three times, but those were with an earlier, much simpler version of the booster that featured totally different engine layouts and grid fins. The upcoming V-3 architecture is going to introduce massive upgrades to the navigation system alongside a brand new launch pad. That kind of hardware demands precision down to the exact second and centimeter, which is why a sloppy maneuver just won't cut it. That being said, there are still plenty of wildly optimistic predictions defending V-20's chaotic final maneuver. This hopeful camp speculates that SpaceX intentionally wanted to pull off a specific booster flip and therefore deliberately withheld certain engines to create a balanced differential thrust across the vehicle sides. Furthermore, the engines that failed to fire or shut down early were sitting in neat symmetrical positions, which heavily implies this might have been a planned choreography all along. Regardless of whether it was a real mechanical glitch or a secret master plan, I think SpaceX still needs to obsess over the Super Heavy Booster engines and Starship in general to score bigger wins in the future. Do you think this weird engine hiccup is a massive red flag, or are there other underlying issues we completely missed? Drop your hot takes in the comments down below. Of course, after dragging the problems into the light, we still need to hype up the incredible things the Starship engines actually achieved. Let's be real, with all those pre-flight turbopump scares I mentioned at the top, we were sweating bullets about whether the ship would even survive the ascent phase, but this time the rocket cleanly ripped off the launch pad without a single scrub. Obviously, that was the exact moment we could all collectively unclench our shoulders, proving that the Ox turbopump saga was thoroughly conquered after a grueling week of all-nighters by the engineering team. Right behind that came the ascent phase, which was the exact spot where Flight 12's booster engines famously imploded. As you probably saw, this time all 33 Raptors fired like clockwork, scoring a literal zero failure rate. That kind of reliability unlocked peak aerodynamic performance during the punch into the upper atmosphere. That rock-solid reliability was dialed up even further once the flight transitioned into stage separation and the boostback burn. This is the exact highest stress phase where Starship's propulsion systems have to toggle on and off with Swiss watch precision, and they totally nailed the assignment. Right after separation, SpaceX orchestrated a gorgeous shutdown of the booster engines, starting with the eight symmetrical engines in the middle ring at T plus 2 minutes and 19 seconds, followed by the outer waves. This theatrical shutdown method wasn't just visually stunning, it showcased elite thrust management designed to keep the vehicle perfectly balanced. The sequence wrapped up with just five engines maintaining steady thrust right up until separation. The absolute second the upper ship fired its own engines to pull away, the booster instantly kicked off its boostback burn. At that exact moment, the remaining booster engines fired back up, again moving sequentially from the inside out in a buttery smooth sequence, allowing for absolute mastery over the booster's speed and trajectory. Even the final boostback shutdown process executed a textbook perfect transition from the outside in. It's safe to say that the booster engine management during the first half of this flight was genuinely world class, arguably the cleanest performance of any test flight to date. Clearly, if they can squash those lingering doubts surrounding the terminal landing phase, the entire operational flight profile will be bulletproof. The upper ship's engines were equally impressive. We had plenty of low-key anxiety about how the upgraded ship would handle the vacuum of space, but it's fantastic that zero ship engines failed this time around. This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that whatever gremlin messed with the vacuum on flight 12 has been thoroughly exterminated. Thanks to that newfound reliability, the ship enjoyed a buttery ascent before coasting into a prime state for payload deployment. On top of that, it successfully pulled off an in-space engine relight that ran longer than any previous attempt, proving it's officially ready for deep space missions and beyond. The Raptor's journey finally wrapped up with its own terminal landing burn, which relied on just three active engines. All three engines successfully restarted, permitting a smooth flip, deceleration, and precise navigation toward a controlled splashdown. Because the ship miraculously refused to explode upon impact this time, post-landing camera angles gave us a pristine look straight into the engine compartment, which looked remarkably intact. Flight 13 can easily be stamped as a monumental stepping stone for the Raptor engine program. Most flight phases demonstrated elite reliability, empowering SpaceX to exercise near-total control from ignition to splashdown. Sure, there was a minor hiccup with the Super Heavy during the landing phase, but knowing this team, it'll get patched up faster than you can refresh your feed. This success completely opens up massive, highly lucrative potential for the next flight, where the ship might actually claw its way into a true full orbit, or perhaps even get snagged out of mid-air by the Mechazilla arms as Musk recently teased. We'll definitely break down those wild possibilities in the next episode, so stay tuned. Now, let's totally shift gears and talk about one of the biggest logistical nightmares currently facing SpaceX's crown jewel, Starship's little sibling, Starlink. Starlink has officially snowballed into the largest satellite constellation in human history, with over 10,800 currently circling the globe, and more than 9,000 actively hammering out internet traffic. While offering game-changing connectivity, its massive footprint is turning low-Earth orbit into a cosmic rush hour. According to the latest FCC report, Starlink satellites executed a staggering 207,152 autonomous avoidance maneuvers between December of 2025 and May of this year, nearly 60,000 more than the previous window. Over a full 12-month stretch, that total smashes past 355,000 maneuvers, averaging over 40 collision avoidance pivots annually per active satellite. Hugh Lewis, a professor of astronautics at the University of Birmingham, issued a stark warning, I think we're heading towards a situation where there will be a collision involving an operational satellite in the constellation, and it will not be for the lack of trying to avoid those things. It'll be in spite of all those maneuvers. Operating between 298 and 342 miles up, Starlink relies on an autonomous system that dodges whenever collision probability crosses 3 in 10 million. While Lewis acknowledged SpaceX is doing an excellent job managing traffic, he cautioned that expansion inherently scales risk. The avoidance maneuvers reduce the probability of collision to about 1 in a million, which is so small that it's dismissible. The problem is that if you make a million maneuvers and you have a residual probability of 1 in a million, you end up with an aggregate risk across your entire constellation that you can't get rid of. If scaling continues and the FCC approves a 100,000 satellite megaconstellation, cumulative maneuvers could hit 1 million by June of 2027, turning that safety margin into a statistical inevitability by 2030. As competitors like Amazon's Project Kuiper and China's Thousand Sails crowd orbit, Lewis argues the smartest fix is separating orbital altitude corridors, concluding the safe thing to do is to separate the constellations, but then you are talking about orbital carrying capacity and the first mover benefit, because if I go into a particular altitude with my constellation, then nobody else can use it. And that brings us to the end of today's episode. Thank you so much for tuning in. As always, this has been Kevin from GreatSpaceX, and until next time, keep looking up!