SpaceX Revealed Starship 40's Recovery Plan just CHANGED... What went wrong?

SpaceX Revealed Starship 40's Recovery Plan just CHANGED... What went wrong?
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#alphatech
#techalpha
#spacex
#elonmusk
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0:00 Musk's Grim Admission
0:15 Slowly Sinking Rocket
3:19 The Drag Line
5:39 Australia's Final Destination
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SpaceX Revealed Starship 40's Recovery Plan just CHANGED... What went wrong?
They're losing it! Elon Musk just admitted that ship 40 recovery is not looking good right now.
And that one sentence has forced the entire recovery plan to change.
So what exactly went wrong out there? What's the new plan? Let's get into it.

Nearly two weeks have passed since Ship 40 was left adrift in the Indian Ocean, and the clock is still running. Every hour it runs, the situation gets more critical — because at this point, that spacecraft is basically a drowning patient. And last night, SpaceX finally admitted the danger it's in.
"The SpaceX Recovery team is still working to recover Flight 13's Starship from the Indian Ocean. They've been overcoming challenging conditions and increasingly rough seas as they attempt to guide the 52-meter-long spacecraft to port."
SpaceX Revealed Starship 40's Recovery Plan just CHANGED... What went wrong?
Increasingly rough seas. And here's what's strange about that. A swell like that means nothing to a vessel the size of the Normand Ranger — the tug is fine. The problem is what's on the other end of the rope.
Because in that 45-second video SpaceX released — and it's genuinely beautiful footage, Ship 40 sitting under a hazy dawn in the middle of nowhere — there's something strapped along the length of that hull that wasn't there two weeks ago.
Hold that thought. It explains everything.
Then Elon Musk made everyone a lot more nervous.
"Unfortunately, ship recovery is not looking good right now. Nonetheless, we were able to obtain close-up photos of critical regions of the heat shield and engines for future upgrades."
Read that carefully. Twice.
Recovery is not looking good. If you clicked on this hoping SpaceX was going to drag this thing home to Starbase, half a world away — that hope is basically gone.
Hold onto that one too. We'll come back to it.
So what actually happened out there? Because a week ago, this was all going fine.
SpaceX Revealed Starship 40's Recovery Plan just CHANGED... What went wrong?
Here's the thing that bugged me. Ship 40 had already ridden out rough water for nearly two weeks straight. Why would the ocean suddenly become the problem now?
The answer is that thing I told you to hold onto — the one strapped along the hull.
Go back to that video and freeze it. You'll see Ship 40 wearing what looks like a necklace — a row of big black cylinders strapped down both sides of the hull. Those are Yokohama fenders. Pneumatic rubber cushions wrapped in chain-and-tire netting, the kind used to keep supertankers from grinding each other to pieces when they moor out at sea.
They're doing two jobs. They shield that thin stainless steel from anything that hits it. And they add buoyancy — pushing the ship higher out of the water.
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