Uploaded January 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Flight 12 is already taking longer than expected to get ready, and now SpaceX has run into another serious problem. The booster planned for this mission has just suffered a major failure during ground testing, only a few weeks after the previous booster was destroyed in a similar test. It is not normal to see two boosters fail back to back at this stage of development, especially when these vehicles are supposed to be close to flight ready.
So what exactly is going wrong, and should this be a reason for concern as SpaceX prepares for its next Starship launch?
Before we dive deeper into what happened and what it means for Flight 12, make sure to subscribe to the channel for more updates on Starship.
On the evening of January twentieth, the test tank B18.3 failed during a high-pressure structural test at the Massey test site. This was a full-scale booster-class test tank built with the same nine-meter diameter and steel thickness as an operational Super Heavy booster. The test was designed to verify how the structure behaves under the combined pressure and compression loads created during hot staging, when the upper stage ignites while still attached to the booster.
Flight 12 is already taking longer than expected to get ready, and now SpaceX has run into another serious problem. The booster planned for this mission has just suffered a major failure during ground testing, only a few weeks after the previous booster was destroyed in a similar test. It is not normal to see two boosters fail back to back at this stage of development, especially when these vehicles are supposed to be close to flight ready.
So what exactly is going wrong, and should this be a reason for concern as SpaceX prepares for its next Starship launch?
Before we dive deeper into what happened and what it means for Flight 12, make sure to subscribe to the channel for more updates on Starship.
On the evening of January twentieth, the test tank B18.3 failed during a high-pressure structural test at the Massey test site. This was a full-scale booster-class test tank built with the same nine-meter diameter and steel thickness as an operational Super Heavy booster. The test was designed to verify how the structure behaves under the combined pressure and compression loads created during hot staging, when the upper stage ignites while still attached to the booster.
