Elon Musk is now one of the most popular humans on the planet. His Starship landing was broadcasted worldwide, and it was absolutely wild to watch—this massive rocket landing itself in a seemingly tiny space.
But did you know Elon also likes to game? And that’s where this story begins.
Musk recently posted a clip from his Diablo IV gaming session, where the Starship almost didn’t make its epic landing. In the clip, you can hear a SpaceX engineer telling Musk things aren’t going as planned.
“I want to be really upfront about scary shit that happened,” the unnamed engineer says, while Musk plays Diablo IV. He explains that a misconfigured component didn’t have the right “ramp-up time for bringing up spin pressure” on the booster.
“We were one second away from that tripping and telling the rocket to abort and crash into the ground next to the tower,” the engineer continues.
“Wow,” Musk responds. “Yikes.”
The engineer didn’t stop there. Right before engine startup on the booster’s descent, a cover on the skin of the booster ripped off—right in a spot that had been spot-welded. “We wouldn’t have predicted the exact right place, but this cover that ripped off was right on top of a bunch of single point failure valves that must work during the landing burn. Thankfully, none of those or the harnessing got damaged, but we ripped this chine cover off over some really critical equipment right as the landing burn was starting. We have a plan to address that.”
So, what was Musk being briefed on? It was the fifth Starship integrated test flight, or IFT-5, that took place on October 13. SpaceX set out its most ambitious goals yet, including returning the Super Heavy booster to the launch site and catching it with a pair of oversized “chopstick” arms sticking out from the launch tower.
And guess what? They pulled it off. History made.
The full conversation isn’t clear since Musk’s clip on X is only about three minutes long, but it shows that even those perfect-looking rocket launches (and, in this case, booster landings) can come dangerously close to going wrong. And every test gives SpaceX a “butt load” (yes, that’s what the engineer called it) of post-flight data to guide their next steps.
“We’re trying to do a reasonable balance of speed and risk mitigation on the booster” before the next flight, the engineer explains. Interestingly, this will be the first Starship test flight whose schedule isn’t dictated by the FAA. While SpaceX usually races ahead of the FAA’s launch license approvals, this time, the regulator was ahead, granting approval for IFT-5 and IFT-6 at the same time.
So, what’s next for Musk, Diablo IV, and Starship? Only time (and maybe another gaming session) will tell.