SpaceX Scrubs Starship Flight 13 Twice in 24 Hours

SpaceX has had a frustrating week at Boca Chica. The company attempted to launch Starship's 13th integrated flight test and was forced to abort the attempt after some of the vehicle's Raptor engines failed to ignite during the start sequence. Then, in what became a second blow within the same news cycle, a subsequent attempt was also scrubbed after ignition, suggesting the issue wasn't a one-off.

This is Starship V3, the latest iteration of the most powerful rocket ever built, and these kinds of scrubs are a normal part of the programme's test-heavy approach. SpaceX has always been explicit that it would rather abort on the pad than push through an anomaly. Still, two scrubs in quick succession, both related to engine start, raises questions about what specifically has changed with the V3 propulsion configuration and whether there's a systematic issue rather than an isolated fault.

What We Know About the Abort

The first scrub occurred when a subset of Starship's Raptor engines didn't complete their start sequence. The vehicle has 33 Raptor engines in its Super Heavy booster stage alone, plus six in the upper Starship stage, and the ignition choreography for that many engines is extraordinarily complex. SpaceX's flight computers are designed to detect any deviation from expected start parameters and abort automatically, which is exactly what happened here.

The second abort, described as occurring after ignition had begun, indicates the engines did fire but something in the sequence still triggered the automated safety system. SpaceX hasn't released detailed telemetry publicly, which is standard practice for test flights, but engineers will have a very detailed picture of exactly which engines behaved unexpectedly and why.

It's worth noting that Starship V3 features several upgrades over the V2 configuration that flew earlier this year. The Raptor 3 engines at its core are reportedly more powerful than any previous version, with improved propellant efficiency and fewer external components. More power and fewer mechanical redundancies can sometimes mean a tighter tolerance window during start-up.

The Waymo Problem Next Door

Interestingly, Starship's scrubs weren't the only transport-related headache making news this week. In San Francisco, Mayor Daniel Lurie announced he is pushing for tougher regulatory oversight of autonomous vehicle operators following what he described as a Waymo traffic incident that caused significant disruption. Details are still emerging, but the mayor's intervention signals that city governments are growing less patient with the idea that robotaxi companies should be largely self-regulated.

The timing puts two of the most watched autonomous technology programmes in the same news cycle for different reasons. SpaceX's scrubs are a reminder that cutting-edge propulsion remains genuinely hard. Waymo's regulatory trouble is a reminder that even working autonomous technology faces non-technical barriers that are just as difficult to navigate.

What Happens Next for Starship

SpaceX will work through its scrub data and almost certainly attempt Flight 13 again within days or weeks. The programme has shown a consistent ability to turn around quickly after setbacks. Flight 12, which launched earlier this year, successfully demonstrated reuse of the Super Heavy booster and brought the upper stage down for a controlled ocean entry.

Flight 13 was expected to push further on reusability milestones, potentially including a second booster catch at the Mechazilla arms on the launch tower, which SpaceX first achieved on Flight 5 in late 2024 and has since repeated. That capability is central to SpaceX's long-term cost reduction goals for the vehicle.

NASA is also watching closely. Starship is the chosen Human Landing System for the Artemis lunar programme, and any delay to the flight test campaign has downstream implications for NASA's lunar timeline, which is already under considerable schedule pressure.

For now, the stack sits on the pad at Starbase. The next attempt will come when SpaceX's engineers are satisfied they understand what happened and have addressed it. That's how this programme works, and despite the frustration of a scrub, it's the right approach.