WHAT HAPPENED:

SpaceX has released a new blog post about Starship’s 14th flight today.

“During Starship’s ascent burn, a single Raptor vacuum engine shut down early. Starship still achieved its planned, passively safe suborbital trajectory by burning its remaining five engines for longer than… pic.twitter.com/0BGft7pyaV

— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) September 28, 2026

Starship has a lot of engines, which both increases the likelihood of one failing and the ability to deal with failure if it happens. That said, the Raptors, while great engines, probably need a bit more refinement to increase reliability. No doubt that will happen.

Related:

The basic success of the Starship 14 orbital test payload deployment and re-entry means that although engineering problems remain, there can be no more doubt that the industrial process of providing cheap access to space is here. While the focus was on the test vehicle the…

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) September 28, 2026