SpaceX loses a trillion after aborted launch

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**SPEAKER_4** (1:26)
SpaceX lost $1 trillion in market value following its public offering. The stock is currently sinking below its initial offering price.
And its newest Starship rocket just aborted right on the launch pad.

**SPEAKER_5** (1:40)
The evaporation of wealth happening right now is, I mean, it's difficult to fully grasp. You're looking at roughly the gross domestic product of a medium sized nation just vanishing from the market.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:51)
Yeah.

**SPEAKER_5** (1:51)
Elon Musk's personal net worth plummeted from $1.4 trillion down to $797 billion.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:58)
Wow.

**SPEAKER_5** (1:58)
Right. He lost his brief status as a trillionaire almost as quickly as he gained it. So the question we really have to ask is, how does the largest public offering in history lose a trillion dollars in value right out of the gate, all while trying to build orbital data centers?

**SPEAKER_4** (2:12)
Well, the answer to that really starts at the mechanical reality of the aborted launch. The sequence of events on the pad is incredibly specific. The Super Heavy Booster actually ignited, the water deluge system fired to protect the concrete pad from all the acoustic energy, and then an automatic abort triggered because four of the new Raptor engines simply failed to start.

**SPEAKER_5** (2:32)
Four of them.

**SPEAKER_4** (2:32)
Yeah, four. And they are now physically replacing two of those engines before they can even think about doing anything else.

**SPEAKER_5** (2:38)
Which is no small task. And, you know, acoustic energy is a concept people usually misunderstand.
You think of a rocket launch as just being loud, but that sound is a physical force.

**SPEAKER_4** (2:49)
It's kinetic.

**SPEAKER_5** (2:50)
Exactly. The shock waves vibrating off the launch pad are violent enough to shatter the rocket's own steel structures and literally tear the engines apart.

**SPEAKER_4** (2:59)
Which is wild to think about. The sound alone could destroy the ship.

**SPEAKER_5** (3:02)
Right. So the water deluge system acts as a dampening blanket. It floods the pad with hundreds of thousands of gallons of water in seconds, turning that destructive sound into steam. It just absorbs all that kinetic energy.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:16)
So the engines ignite, the water floods the pad, the steam clouds the area, and then, well, the computers realize four engines are essentially dead on a rifle.

**SPEAKER_5** (3:25)
That halts the entire operation.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:26)
It has to. The physics of spaceflight are entirely unforgiving.

**SPEAKER_5** (3:30)
Very.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:31)
Like a commercial airliner can lose an engine mid-flight and land safely at the nearest airport.

**SPEAKER_8** (3:37)
Sure.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:37)
But a rocket relies on a highly specific thrust-to-weight ratio just to clear the launch tower without dragging itself against the steel arms. A single misfiring engine alters the entire mathematical equation of the flight.

**SPEAKER_5** (3:51)
Yep.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:52)
So the automated systems caught the failure of those four engines and stopped the launch, which saves the vehicle from exploding on ascent, obviously.

**SPEAKER_8** (4:00)
Right.

**SPEAKER_4** (4:00)
But it leaves the ground crew with a fully fueled, highly stressed machine just sitting on the pad.

**SPEAKER_5** (4:06)
The physical tension on the ground in a moment like that is immense.

**SPEAKER_9** (4:10)
I can't even imagine.

**SPEAKER_5** (4:11)