What's next for SpaceX's Starship after test flight mishap

You're looking at the ninth test flight of SpaceX's Super Heavy Starship rocket launched Tuesday from Boca Chica, Texas. But it wasn't all smooth flying. The first issue occurred moments after liftoff. After separating, the booster exploded midair upon its return to Earth. And about 30 minutes later, some of the fuel tank system sprung a leak and engineers lost control of the Starship. It broke apart upon reentry above the Indian Ocean. CBS News space consultant Bill Hartwood joins us now. So Bill, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk spoke with CBS Sunday morning correspondent David Pogue ahead of the launch about his hopes for an eventual Mars mission. Let's listen. If this goes well and all goes well, how soon before we can do a first uncrewed trip to Mars? If we're lucky, we've probably got about a 50% chance of sending ships from Earth to Mars at the end of next year. So November, December next year, in about 18 months. Well, all did not go well. So what's next for Starship? Well, you know, it's interesting. They're very early in their test program, right? As you said, this was just the ninth test flight. You have to keep in mind, this is the largest, most powerful rocket ever built in the history of space flight. It's obviously gonna take some time to get the kinks worked out and they're working on that. Now, obviously they don't wanna see failures and neither does anyone else, but given how rapidly they're able to pin down problems, fix them, and then fly it again to test that fix, I think his 50% chance of making the end of next year for unpiloted trip around the moon is probably not that much affected by the failure they had this week. I think they can still make that, but the point is they're gonna have to launch a lot of these rockets and they're gonna have to start getting it right to demonstrate reliability and certainly enough reliability and safety before anyone's gonna put people on board. She hopes to ramp up test flights with a new one every three to four weeks. So is that expected to face any pushback from the FAA? He might. You know, the FAA certainly did it. First of all, the FAA is the licensing authority for launches. You have to have their permission to launch because they're responsible for public safety, ultimately. After two failures they had in January and March with the Starship Super Heavy, the FAA grounded them, oversaw an investigation before they were given permission to fly again. Now, the FAA has not yet decided if this latest flight is what's classified as a mishap or not. The public was never any danger here, but obviously there were malfunctions that have to be investigated. SpaceX is going to do that. Whether the FAA steps in this time around, we don't yet know. But, you know, the idea of being able to launch these every, you know, one every three to four weeks, clearly anomalies, you know, problems in flight are things where the FAA can step in at any point and require an investigation that would slow down that rate. No question about it. Are there any concerns China could beat America at getting these types of ships to the moon? I think there's a lot of concern that China could beat America back to the moon, no matter what the ship is. You know, NASA has its own rocket ship, the Space Launch System and the Orion capsule that supposedly is going to carry astronauts back to the moon. They're gonna orbit, or not orbit, but go around the moon next year. And then the flight after that is gonna send astronauts down to the surface using a variant of that Starship upper stage that NASA has contracted with SpaceX to build. Can they do that before 2030? That's the year that the Chinese say they'll be there. So I don't know. It remains to be seen. I think if the Chinese make real progress here, it could spur Congress to throw more money at the moon program, just because of national pride and not wanting to get beat by China. But you gotta remember that America's already been to the moon, been there, done that. So I'm not sure that the public would get as fired up about a race with China now, since we won that race 56 years ago. All right, Bill Harwood, thank you, as always.