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Comment by senko | Hacker News Reader

Article is referencing another[0] which mentions "grounded" but not "indefinitely" and doesn't cite its sources.

The only thing cited (in this article) is:

> An anomaly occurred during the ascent and prior to stage separation resulting in a loss of the vehicle. No injuries or public property damage have been reported. The FAA will oversee the mishap investigation of the Starship / Super Heavy test mission.”

Which is normal - I'd expect nothing less. You'd be crazy to allow further flights (of anything) until you have a full understanding of what happened.

But of course, that doesn't have the same nice sting as "grounded indefinitely".

[0] https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/20/spacex-starship-exp...

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Indefinitely is until an as yet undetermined time. Aviation commonly uses this term, and flying mag is focused on aviation.

The FAA have grounded all flights “indefinitely” in the US as recently as this year.

If it is grounded without a specified end time, isn't it grounded indefinitely?

From a strict reading of the words, Starship was to be grounded "indefinitely" regardless of the outcome of the launch.

The launch license was for only 1 launch. They need to get another one to launch again, which will take an indeterminate amount of time, and isn't technically guaranteed to ever be granted.

Considering Starship is part of the Artemis III program, it's guaranteed to be granted.

Not exactly true, they could be prohibited from launching in Boca Chica and would have to move all operations to the Cape.

The Artemis program could also be cancelled by politicians and budgets

No. It’s grounded until further notice.

That's what indefinite means.

I'd imagine it's grounded until SpaceX can at least demonstrate the next launchpad won't rain down on their neighbors.

There seems to be a lot of things that went wrong in this launch, and the FAA will want to see those issues investigated, from engine failures at launch, to the disintegrating launchpad, all the way to a possible malfunction of the flight termination system, because it seems the rocket disassembled itself before the FTS could do its job in a controlled way.

The word "indefinitely" definitely has connotations beyond its denotations.

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