Elon Musk's ambitions for Starship soar high while reality waits on launchpad Elon Musk took part in an interview at the International Astronautical Congress this week and demonstrated a reality distortion field that would make even the most ardent Steve Jobs fanatic take a step back. The interview, which seemed more of a platform for Musk to extol his vision for interplanetary spaceflight rather than a …
You may recall about 2-years ago when Twitler had a bunch of people fired because they signed a letter requesting he be sidelines because he was becoming a distraction from the serious work they were doing. The engineers at SpaceX already know.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/17/spacex-said-to-have-fired-employees-behind-company-wide-letter-criticizing-elon-musk/?guccounter=1
"You may recall about 2-years ago when Twitler had a bunch of people fired"
I do recall. I also recall being amazed that such allegedly smart engineers didn't see their inevitable departure coming before they signed the letter.
See, his Muskiness owns the company. He does the telling, everyone else does what they're told. That's how it works. I'm sure that, on matters within their expertise, their views are at least heard if not actually acted upon. But how the company is run is far from their remit, and if they really don't like it both they and the company benefit from their immediate departure. While he is undoubtedly a pillock, it is not for anyone else to demand that he runs his company in a way that pleases them.
Musk time may not have much to do with reality, but it doesn't seem to be doing SpaceX any harm. I have no doubt that Starship will continue to explode, to the gleeful delight of onlookers, until it eventually doesn't. At that point they're off to the races.
While what you say is certainly true, there's also a lot of wisdom in allowing your employees to express themselves freely. Even if it makes you look bad from time to time. There's only so many rocket engineers out there, and considering they need to also be able to get a security clearance, which doesn't come cheap, you limit the pool even more. Pretty soon you'll be like Amazon where you've already fired everyone willing to take a job in your shitty warehouse and find yourself without anyone left to hire. You can potentially automate a warehouse, but you can't really automate designing and building rocket engines... yet anyway.* Then if you fire all your best people and they go to work for Blue Origin or some other company, how much longer can SpaceX's technical lead hold out?
The phrase "cutting off your nose to spite your face" seems to apply here. There's nothing illegal about it, it's just incredibly shortsighted and stupid.
* Bootnote: Now I'm curious what an AI would come up with if tasked with designing a rocket to get a person to Mars and back
I think you missed the point of the letter. Putting things like that out in the public are how workers in a company try to build support for changing company policies - or even senior management. In other companies, this is how unions become organised.
Yes, this group lost the bet - but their bet was either change of behaviour or they didn't want to work there. Just because Musk "called their bluff" doesn't mean it wasn't ultimately the best choice for them.
Musk's great skill is selling a vision to people with money that is not entirely linked to reality - that does the companies he's bought no end of good, and allows them to spend their way to workable products. The danger for those companies is if his visions lead them on wild goose chases, or people eventually feel defrauded when they realise their money has not gone towards the vision they were sold, but building a distinctly less revolutionary business that ultimately only benefits Musk.
One rocket not exploding is not the same as all subsequent rockets not exploding.
Musk would have to demonstrate a track record of many rockets not exploding before anyone sensible is going to trust them with a payload that they don't want to run the risk of being destroyed in a sudden runaway thermodynamic disassembly event.
Admittedly, non-living payloads can be insured and replaced, so chances with possible explodification can be taken. Once you start talking about putting humans on board, the rules are very different.
"To be absolutely fair to his Muskiness (if I must) SpaceX has the best non-explody rocket record in the business."
Not when it comes to Starship where the non-exploded count is 1. The Falcon is a completely different product line and had already gone through a bunch of failures before getting to where it is now.
I really just don't get how people can still be blind to the fact that the whole Mars thing is just a grift to fund SpaceX. But, if I had my way, I'd tell the FAA to grant Twitler's license(s) on the conditions that
1) He be a passenger on the maiden flight
2) The landing test is conducted on Mars, not Earth
As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter if the rocket suffers some kind of catastrophic failure along the way or everything works perfectly; Twitler is no longer our problem, so a net win for society as a whole.
On the plus side, don't think she can organise a pissup in a brewery - but that won't stop her being a serious candidate to replace Sunak in the eyes of the ones that voted in Truss.
What hope for Mars when her government just gave up trying to get a high speed rail line built from London to Manchester. Though getting to Mars would be cheaper
"does the US get to tax Mars profits?"
This is where it all falls down.... what profits? The surface of Mars could be littered with precious metals whose mining can be done with nothing more than a rake and it could still be a losing venture. A Mars expedition done by a state entity or several nations in collaboration would concentrate on science and that will be worth the price paid in a sense. The technology spin-offs from NASA every year benefit all of society. While the Apollo missions were very expensive, the work done in metallurgy and electronics advanced the state of the art quite a bit. None of that tech transfer would take place with a private company. It would be held secret or delayed until patents expired.
What's the business case for sending people to Mars? Anybody, Bueller, Bueller?
A lot of the N1's problems were quality control related. One launch failed because someone left a bolt inside a propellant tank and a turbopump ingested it and grenaded, for example. They weren't even testing every engine before flight, something I believe SpaceX is doing. However, the two spacecraft do have a rushed development process in common.
N1 engines could only be started once. If you tested one - pass or fail - it could not fly because some of the valves were actuated by explosives.
Raptor engine parts and subassemblies are tested non-destructively. All raptor engines are test fired at McGregor before being installed at Boca Chica. For some reason some commenters like to say raptors have a high failure rate because of failures on the super heavy launch. A more reasonable guess at the time (later confirmed in the mishap report) was a system level issue rather than an engine issue. (Leaky pipes on the booster started a fire that burned the connection between the engines and their control computer)
Spot on.
I used to fly free flight models (F1A gliders and F1J power models to be precise) in competitions where assorted Soviet model flyers used to turn up (and were expected, complete with their KGB keeper) through the '70s and 80s, though by the '90s and into the Gorbachev era the 'minders' had vanished, so I got to know some of them quite well. They were all cynics to a man and the stories that came out as the vodka started to flow were amazing. One of their common sayings was:
"The State pretends to pay us and we pretend to work".
The contrast between the quality of Soviet manufactured goods and that of the free flight models they'd designed and built had to be seen to be believed: all this took place when the FAI Free Flight Competition Rule contained a rule requiring all competitors to have built their own models, so we knew that their beautiful and innovative models were their their own work, including engines and timers.
You couldn't static-fire NK-15 engines at all, because the valves were activated by pyros, and thus were one-time-use-only.
And speaking of bolts, there was the Proton that did launch gymnastics because an accelerometer had been installed upside down - using a hammer to defeat the bracketry specifically designed to stop such an event. To quote the Beastie Boys: Sabotage?
And of course, the Soviets lacked the necessary number of Nazi Rocket Scientists.
There may have been quality control, but the N1 failed because they didnt have the funds to do testing of the entire stack on the ground to discover problems that only happen when you have lots of engines firing. For example most problems only exhibit themselves in flight, like the vibration or pogo problem, one engine fired on the ground is not the same as firing many in flight.
What NASA Risks By Betting On Elon Musk's SpaceX
Loren Thompson
Senior Contributor May 23, 2011
https://www.forbes.com/sites/beltway/2011/05/23/what-nasa-risks-by-betting-on-elon-musks-spacex/?sh=695f927c6eb2
"Even a cursory review of SpaceX programs and plans reveals reasons for doubt. The questions begin with a business strategy that isn't just disruptive, but downright incredible. Mr. Musk says that he can offer launch prices far below those quoted by any traditional provider -- including the Chinese -- by running a lean, vertically integrated enterprise with minimal government oversight that achieves sizable economies of scale. The economies of scale are possible, he contends, because there is huge pent-up demand for space travel in the marketplace that cannot be met within the prevailing pricing structure. By dropping prices substantially, this latent demand can then be unlocked, greatly increasing the rate of rocket production and launches. When combined with other features of the SpaceX business model, the increased pace of production and launches results in revolutionary price reductions.
There isn't much serious research to demonstrate that the pent-up demand Musk postulates really exists, nor that the price reductions he foresees are feasible. He has suggested in some interviews that launch costs could decline to a small fraction of current levels if all the assumptions in his business plan come true, and he has posted a commentary on his web-site explaining how SpaceX is already able to offer the lowest prices in the business."
"So far, SpaceX's track record is decidedly mixed, with three launch failures in seven attempts, sizable schedule delays, and some fairly substantial price increases above what were originally proposed. With regard to launch failures, the company did not succeed in launching its initial Falcon 1 vehicle until the fourth try, about five years after it originally proposed to demonstrate the system."
"There isn't much serious research to demonstrate that the pent-up demand Musk postulates really exists, nor that the price reductions he foresees are feasible"
Whilst I'm reluctant to side with Musk on anything, it's pretty clear from the rate of increase in satellites in orbit that there is and was a substantial pent up demand for for launches. If anyone posits that past performance does not predict the future, take a look at satellites per capita and form the obvious conclusion. As for economies of scale, well they're a thing whether airhead journalists understand or not. Economies of scale are the key enabler of the industrial revolution, and as such the basis of all the technology we enjoy today.
Musk, well he's still a pillock, but that wasn't the basis of the article that was quoted. I might also add that many famours entrepreneurs and technologists have been opinionated, sometimes difficult people. My own dad worked on gas turbines at Pyestock, and knew Frank Whittle. He characterised Whittle as a miserable old sod. But Frank is still a man that history will remember, and rightly so.
"it's pretty clear from the rate of increase in satellites in orbit that there is and was a substantial pent up demand for for launches"
What is it when you deduct all of the Starlink debris being sent up by Elon? It's about the same except for more Cubesats on rideshare missions.
Musk is a pillock, and more than likely a complete pain in the ass to work with.
However, its not the people who played it safe history remembers.
Plus hes saving the US taxpayer millions by having a cheaper launch option than ULA ever produced, such as the falcon heavy costing less to fly in full on throwaway configuration than a ULA rocket of the same lifting ability(and if the falcon heavy can land the sideboosters and core stage its even cheaper)
Spacex have also proved the reliabilty of their rockets as they've lost 2 in 200+ launches (one to a helium tank failure and 1 to a manufacturing fault in the helium tank asembly)
As for starship, all they've proved with that is that it can fly with multiple engine failures, an APU failure, a flight control failure,its strong enough to survive the flight termination system, and it would be great for digging big holes really quickly if you got it to hover at 40 foot from the ground.
heres looking forward to starships next launch.
PS Musk is still a pillock even with the above going for him
"such as the falcon heavy costing less to fly in full on throwaway configuration than a ULA rocket of the same lifting ability(and if the falcon heavy can land the sideboosters and core stage its even cheaper)"
Now add up how many F9H's have flown..... four (aside from Martin Eberhard's Roadster being sent on the first flight as a big FU).
Rockets have been landed since the 1960's. It hasn't been a technical issue, it's been financial. The added risk and the low launch demand aren't there for a big market in reusable boosters. There's about a 40% performance hit to make a booster reusable and breakeven is on the order of 10 uses. Frankly, it's been cheaper to just drop the boosters into the ocean to this point. Elon is launching so many Starlink sats that reuse is important since Starlink, as advertised, is going to be hard pressed to ever make money so they need to save money on launches if they can.
Elon Musk owned two Roadsters. One was with an early VIN number, I think the one that Martin Eberhard wanted. The other Roadster was a later, improved model. It was that later-model Roadster that was sent into Space.
The ability to cut costs dramatically by reusing rockets is important not just for Starlink, but also to help SpaceX provide lower prices to customers for getting cargo into Orbit, and eventually for Elon's so-ambitious-it-seems-impossible goal of establishing a colony on Mars. As an example of lowering costs, a US Air Force general claimed that SpaceX has saved the US government $40 billion (source: https://spacenews.com/nelson-criticizes-plague-of-cost-plus-nasa-contracts/).
As for your claim that there isn't a big demand for rocket launches... SpaceX's launch rate has been growing exponentially over the past few years, and it now accounts for 80% of the worldwide cargo being sent into orbit.
>Spacex have also proved the reliabilty of their rockets as they've lost 2 in 200+ launches (one to a helium tank failure and 1 to a manufacturing fault in the helium tank asembly)
That was back in the days when Elon Musk had more influence, and didn't care to pay for quality control. The first - when the helium tank came loose in flight - was because it turned out SpaceX wern't bothering to do any QC on the struts that attached the tank to the walls. The second - when the thing exploded on the pad during fuelling - happened because they were filling it with superchilled O2 (to get more O2 on board), but had never bothered testing the CF-wrapped helium tank immersed in such cold LOX. Turned out that the coating failed, pure O2 started infiltrating the carbon fibre weave, and kablooie. The fact that they blamed that particular incident initially on a sniper operating from the roof top of a ULA building tells you a lot about the maturity of the company at the time.
What happened since was that, to get rated for crewed flight, NASA obliged SpaceX to do their QC home work properly. This came about following what was reported to be something of a train wreck of a meeting bewteen SpaceX and NASA, in which the company rolled out Elon's vision of "reliability demonstrated by means of having launched lots of of them successfully". NASA said nope, and kept saying nope. NASA's input into the Falcon 9 program is what's resulted in it becoming a highly reliable launcher.
>As for starship, all they've proved with that is that it can fly with multiple engine failures, an APU failure, a flight control failure,its strong enough to survive the flight termination system, and it would be great for digging big holes really quickly if you got it to hover at 40 foot from the ground.
That is being generous! That first flight is a still on going disaster for SpaceX, though few realise it.
Firstly, to get a license for the second launch the company is having to persuade the FAA that they know what they're doing. Thing is, it's the same people who claimed to know what they were doing first time round. The FAA, rightly, can ask "so, what's changed to make it reasonable for us to believe you?".
Secondly, the FAA itself. Their job is to vet license applications, and act as technical experts of last resort to ensure that companies really do know what they're doing. And, as the litany of things that went really badly wrong with the first launch shows - particularly the failure of the FTS to disintegrate the vehicle - the FAA failed in their role as tech experts of last resort; they believed SpaceX. The questions they should be asking themselves is, what went wrong in our assessment of the first launch license application, and how have we (the FAA) changed to ensure that we don't get it wrong a second time.
This second one really, really matters because with a vehicle like this and an outcome like the first launch had, there is a very real possibility that a future launch could go just as badly wrong and end up wiping out Port Isabel or some other urban conibation. It's the FAA's job to prevent that. If the FAA decides that it cannot be competent enough to guarantee that, then they can't grant a license.
Thirdly, the design itself. The failure of the flight termination system means they're going to need a bigger, better one. Thing is, Star Ship itself sitting on top also needs a FTS, and this too failed (despite Star Ship being fully loaded with LOX and LMETH - you'd think it'd have gone up immediately but it didn't). Also, Star Ship cannot afford to carry this FTS up into space. It needs to be dumped before reaching orbit, because it cannot afford to have lumps of explosives strapped to the outside when it re-enters the atmosphere for a landing. But, if a larger more comprehensive FTS means that dumping it becomes difficult, then the whole Star Ship concept could be toast.
I think there is a real possibility of this; they used point charges to punch holes through the tank walls, and that failed to set anything off, and Star Ship did not disintegrate on command. Point charges can themselves be easily detached. If instead they're forced to have linear cutting charges strapped up the length of Star Ship, to be able to cut the thing open end to end, I don't see how they can then also detach those. If that's what they have to have, and they cannot detach them, then Star Ship won't be able to reenter the atmosphere and land without blowing itself to smithereens in the process. So it won't be re-usable. So the launch tempo would depend on manufacturing, not simply refurb / refuelling it. So, the rate at which Star Link V3 can be deployed is limited and more costly. Which probably risks the entire show.
This analysis shows just how fragile a position SpaceX is probably in, and how dependent they are on the good will of the FAA to say "yes". Insulting the FAA is simply going to incline them to say "No", when there's probably still / already a ton of technical reasons to say "No" anyway.
FTS is simply disarmed, you routinely hear the call-outs during falcon 9 lauches ("Stage 1 FTS safed", "Stage 2 FTS safed").
Stage 1 / boosters reenter with the FTS still on the booster, but disarmed.
It would not exactly be in the interest of any launch provider to have a FTS that uses unstable explosives that can randomly detonate through vibration or heat...
Falcon 9 is totally irrelevant. The Stage 1 never gets fast enough for atmospheric heating to be an issue. Stage 2 get disposed of.
Name an explosive that is guaranteed not to detonate when heated to 2,500C (the temperature it would have to survive, still attached to the outside of StarShip on reentry).
Plus hes saving the US taxpayer millions by having a cheaper launch option than ULA ever produced, such as the falcon heavy costing less to fly in full on throwaway configuration than a ULA rocket of the same lifting ability
Your making the critical error of just looking at the ULA as a rocket. It's primarily a pork barrel delivery system designed to divert money to particular interests.
"SpaceX's track record is decidedly mixed, with three launch failures in seven attempts"
With Starship, they had one vehicle land and not blow up before launching the full stack. It wasn't a full up Starship, though. It was an empty hull test article with only 3 engines.
"and he has posted a commentary on his web-site explaining how SpaceX is already able to offer the lowest prices in the business.""
Odd that SpaceX needs to raise hundreds of millions of dollars each year to keep the doors open. The Italian space agency just made a substantial investment in SpaceX. This smacks of a financial system that can't feed itself from generated revenue. Nor can they continue expensive development of new systems from earned income.
That's what you get when a stoner with a five year old's sense of humor is in charge. At least he leaves SpaceX alone most of the time since it has its own highly competent CEO unlike Tesla, or Twitter's powerless figurehead CEO.
I bet Ms. Shotwell was very happy when Elon bought Twitter, because she knew he wouldn't have time to mess with SpaceX's operations for a while (other than changing that launch date, I guess)
The first experimental launch attempt of the starship used first generation hardware that was obsolete when it was launched. The entire reason for this launch was to find out how far they could go with this kit and what would be needed to make the next attempt work better. SpaceX was required to address all of the know problems (around 1000) with the first launch before they could attempt a second launch which they have now completed according to SpaceX.
After watching these two videos I believe that the launch pad problem may be fixed! They are kind of long but the engineering and effort (and money) used to fix the launch pad is truly amazing and well worth the watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09DDpHdIYgU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqVLP3DKOk4
As I have said before, Musk lost me with the pedo incident and IMHO he has only spiraled downward since then. Luckily SpaceX has continued changing the future of space launch systems with and without him. They just launched and landed their 67th Falcon 9 and launched 3 Falcon Heavies as well this year. Two Falcon 9 boosters have now launched and landed 17 times. As an old timer that goes all the way back to the Mercury program this is like sci-fi to me, except of course it is really happening. For all his faults he has still managed, with a lot of help, to turn the space launch industry on its head.
They've not done a full power test of it. By definition, it has not proven to be fixed.
Every rocket engineer knows how to launch rocket such as this without destroying the pad or damaging the rocket. That they've not done so is, probably, asking for significant an on-going regulatory difficulties.
>For all his faults he has still managed, with a lot of help, to turn the space launch industry on its head.
Ha. Falcon 9 became reliable only after the child in the room was sidelined and the grown ups started listening to what NASA was saying about mandatory QC, if they ever wanted to get it rated for crewed flight. The credit really should go to NASA, who didn't actually have to help SpaceX fix Falcon 9 but did indeed help.
"The credit really should go to NASA, who didn't actually have to help SpaceX fix Falcon 9 but did indeed help."
NASA was under a lot of pressure. They chose SpaceX to construct a crew capsule to get astronauts to and from ISS and it was delivered 4 years late. In the mean time, NASA had to pay the Russians an increasing amount of money per set to send people up on Soyuz. Starting over with another company to get a ISS compatible crew capsule built and tested was going to add even more delays. Even with NASA's help, the first descent of a manned Dragon capsule almost lost the heat shield.
SpaceX was going to be the sole provider for a lunar lander, but NASA is slowly learning not to trust Elon and his "optimistic" time lines so they've contracted with more companies to have options or the Artemis program could sit idle for years waiting. SLS is already a massive money pit. To have to put it on hold indefinitely would be an even bigger embarrassment.
"and it was delivered 4 years late" maybe so but remind me how well the "old space" competitor has performed the same job...
PS I'm defending SpaceX, not Musk: starting with the cave rescue pedo thing he's increasingly demonstrated he's a horrible person, and his Twatter train wreck is demonstrating he's no business genius either.
> NASA was under a lot of pressure.
They were, which rather illustrates the bad set up for How Space Is Done in the USA (political motivations...).
The more sensible thing would have been to turn to the Europeans, and get them to do have done a crew capsule. Ariane 5 was crew-rated (though never flown as such), and the ATV was also crew rated, lacking only seats, a conical shape and a heat shield to have become a up-and-down capsule. All the necessary avionics / thrusters were already done (and these are the hard, expensive bit), and it could autonomously dock with the ISS (unlike Dragon).
I guess it was a case of it had to be a US solution, and it was better that it was 4 years late than foreign!
I think part of SpaceX being 4 years late was that you have to do an awful lot of qualification for a crew-rated vehicle. And the qualification is not just for the vehicle, it's the fitness-for-purpose of the organisation doing the work that gets qualified first (i.e. is its approach to QC and assurance right?). That sounds a bit meta, but one will not successfully build a crew-rated vehicle unless the organisation is right. Afterall, look at what one (deliberate?) lapse did in Boeing with the 737MAX.
I suspect it took quite a while for SpaceX to adjust from the Muskian gung-ho approach to the necessarily mature approach NASA was needing to see before they'd let anyone get inside one of their products.
>Even with NASA's help, the first descent of a manned Dragon capsule almost lost the heat shield.
I hadn't heard that. Crew inside it? I think I'd have got pretty cross if I'd been onboard that one.
"I think part of SpaceX being 4 years late was that you have to do an awful lot of qualification for a crew-rated vehicle."
No, Elon was off doing other things and there is video of at least one NASA director asking where the heck the crew capsule was. Elon boasted from the start of the Dragon capsule program that it was being designed from the ground up to be man-rated. This was even before they got the contract from NASA to get crews up and down from ISS. Apparently, that might have been an exaggeration.
SpaceX's first launch of Booster/Starship was a dog and pony show. Mismatched hardware, obsolete systems already in the process of being replaced on the next iteration and known issues in many different areas. They knew on the day that three engines (maximum failures for a mission, so no margin left) were not going to light. 85 seconds into flight the steering was off-line having lost the hydraulic system. The Flight Termination System that was supposed to be automatic turns out to be manual and completely ineffective. The final events were the booster and Starship blowing up of their own accord and showering Mexican territorial waters with debris. Digging a huge crater was an issue and made worse by the "not a deluge" system not ready in time for a 4/20 launch. There had to be some engineers that knew the concrete had no chance of surviving even one launch. Chances are marginal that the rocket bidet can survive. Even if it does, the fresh water contamination of the site is an ecological no-no.
A rocket lander I worked on over 10 years ago is still in one piece with over 200 launch/landing cycles. At the time I was with the company, we won a NASA prize for that vehicle (second place). John Carmack of Doom fame won first place with his company, Armadillo Aerospace. Rumor has it that Elon saw the competition and that's what got him going on SpaceX's Grasshopper program.
If the first flight was just a vanity shot, it could end up back firing spectacularly. There's a good chance that all those failures - particularly the FTS - add up to the FAA not permitting a second flight.
For me, the FTS is a real danger to the whole project. If the FTS has to become linear cutting charges to open it up along its entire length, Star Ship likely cannot also reenter the atmosphere with that still attached. I don't know how you attach linear cutting charges such at that they're not going to fall off during the launch, but can still be jetisoned when they're no longer required. Re-entering the atmosphere with explosives still on the outside sounds like a non-starter.
The whole concept is novel. There's never been a re-entry vehicle that's also had to have a launch FTS attached to it. Shuttle's FTS was on the SRBs and external tank; the Shuttle itself didn't need any (because it carried no fuel as such). Apollo - none (Saturn V - yes), and so on. Star Ship carries large tonnages of fuel up into orbit, and therefore needs a launch FTS, which might mean it cannot safely re-enter.
Here's a very small (1,000lb thrust rocket motor) digging a hole during a test:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIMY5Qx37oA
The concrete was bog standard and 6-8" thick. Fondag doesn't hold up any better under the blast of a rocket motor even though it can handle a bit more temperature.
. . . for Mars (or elsewhere), I would strongly oppose a human landing on Mars before all the science by the robot explorers is complete and we have some reasonably definitive answer as to whether there is or, more likely, was life on Mars.
The instant a human sets foot on Mars, that research is immediately compromised, since it is virtually impossible to make the exterior of a life support suit clean enough to avoid spreading human microbes willy nilly across the planet's surface. The robotic systems we've sent and will send are difficult enough to make clean enough and even then we have to be very careful where we land them.
Hey, Elon. I hear that the asteroid Eris is nice this time of year.
It's probably too late. The Tesla roadster they launched ended up in a Mars-crossing orbit. It was supposed to reach just short of Mar's orbit.
Basically, the treaties these days add up to anything capable of reaching Mar's orbit or travelling beyond are supposed to be sterile to a very high standard. SpaceX / Musk went ahead without that, as it wasn't supposed to reach Mar's orbit. Having underestimated the performance of the first Falcon Heavy (despite knowing full well the performance of its constituent parts - Falcon 9's). Thus SpaceX put the US in the embarassing position of having not lived up to its treaty obligations...
Eventually, that thing will crash on Mars, potentially contaminating it, unless it hits something else first. It's aphelion only just exceeds Mar's orbit, so I suspect that if it ever did hit Mars it'd do so quite gently (so far as these things are concerned). Possibly it won't burn up completely in Mar's thin atmosphere, so arguably the chances of contamination are maximised...
"Billionaire Elon Musk in 2011 had said that he would put a man on Mars in the next 10 years"
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/elon-musk-in-2011-promised-to-put-man-on-mars-the-internet-remembers-3027617
So I'd take anything this man says with a pinch of salt so humongous it's probably visible from space.
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