SpaceX’s Last Launch Looms Over Its Next One

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[00:00:32] Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Thursday, February 20th. I'm Charlotte Gartenberg for The Wall Street Journal. A number of social media creators are not happy with browser extensions that help consumers find coupons. They claim those services are stealing their money. So now they're taking them to court. Then, Elon Musk's SpaceX has deep space ambitions. But the company's Starship vehicle exploded on a recent test flight and rained debris across the Caribbean.

[00:01:02] WSJ's Micah Maidenberg tells us what it'll take to get the next Starship to the launch pad. But first, social media creators are suing over browser extensions like PayPal Honey and Capital One Shopping that are designed to find discounts when shoppers check out online. In several lawsuits, they're accusing these browser extensions of taking credit for consumer purchases that they say they're responsible for,

[00:01:31] essentially by taking the commission that they feel they're owed. Our reporter Megan Graham has been following this, and she joins us now with more. Megan, I have not used one of these extensions before. So how do they work? When you are online shopping, so if you're on Sephora.com, for instance, it'll say, do you want me to look for coupons for you? And I think you can set it where it just does it automatically. It will search coupon codes, promo codes, whatever it may be, free shipping, and put those in for you.

[00:02:00] So you can feel like, okay, I know that there was no secret first-time buyer deal going on. It like scours the internet? It will scour the internet to find those. I don't know if you've ever used those sites that you can search for coupon codes, but you try them over and over again. And this does that all for you automatically. It's very quick. As a consumer, that sounds great. I get a coupon, and I don't have to do a ton of work to find it. But if you're a social media creator, not so great. Right. So this is where this comes in.

[00:02:28] So if you're familiar with affiliate marketing, let's say you are a content creator who makes content about babies. And you might say, okay, I make all this great content, and in my content, I might be wearing some kind of maternity item, whatever have you. If you are an affiliate marketer, you can show these items and then have some sort of link from your content, wherever that might be.

[00:02:53] And if you have a relationship with this retailer, they will give you some kind of kickback, whether it's like a flat fee, however they choose to pay. But it incentivizes people to basically showcase these items in their content. Okay. And you're reporting that it's profitable for creators. Affiliate marketing spending in the U.S. is expected to total about $12 billion this year, which is up from $10.72 billion in 2024. That's according to research firm eMarketer.

[00:03:22] So I want to get into these lawsuits. Who's suing whom? What are the grounds these plaintiffs are presenting for some of the lawsuits? So to go back to what we were talking about, about the affiliate marketing, when a creator is showing a product, there is a little bit of tracking technology that follows the consumer. The timing varies. Maybe it'll track me for a week.

[00:03:47] And if I end up buying that item, even if it's five days later, that creator will potentially get the commission of me buying this item. What creators are saying is that when that consumer uses those browser extensions, it's intercepting that tracking technology and then giving the credit for the purchase to Honey or whoever it may be, taking it away from the creator who made the content. That sounds like it could get complicated.

[00:04:17] How have some of these defending companies, you know, PayPal Honey, Capital One Shopping, Microsoft Shopping, how are some of these companies responding? So all these lawsuits have happened very quickly. To my knowledge, they haven't responded legally to any of them, but there are so many suits and there's new ones every day. I've reached out to all of these companies and they're really saying we disagree with this, but they're not giving specifics. Where could this all be headed?

[00:04:44] Could we see practices change from these companies that do these extensions? Could we see practices change from social media creators? Talking to experts, if the suits go a certain way, it's just going to inform how everything shakes out. If creators are saying this is impacting my revenue in a major way or they're saying, OK, this retailer works with Honey and allows this to happen. Well, I'm not going to work with them anymore because I'm not making as much money as I used to.

[00:05:12] But one creator, Nate O'Brien, that I talked to said, you know, this is probably impacting like 10 percent of my revenue in affiliate. So that's not nothing. But it's not enough for him to say I'm going to stop doing it. That was our reporter, Megan Graham. Coming up, SpaceX wants to take us to deep space. But the company's Starship vehicle exploded on a test flight last month. How are the company and regulators dealing with the fallout? And when might SpaceX try again?

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[00:06:11] All das auf einer einzigen Plattform. Deshalb funktioniert die Welt mit ServiceNow. Mehr auf ServiceNow.de slash AI for People. Last month, SpaceX's seventh flight test of its Starship vehicle exploded over Turks and Caicos. Anytime there's a major anomaly or mishap in a space operation,

[00:06:38] regulators, in this case the Federal Aviation Administration or FAA, asked the companies for an investigation and some fixes. So right now, Starship's eighth test flight is grounded. Here to talk us through what happened and what could get it back in the air is WSJ reporter Micah Maidenberg. So, SpaceX cannot launch another Starship until they get regulatory clearance from the FAA. What exactly happened with the last flight from a technical standpoint?

[00:07:08] So, SpaceX is investigating exactly what happened down to granular details to get to the root cause right now. They haven't released that information yet. All indications are that that work is ongoing. However, Elon Musk, the company's CEO, did say right after the explosion that there was data indicating there was a leak in part of the ship, pressure built up inside the vehicle, more pressure than could be vented out,

[00:07:36] and a fire began according to SpaceX. And that eventually led to the explosion and the vehicle coming apart when it did. So, who was affected by this explosion? Where did the debris end up? When the vehicle blew up, there were a lot of videos that sort of went around the Internet. People were seeing what appeared to be like flaming pieces of the vehicle kind of coming toward Earth.

[00:08:01] What was happening there is like parts of the rocket were burning up as they were coming back in through Earth's atmosphere. However, not all the debris burned up. Some of it landed in the Caribbean region, including on the island territory of Turks and Caicos. That's all we know right now where debris made landfall, so to speak. So, folks on Turks and Caicos have been finding debris. They've been finding hexagonal heat shield tiles, pieces of what appear to be rubber,

[00:08:29] and are trying to figure out how to clean this up and what the next steps are for all this detritus that has shown up there. In addition, the presence of debris caused the FAA and SpaceX to basically clear airspace in part of the Caribbean region for some period of time. And that caused flight delays. It caused planes that were in the air to have to hold positions to avoid potentially getting hit by any debris that made it back down.

[00:08:58] This incident has really reignited some simmering tensions between the aviation industry and SpaceX because the issue here is like how do you share airspace? And who's responsible when something happens and the airspace that passenger planes are flying through can't fly through those or have to make maneuvers to guard against risks, planes getting hit, that kind of thing.

[00:09:23] And you reported that in Turks and Caicos, SpaceX representatives met with a local government disaster management team along with UK aviation accident officials to develop a debris recovery plan. Micah, current and former SpaceX executives have said that failures allow the company to gather data, to learn, and improve. So how is the company responding to this particular incident and its delays?

[00:09:51] This is sort of part and parcel of what the company does. It's built very sophisticated rockets and spacecraft. And part of the secret sauce there, according to folks familiar with the company, is to build, test intensely, and accept failure as a part of the learning process. And that's part of what SpaceX is doing here with Starship.

[00:10:13] Executives of the company say public safety is always first and foremost in their mind and they don't want to take any risks for the uninvolved public. SpaceX is facing a delay on its next planned launch because it has to get regulatory clearance for another flight. What does this mean as the company looks to increase how often it conducts Starship launches? SpaceX has been very vocal about wanting to launch Starship more.

[00:10:42] This is their next generation deep space vehicle. It is an experimental rocket system right now. It's not operational. And with an exploded vehicle and an investigation to undertake and questions about how to do this debris cleanup and how to coordinate airspace, there's just a lot to sort through before the next flight. They do have deadlines to meet for Starship.

[00:11:06] Starship is an integral part of NASA's return to the moon program, which is called Artemis. And SpaceX has got to get that vehicle ready for that mission, which is now set for the end of 2027. That's a long way off on some ways, but in the world of rocket and spacecraft development, that's a pretty tight deadline because these are complicated machines that if they're going to carry humans, you have to iron out all of the potential sort of problems with them.

[00:11:36] And so the company has been wanting to fly more and get closer to that goal of having the vehicle ready for future moon and deep space missions. That was our reporter, Micah Maidenberg. And that's it for Tech News Briefing. Today's show was produced by Jess Jupiter with supervising producer Catherine Millsop. I'm Charlotte Gartenberg for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back this afternoon with TNB Tech Minute. Thanks for listening.