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FAA orders SpaceX to investigate Starship V3 booster failure

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The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has ordered SpaceX to investigate why its Starship booster failed during the company’s May 22 test flight, according to a statement released to TechCrunch on Wednesday.

This means SpaceX will have to pause any further Starship test launches until the investigation is completed and the results are submitted to the FAA for approval, diminishing the chance that another will occur before the company’s anticipated IPO in mid-June.

SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“After a thorough assessment of the operation, the FAA has determined the May 22 SpaceX Starship Flight 12 launch resulted in a mishap. The mishap involved the Super Heavy booster as it flew back to the Gulf of America after stage separation. There are no reports of public injury or damage to public property,” the FAA wrote. “The FAA will oversee the SpaceX-led investigation, be involved in every step of the process, and approve SpaceX’s final report, including any corrective actions. ”

The problem with the Starship booster occurred a few minutes into the flight, which was the first launch of SpaceX’s upgraded version of its super heavy rocket system. The first “V3” Starship made it through the point of maximum dynamic pressure and into space, where the booster was supposed to separate from the ship and return to the Gulf for a simulated landing in the water.

The booster did separate from the ship. But it immediately experienced an apparent engine failure — or a possible series of engine failures — when it tried to perform the sustained burn that is meant to propel the booster back toward SpaceX’s launch site in South Texas. This led to the booster tumbling down towards the Gulf before most likely exploding on impact.

SpaceX made a plethora of changes to how Starship works in this third version, with the intention of making the rocket far more reliable than it was in the previous 11 test flights. That included tweaks to the design of the booster, the inclusion of all-new third-generation Raptor engines, and upgrades to the Starship vehicle itself.

Starship experienced its own failure after the booster separated, as it lost one of its six raptor engines. This contributed to SpaceX abandoning one of its testing goals for the flight, which was to do another sustained burn in orbit with Starship.

SpaceX expects its rockets to fail in various ways during this development process, though the goal is to ultimately create a vehicle like the Falcon 9 that becomes not only reliable, but incredibly reusable. Making reusable rockets is crucial to lowering the costs associated with sending heavy payloads to space. As it detailed in its IPO filing, SpaceX is thoroughly reliant on Starship becoming reliable and reusable in order to continue growing its Starlink service, which is by far the company’s biggest revenue generator and currently its only profitable business.

The FAA has ordered SpaceX to perform multiple mishap investigations during the development of Starship. The federal agency also ordered SpaceX rival Blue Origin to perform them as that company develops its own heavy-lift rocket, New Glenn.

Just last week, the FAA cleared New Glenn to fly again. Blue Origin is expected to perform the fourth New Glenn launch attempt in the next month or so.

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Dangote Cement suspends proposed London listing

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Dangote Cement Plc has put its proposed listing on the London Stock Exchange on hold, citing current market conditions and the company’s strategic priorities.

The company disclosed this in a regulatory filing signed by Edward Imoedemhe, the company secretary, following a meeting of its board of directors on Tuesday.

In May, Dangote Cement announced it was in early talks over a potential London listing, a move that would help widen its access to overseas investors and capital.

The company later, in July, explained that the faster and more practical listing process in the United Kingdom influenced its preference for London over Dubai for the secondary listing.

On Tuesday, the cement producer said it will not proceed with the secondary listing, noting that its shares remain listed on the Nigerian Exchange Group, and that the decision will not affect the company’s operations.

“The Company’s ordinary shares remain listed on the NGX, and this decision does not in any way affect the Company’s operations or business plans,” Dangote Cement added.

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READ ALSO: Dangote Cement’s nine-month profit jumps 31% as revenue hits N3.8 trillion

The company said it will remain focused on delivering sustainable value to its shareholders and building on its strong market position.

Dangote Cement is majority-owned by Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, who launched the continent’s largest-ever initial public offering in September for his oil refinery.

Dangote Cement, with a production capacity of 55 million tonnes per annum, has a footprint in 11 African countries, including Cameroon, Ethiopia, Zambia, Tanzania, and Côte d’Ivoire, among others.

The corporation’s nine-month profit in 2026 jumped 31 per cent, while its revenue hit N3.8 trillion, boosted by improved revenue from cement and clinker sales.


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X launches its own clipping feature to spur influencer engagement

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Over the past few years, X has released a number of features to make itself a friendlier hub for influencers. The latest effort to attract social media talent? Its own clipping tool.

Clipping is the pivotal social media technique by which longer videos are spliced into TikTok-attention-span length “clips” and then strategically posted to engage as many eyeballs (and, thus, derive as much ad revenue) as possible.

On Monday, X announced the tool, which, from what we can tell, appears to be little more than a straightforward video-trimming feature that lets users edit videos and post them to X.

The site says that every clip includes a “Clip from” label that links back to the original video from which it was derived, allowing X users to see more about the creator and the creator’s content.

“Grab your favorite moment from any video, add your take, and post it without leaving X,” the company posted.

The platform added that both creators and clippers can “earn from views on the clip through Original Content Rewards,” X’s rewards program. The program is only available for eligible creators and pays out based on specific levels of audience engagement.

In many cases, influencers pay special firms to handle clipping for them. More and more large companies are also turning to such services to run marketing campaigns, and the technique has been used in political campaigns as well.

Over the last several years, X has tried to compete with other social sites by expanding the kind of content it supports. To take on sites like YouTube, X introduced long-form videos in 2022 (when the site was still known as Twitter), and they have since taken off on the platform. To be more like Substack, it long ago dispensed with the site’s traditional character limits and introduced long-form blog posts, which are available to premium subscribers.

X has kept at it this year. In March, it added a feature called “exclusive threads” that lets creators put parts of a thread behind a paywall so only subscribers can read them, and in July it launched a live-streaming studio and set aside $1 million for creators who go live.

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