Record-setting SpaceX Starship launches, but blows up 4 minutes into test flight

SpaceX managed to get the most powerful rocket ever off the launch pad Thursday, but it exploded four minutes later and didn’t make it to space during the first test flight of the massive Starship and Super Heavy spacecraft.

A company engineer suggested the result wasn’t unexpected.

“Starship just experienced what we call a rapid unscheduled disassembly,” said John Insprucker, SpaceX principal integration engineer and commentator. “This was a development test, a first test flight of Starship and the goal was to gather the data, and as we said, clear the pad and get ready to go again.”

Before Thursday, SpaceX had only flown low-altitude flights of the Starship alone without the booster, with many also ending in fireballs.

“Everything after clearing the tower was icing on the cake,” said Kate Tice, a SpaceX quality systems engineer and commentator.

The launch happened on 4/20, one of CEO Elon Musk’s favorite references to drop on his Twitter account as it’s also a reference to 4:20, the time of day people often associate with smoking marijuana.

Musk was on site in Boca Chica, Texas, at the Starbase control center during the launch, and he congratulated the team on Twitter calling it an “exciting” launch.

“Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months,” Musk wrote.

The mission was the first time the booster with its 33 Raptor engines capable of producing more than 17 million pounds of thrust at liftoff was connected for a launch with a Starship spacecraft.

After a short delay at the opening of the launch window, the 395-foot-tall rocket cleared the pad at 9:33 a.m. EDT. Cheers from the crowd gathered at the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California, drowned out commentators during a live feed, which were in turn drowned out by audio of the roar of the engines.

Video showed at least six of 33 engines shut down as it climbed to a maximum altitude of more than 26 miles before what was supposed to be a separation of the spacecraft from the booster three minutes into flight. On its climb, the video showed the curvature of the Earth, but without stage separation, Starship was not going to make it to space, which would have needed to be at least 62 miles altitude.

One minute after the failed separation with the combined hardware seen falling and spinning back down to Earth, the two exploded in the sky, which prompted a collective “awww” that turned into more applause and cheers from the gathered crowd.

Plans were for Starship to climb to between 93 and 155 miles during a suborbital trip two-thirds of the way around the Earth for a hard splashdown near Hawaii. That aspect of the flight test will have to wait.

“So you never know exactly what’s going to happen, but as we promised, excitement is guaranteed and Starship gave us a rather spectacular and what was truly an incredible test thus far,” Insprucker said.

NASA’s Space Launch System with its 8.8 million pounds of thrust that sent the Orion spacecraft into space last November on the Artemis I mission remains the record holder for most powerful rocket to make it to space, which topped the Saturn V rockets from the Apollo moon missions.

“What a sight from the ground cameras as Starbase,” Insprucker said. “We’re flying at twice the thrust of the Saturn V.”

The rocket, using a combined propellant of liquid methane and liquid oxygen, did manage to make it through what’s called Max Q, the area where the craft endures maximum dynamic pressure, and it did achieve speeds up to 1,340 mph.

The launch was the second try by SpaceX after a Monday attempt was scrubbed because of a frozen pressurization valve on the Super Heavy booster. The stacked first stage and spacecraft only received the OK to fly from the Federal Aviation Administration last Friday.

Had all gone well, both the booster and Starship were to have separated and each made their own hard water landings, with the booster splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico and Starship in the Pacific Ocean after its flight.

The launch system, though, is designed so that eventually, the Super Heavy booster would return to the 469-foot-tall launch integration tower often referred to as “Mechazilla,” with a landing achieved with the aid of two pivoting metal arms called the “chopsticks.”

The Starship spacecraft, which has six of its own Raptor engines, would make a vertical landing at its destination as well, which would make the combination the first fully reusable rocket in the industry.

While this was the first time SpaceX sent the stacked version for a test launch, it plans many more before any commercial operations begin.

Dozens if not more than 100 of those operational launches will be needed as well before SpaceX lets humans on board, but it has at least three commercial human spaceflight missions already lined up as well as being awarded the NASA contract to land the next humans to walk on the moon.

Production for more test flight hardware is already underway with five Starships and eight Super Heavy boosters already in SpaceX’s hands. Test flights will continue from Texas, but SpaceX is also building out a Starship launch tower at Kennedy Space Center for when it begins operational flights.

“It’s important to have that system fill-in, basically the manufacturing line so that we have product ready to go as soon as we’re done with this test,” Tice said.

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