Watch how SpaceX launched Starship, the tallest and most powerful rocket ever built, exploded on its first orbital flight

MSN ^ | April 20, 2023 | Staff

[Red Badger]

Story by mguenot@businessinsider.com (Marianne Guenot,Morgan McFall-Johnsen,Kate Duffy) • 13m ago

SpaceX launched its new Starship mega-rocket on Thursday after a frozen valve stopped the first attempt. The mega-rocket exploded about three minutes into its flight but managed to clear the pad. Musk previously said he estimated a 50% chance of success. SpaceX launched its new Starship mega-rocket toward space for the first time on Thursday, after canceling its first attempt due to a valve issue.

Stacked atop its Super Heavy booster at SpaceX's new launchpad in Boca Chica, Texas, the black-and-silver vehicle was poised to prove itself as the biggest, most powerful rocket ever built.

The rocket successfully roared off the launch pad at 8:33 a.m. Central Time, but blew up about three minutes into the flight, at the point when it was due to separate from its booster.

Starship is the rocket on which SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk is hinging his biggest aspirations — including building and populating a human settlement on Mars. NASA, meanwhile, is counting on Starship to land its next astronauts on the moon as soon as 2025.

The company live-streamed the flight attempt, in the broadcast embedded below.

[minnesota_bound]

Here is another look at the rocket taking off and exploding....
Robin Reliant
https://youtu.be/pJdrlWR-yFM?t=479

Here is an earlier model test flight of Elons rocket...
A Big Bang
https://youtu.be/ynyRqUXhHik?t=79

[dynoman]

I think SpaceX will get Starship to Falcon level of reliability.

[dynoman]

Do you think they were able to relight engines during the flight?

[FrankRizzo890]

Different design philosophy.

[FrankRizzo890]

I’ve been reading about this all day, and I just saw a comment over on Slashdot that I think pretty well sums it up: “People in debt for gender studies degrees are mocking a man who just launched a 40 story building into the air”

[GingisK]

Sort of intuitive.

[Paul R.]

A question:

In previous “big” launches (well, not this big) such as Saturn 5’s, Artemis, etc., and esp. with Artemis 1, we see huge cascades of water used to “damp” (mechanical term, sort of like cushioning / absorbing energy) the blast of the engines @ liftoff. I’d noticed that when SpaceX did their engine test of the Super Heavy booster, I did NOT see those volumes of water used to quash the ignition blast.

I wonder why not?

There is considerable speculation online that chunks of concrete may have flown up and damaged multiple engines:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13KtGfpZtDw

(Pretty good early analysis of the launch. See the comments regarding the launch pad damage.)

[Paul R.]

it fell apart during the uncontrolled flipping.

No, after control was lost (and multiple rotations) the vehicle held together, but SpaceX sensibly hit "self-destruct".

BTW, a careful watch of the launch shows pieces of the pad flying around. Some cars hosting livestream feeds were destroyed, too... https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starship-launch-pad-damage/

[central_va]

The first law of rocketry must never be violated.

First Law of Rocketry

"At no time can the pressure in the combustion chamber be allowed to exceed the output pressure of the fuel pump."

[Red Badger]

Yep, idiots, morons and imbeciles.

They do not and cannot understand that this is how business and science works.

That is why this was called a ‘test’......................

[Red Badger]

Yes, I heard that as well.

It is possible..................

[SauronOfMordor]

“whats funny is they all cheered when it happened”

They cheered that “self destruct” worked and it didn’t fall all in one piece on something.

[SauronOfMordor]

I wasn’t intimating that a single engine system could possibly be workable, merely using the small plane analogy to illustrate how more engines = more chances for engine failures.

Probability of engine failure is not important. Probability of arriving safely is what is important.

If a plane can lose any single engine and still land safely, that's a good thing. If it has 4 engines and NEEDS all 4, that's a bad thing.

[BigFreakinToad]

thats news. They blew it up? I haven’t seen that stated in anything I’ve read.

[Justa]

Failure is a critical part of the engineering process. It allows the ‘assholes’ to say “I told you so”.