I just saw a couple of videos of the aftermath of the launch. There were a couple of shots of Stage 0, or the launch pad..
Holy freaking cow.
The thrust from those 33 Raptors basically blew the bottom of the pad to smithereens. There was a huge crater under the pad, with rebar exposed. It’s now being speculated that in the 8 seconds the vehicle was held down before liftoff, the flying concrete may have damaged the first stage, which may be why 3, and later 6 engines weren’t working at liftoff.
As it stands, the tank farm next to the pad sustained damage from the flying debris.
One of the things that Elon said they wanted to avoid was building a flame deflector or a flame trench. Because of the ground and the water table at Boca Chica, that may be a problem, especially if SpaceX wants to launch another one “in a few months” (as Elon said in a Tweet yesterday).
Can you elucidate on the details (ground and water table)?