Elon Musk's Starship goes up in smoke on 4/20: World's most powerful rocket fails to separate and EXPLODES in $3BN fireball before crashing back down to earth

Daily Mail UK ^ | April 20, 2023 | Stacy Liberatore

[Morgana]

Elon Musk's SpaceX's Starship exploded into a ball of fire on 4/20 during its second failed orbital launch in a week.

The world's largest and most powerful rocket – which was unmanned - lifted off in South Texas and successfully cleared the launchpad, its first milestone.

But the craft was sent into a tailspin when the booster - called Super Heavy - failed to separate from the rocket in mid-air.

The mission ended at around four minutes when the failure sent both stages crashing toward Earth, imploding mid-descent over the Gulf of Mexico.

Despite the failed launch, the team at SpaceX reportedly cracked out champagne bottles and chanted 'go Starship' after the rocket's explosion. The entire Starship program cost around $3billion.

The companies leadership - including Musk - has repeatedly stressed the experimental nature of the launch and said any result that involved Starship getting off the launchpad would be a success.

Musk himself claimed last month that there was a 50 percent chance his spacecraft could explode during the launch.

The billionaire congratulated the SpaceX team on an exciting test launch of Starship' about 20 minutes after the explosion.

'As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation,' SpaceX tweeted.

The company shared on Twitter that its team will review data and work toward another flight for the rocket.

'With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today's test will help us improve Starship's reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multi-planetary,' SpaceX tweeted.

[griffin]

Which means there were such significant unknowns and unpredictability in the models that actual real world flight tests were needed to progress reliably.

It is refreshing to see this willingness to learn by failure in order to progress reliably at a faster rate.

[ifinnegan]

Yes.

[wrench]

“Take note: It was a successful launch. This was a historic event.”

So was the first Titanic voyage, wildly successful.

[Paladin2]

“It’s part of the process.”

Apparently Rocket Science is much like it was in the days of Robert Goddard.