BREAKING: SpaceX Starship explodes after launch

[george]

BREAKING ???? SpaceX #Starship has exploded after launch pic.twitter.com/DHwadFFgv9

— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) April 20, 2023

 

SpaceX’s Starship lifted off the pad in Southern Texas and cleared the launchpad, its first milestone, but then began tumbling as it was preparing for stage separation and the vehicle came apart some four minutes into flight.

 

“Obviously this does not appear to be a normal situation,” SpaceX’s John Insprucker said during the broadcast.  

— Washington Post 2023-04-20

At least the launch pad survived

By Christian Davenport

Starship may have exploded, but it still met one of the major milestones SpaceX set out for the flight: It didn’t blow up the launchpad. The massive rocket was able to lift off successfully and didn’t explode until it was on its way to space.

 

If the rocket gets “far enough away from the launchpad before something goes wrong, then I think I would consider that to be a success,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said before the flight. “Just don’t blow up the launchpad.”

 

With 33 engines igniting, he said he was worried about a cascading effect, where one failure leads to others in succession. “It’s like it’s like having a box of grenades,” he said. “You know, really big grenades.”

 

Losing “the launchpad is really the thing we’re concerned about,” he said. “It will take us probably several months to rebuild the launchpad if we melt it.”

 

[onthedarkside]

OMG! 

 

Live updates here............

 

SpaceX's uncrewed Starship explodes on launch attempt

https://edition.cnn.com/us/live-news/spacex-starship-rocket-launch-04-20-23/index.html

[still kicking]

Just like his cars 

[george]

 

[Denim]

Back to the drawing board.

 

I read somewhere recently that Musk was kind of expecting some kind of setback. This is bigger than he was thinking of.

[Slip]

Why is this lunatic being allowed to do this?  Note I don't say 'that lunacy'.

[george]

This test flight was a small step in a grand project. Before Starship can complete its first grand mission or host astronauts, SpaceX has significant technological questions to hash out.

NASA tapped SpaceX's Starship to serve as a lunar lander, ferrying astronauts from a separate spacecraft down to the lunar surface for the Artemis III mission, which is currently scheduled for as early as 2025. Before that mission can take off, however, SpaceX has to prove that Starship can make it to the moon.

 

The sheer mass of the vehicle will force the company to refuel the spacecraft while it's still in Earth's orbit. More than a dozen launches — carrying nothing but propellant — may be required to give a single Starship lunar lander enough fuel to traverse the 238,900-mile (384,500-kilometer) void between the Earth and the moon.

 

Before SpaceX can even hash out that process, it'll also need to learn to put Starship into orbit in the first place. Today's test flight only sought to get to near orbital speeds and make a partial lap of the planet.

 

— CNN 2023-04-20

 

 

[Social Media]

 

[Celsius]

Didn't we go to the moon like half a century ago?

[ozimoron]

3 engines were apparently out, this was visible in the video. Neither a success not a failure other than the unplanned loss of the main booster rocket.

[ozimoron]

3 minutes ago, Celsius said:

Didn't we go to the moon like half a century ago?

He hasn't actually done anything not already achieved by NASA 53 years ago.

[ozimoron]

TSLA down about 10% today

[Chicksaw]

It's not how many times your rockets blow up, it's how many times you pick up the pieces and launch again.

[Tug]

Ouch!glad no one was killed to bad it sets us back a bit hope it gets ironed out asap 

[placeholder]

Does anything think that calling this "Breaking News" was done as a joke?

[ozimoron]

7 minutes ago, placeholder said:

Does anything think that calling this "Breaking News" was done as a joke?

I prefer "unplanned disassembly" news. Orwellian doublespeak has arrived.

[thaibeachlovers]

3 hours ago, Slip said:

Why is this lunatic being allowed to do this?  Note I don't say 'that lunacy'.

Have you forgotten the similar that happened to NASA first attempts to launch a rocket, and even after they were able to do so successfully?

Early days.

 

I suspect those that were qing up to join the Mars expedition may have second thoughts.

 

However, the cost at this time is perhaps too much and better uses for the money than vanity projects.

[Chomper Higgot]

“Excitement guaranteed.”

[bendejo]

11 hours ago, george said:

If the rocket gets “far enough away from the launchpad before something goes wrong, then I think I would consider that to be a success,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said before the flight.

Arrogant would be an understatement!

Congrats on today's success, buddy!  Glad to hear it went well.

 

 

[herfiehandbag]

Known in the business as "doing an Elon".

 

I believe the official verdict was that at 1'04" after launch it went "all of a twitter"!

[Chomper Higgot]

Keeping you up to date, because I know these things are matters of concern to many.

 

SpaceX Starship’s pronouns are “was/were”.

[JonnyF]

9 hours ago, Celsius said:

Didn't we go to the moon like half a century ago?

Yep.

 

In a little pod covered in tin foil. And the wind was blowing when we got there. Amazing indeed.

[Chomper Higgot]

18 minutes ago, JonnyF said:

Yep.

 

In a little pod covered in tin foil. And the wind was blowing when we got there. Amazing indeed.

“Huston, we got one.”

[KhunBENQ]

Looks to me as if his planned interplanetary colonies might take quite long ????

Did you know that he suffers the same behavioral disorder as Greta Thunberg? (Asperger)

[mrfill]

19 hours ago, Slip said:

Why is this lunatic being allowed to do this?  Note I don't say 'that lunacy'.

Because he can. Remember, this is the man who frittered $44bn on a shouting website he didn't want. This failed firework cost about 5% of that - small beer to Mr Moneybags who has only really acquired such immense wealth because a lot of punters believe nearly everything he says and are willing to put their money in his vastly over-valued companies.

Tesla is 'valued' at more than the combined values of VW, Toyota and Ford so it is priced as if in a dream world - in 13 years the price to asset value has never been lower than 44 times and has been up to 181 times.

Imagine if you can, buying a house for 10m Bt and then borrowing half a billion Bt against its value. What could possibly go wrong?

[Bangkok Barry]

It lasted four minutes before, in Amerispeak, there was a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" (translation, it exploded), and it cost how much?

[ozimoron]

3 minutes ago, Bangkok Barry said:

It lasted four minutes before, in Amerispeak, there was a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" (translation, it exploded), and it cost how much?

I don't know what went down faster, TSLA shares or the rocket.

[thaibeachlovers]

22 hours ago, JonnyF said:

Yep.

 

In a little pod covered in tin foil. And the wind was blowing when we got there. Amazing indeed.

I'm not joining in the conspiracy theories, but it was an amazing feat for them to blast off from the moon at exactly the right time to meet the mother ship without running out of fuel, and done probably before decent computers were small enough to put in the capsule ( the rockets were apparently designed by engineers using slide rules ).

[stevenl]

19 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

I'm not joining in the conspiracy theories, but it was an amazing feat for them to blast off from the moon at exactly the right time to meet the mother ship without running out of fuel, and done probably before decent computers were small enough to put in the capsule ( the rockets were apparently designed by engineers using slide rules ).

Amazing feat as in 'outstanding' or as in 'i don't believe it'?

[thaibeachlovers]

5 minutes ago, stevenl said:

Amazing feat as in 'outstanding' or as in 'i don't believe it'?

I already said that I'm not with the conspiracies on that, so it was an amazing feat, but they were incredibly lucky to survive. I'm sure they knew there were no guarantees that they would return, but went anyway. They are my definition of "real men".