Starship explodes shortly after takeoff. That’s why Musk considers it a success

A crazy bang, however welcomed by applause and stadium cheering. Starship has finally lifted off from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas for its maiden launch. SpaceX’s spaceship built to land on the moon and carry a crew to Mars has made its first small jump. And a few minutes later it disintegrated in a spectacular explosion (they call it “rapid unscheduled disassembly”, “rapid unscheduled disassembly”, with that irony that has now become their signature). On the other hand, Elon Musk had said it: “Fun will be guaranteed”. After the stop imposed by an icy valve that forced the postponement of the debut three days ago, the Super Heavy booster, now officially the most powerful carrier in operation and the most powerful ever builtlifted Starship and accelerated it to over 1,700 kilometers per hour.

Although at least five of the 33 raptor engines, it was immediately clear, had not ignited, it seemed at least on the surface that everything went smoothly. Until the Super Heavy would shut down and undock, and Starship would continue on to reach space and end her run in the sea north of Hawaii.

But it didn’t happen. Both, still united, have started a series of somersaults and 4 minutes after launch it all ended with an explosion, it is not clear whether it was “spontaneous”, or whether it was the hand of SpaceX engineers who pressed the button, causing Starship to explode over the Gulf of Mexico (a system that destroys the rocket to avoid losing control of it if things go wrong).

Still a success

L’exultation of the hundreds of employees at the aerospace company’s base, however, it is not out of place. First of all because Musk himself had declared that he considered the chances of reaching orbit on the first attempt low, indeed, he had declared to his followers on Twitter that whatever happened, if Starship and the Super Heavy had managed to leaving the ramp (“clear the tower”) without destroying it would have been a success. And so it was. “Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on an exciting first integrated flight test of Starship! – SpaceX itself tweeted – 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. The teams will continue to review the data and work towards our next test flight.” Musk also congratulated his team on an “exciting test. We learned a lot for the next test in a few months.”

AND SpaceX’s very empirical approach: Launch again and again and fix what doesn’t work time after time. All the data obtained from this first test will be very useful for understanding what and how we can improve and then try again. An explosion still on the ramp would have implied having to rebuild it, and lengthen the time considerably. And time is of the essence. There are many tests to do (in the SpaceX hangars there are many others waiting to fly), first of all to bring Starship into orbit, and demonstrate to NASA that it is capable of making an orbital refueling, reaching the Moon, descending and to return. In fact, Starship is the lander chosen by NASA to bring astronauts back to the surface of the Moon, and the date is still set for the end of 2025. That is, very little is missing: the guarantees to transport a crew and bring them home safe and sound are, of course, very stringent.