SpaceX's Starship Explodes After Launch

By Elaine Wang

To much anticipation, SpaceX ran the first fully integrated flight test of the most powerful rocket ever built, Starship, on April 20th. After months of delay and a scrubbed last-minute attempt, the massive vehicle lifted off successfully from the SpaceX Starbase at Boca Chica, Texas to the joy of many engineers and rocketry fans. However, the rocket’s brief journey both started and ended with a bang–quite literally– as its liftoff was unexpectedly violent and nearly 4 minutes after launch, it exploded.

What is collectively referred to as “Starship” consists of two parts, Starship and the Super Heavy rocket. Starship is the 50-meter-tall spacecraft capable of carrying up to 100 people on trips around Earth and to other planets. The Super Heavy is a 69-meter-tall booster rocket powered by 33 Raptor engines running on cooled liquid methane and oxygen. Stacked together, Starship as a whole is 120 meters tall For scale, that is around the size of a 37-floor building. It’s even 9 meters taller than Saturn V, which sent people to the moon multiple times One of the most remarkable aspects of the system is its financial sustainability– as part of SpaceX’s goal of lowering the cost of entering orbit, both parts of the system are fully reusable, and the Raptor engines are also mostly reusable. Additionally, Starship features the capability to refuel in low-Earth orbit for future trips to Mars.

The prototype launched on April 20th was planned to complete nearly one orbit around Earth, but unfortunately it didn’t reach space. After tumbling out of control for a minute, the rocket self-destructed to minimize danger to word people and structures on the ground as it fell. From the get-go, only 25 of the 33 engines fired (though 31 had previously worked in a test in February), and the concrete launchpad was shattered due to an oversight in the design of the pad. In spite of this, Starship made it past Max Q, the point in launch when a vehicle experiences maximum dynamic pressure (in simpler terms, when a vehicle undergoes the most mechanical stress) The debris afterwards, ranging from launch pad concrete to metal sheets from Starship’s self-destruction, spread beyond the expected range and infiltrated nearby wildlife areas, raising concern among environmentalists. SpaceX stated that the mission was a success because much was learned from this launch, and they plan to try again in the upcoming months. It is unclear when SpaceX will gain FAA approval for another test, but multiple Starships are currently being constructed.