The mission lasted for just four minutes, but the fiery debut of SpaceX’s Starship resulted in stunning visuals and an abundance of new questions.
The fully integrated Starship megarocket blasted off at 9:33 a.m. ET on Thursday, April 20, from SpaceX’s launch facility in Boca Chica, Texas. The inaugural mission didn’t go as planned, with the rocket entering into a fatal tumble that forced ground controllers to issue a self-destruct command at the 3:59 mark of the mission.
Many observers greeted the failed mission with hefty doses of schadenfreude, as SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has done much lately to attract the public’s ire. The rocket did explode prematurely above the Gulf of Mexico, that is true, but this result was not wholly unexpected. It is rocket science, after all; SpaceX will learn from this mission and move on, just like it did when developing Falcon 9, currently the world’s most reliable medium-lift rocket. With that said, here are some key things we noticed during the short-lived mission.
Staged engine ignition is very cool
The booster’s 33 Raptor engines don’t ignite simultaneously and are instead ignited in banks, or clusters. The first set undergoes ignition with the countdown clock at T-6 seconds, followed by the next set of banks until they’re all lit. On Thursday, this made for a unique visual spectacle, in which the blast beneath the rocket grew iteratively until the rocket was finally able to leave the ground.
Starship took about 10 seconds to clear the tower
It took what felt like an eternity for Starship to finally clear the 142.95 m-tall (142-metre) launch and catch tower. In fact, this slow vertical crawl at first made me believe that something had gone wrong. Weighed down by 10 million pounds (4,500 metric tons) of liquid methane and liquid oxygen, and with three Raptor engines failing to ignite, the rocket required around 10 seconds to fully clear the tower.
More engines, more problems
Speaking of that trio of uncooperative Raptor engines, that was just the start. By the time Starship reached its peak altitude of roughly 39 miles (63 kilometers), as many as eight Raptors had either called it quits or simply refused to light in the first place. “The vehicle experienced multiple engines out during the flight test, lost altitude, and began to tumble,” SpaceX explained in a statement. “The flight termination system was commanded on both the booster and ship.” SpaceX now faces the daunting task of having to make its Raptors more reliable, as having upwards of 24% of its booster engines fail is clearly unacceptable.
Starship drifted horizontally after clearing the tower
Shortly after clearing the tower, the 120.09 m-tall (120-metre) Starship began to drift horizontally — by a lot. This was likely a consequence of the Raptor failures, but it made for an unsettling sight. Looking at the video above, you can also see a tremendous amount of debris splashing into the ocean. The giant plume produced during the launch was primarily made from dust, sand, and rocks kicked up by the engines, and not engine exhaust (methane fuel barely produces a plume).
A flame trench is desperately needed
Even with three Raptors not working, Starship still exerted an estimated 15 million pounds of thrust at liftoff. With no safety provisions like a flame trench or water suppression system, the rocket’s blast at liftoff wreaked havoc at the launch tower and surrounding area. Video feeds from LabPadre and others showed a tremendous amount of debris emanating from the launch site, blasting through remote-controlled cameras, palm trees, and in one case a parked minivan.
Flame trench desperately needed
The nearby tank farm was badly damaged, and even Starhopper, the prototype vehicle used to develop Starship, took a hit. Most impressively — or disturbingly — was the giant crater that formed directly beneath the Orbital Launch Mount (OLM). Given all this, SpaceX will need to consider a major change to the launch site and construct a flame trench similar to the one at NASA’s Launch Pad 39B.
The launch got Starship grounded
In a tweet, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said the company could perform a second flight in “a few months.” For that to happen, however, the company will need to procure another launch licence from the Federal Aviation Administration; the regulator has grounded the rocket and launched an investigation as a result of the anomaly. A return to flight of the fully stacked Starship “is based on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety,” the regular wrote in an emailed statement. “This is standard practice for all mishap investigations.”
Clearing MaxQ was a huge accomplishment for SpaceX
On a more positive note, Starship did survive MaxQ — the moment during a rocket’s ascent when it endures the maximum aerodynamic stress due to the combination of atmospheric pressure and its velocity. For Starship, this moment came at the 55-second mark of the mission. The rocket continued for a few more minutes and lasted until the end of stage 1 burn. Unfortunately, stage separation did not happen when it was supposed to, as the rocket fell into a tumble that required SpaceX to issue the destruct sequence.
Starship won’t be ready for a while
I’m sure many of us went into this launch with a glass-half-full perspective, hoping — and even expecting — to see the first mission unfold as planned. After stage separation, the upper stage was supposed to journey through space for a brief stretch and crash some 155 miles (250 kilometers) off the coast of Hawaii. That obviously did not happen, with the fully stacked rocket exploding far above the Gulf of Mexico. Despite this successful failure, I now consider this glass to be half empty, particularly as I look to the future of this program and NASA’s Artemis 3 mission, which needs the vehicle to land humans on the Moon in just a few years.
Starship won’t be ready for a while
SpaceX has a knack for moving quickly, but this first mission will undoubtedly produce a hefty to-do list for the private space company, including a fix for those problematic Raptor engines, a complete overhaul of the Boca Chica launch site (including the possible installation of a flame trench and water deluge system), and a potential rethink of the stage separation system, the latter of which failed to work at the designated time. That’s not to say these are intractable problems — they’re likely not — but these fixes won’t happen overnight.
The launch was awesome
Stepping back for a moment, the debut of Starship was an absolutely breathtaking sight. A personal highlight for me was the moment when Starship finally emerged from the dark cloud of smoke and debris, rising upward in defiance. To see something so huge — and yet so fragile — take to the skies was an admittedly emotional experience for me. And to recognise Starship’s revolutionary potential for opening a slew of new and unprecedented opportunities in space, well, that’s nothing short of goosebump inducing. We truly live in amazing times, as we continually search for new ways to expand our presence outside of our home planet.