Starship test flight a partial success with an explosive ending (Update)
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The good news is that Starship cleared the tower and didn’t blow up the launch pad. That was the minimum criteria Space X had set for success for this test. The bad news is that about four minutes into the test flight the ship itself wasn’t able to separate from the super heavy booster and the whole rocket was destroyed.

Space X tried to set expectations before the launch.

This little clip gives you a sense of the scale. This is a massive rocket.

The rocket was loaded with 4500 metric tons of propellant and the countdown continued. It came to a halt at 40 seconds to give Space X time to check everything one last time. Finally, the green light was given and the liftoff took place. Watch how slowly this clears the tower compared to smaller rockets like Falcon 9.

Elon was there watching of course.

A lot of other people had gathered to watch the launch. I love this photo. It’s worth clicking on it to see the whole image.

Here’s what the liftoff looked like from closer to the ground. There are large chunks of something flying toward the camera here. Wondering if the engines scoured those out of the ground or if it was something else.

From there the ship climbed quickly.

There were shots of the engines themselves which suggested maybe six of them weren’t operating.

You can see it here pretty well:

The ship made it to nearly 40 kilometers in altitude where it was scheduled to execute an maneuver and separate. This is the view from about 35km up.

If all had gone as planned the ship itself would have separated from the booster and climbed higher and circled the earth once before coming down in the ocean. The booster stage would have attempted to land itself just like the Falcon 9 boosters do. But that’s when things went wrong. Unable to separate the ship from the booster, the rocket just spiraled and finally exploded.

Space X took the loss in stride.

Elon Musk tweeted his congratulations.

The plan is to have another test later this year once they’ve absorbed all of the lessons to be learned from this launch. Finally, here’s the full Space X coverage. I’ve cued this up to the launch itself but you can scroll back if you want to see more.

Update: This guy is such a goon.

Update: And this guy.

The Hindenburg explosion killed dozens of people, dummy. This was a test flight.

The mission wasn’t a complete success obviously. Would have been great if it had gone all the way. I’m sure they were hoping for that. But it wasn’t a complete failure either and you’re not a rube if you say so.

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