See SpaceX Starship Explode After Being Launched
The SpaceX Starship rocket exploded barely moments after launch.
Tesla founder Elon Musk experienced an enormous disaster in the Twitter clip below, as a test run for one of the entrepreneur’s SpaceX Starships doesn’t go exactly as planned. Thankfully, the vessel wasn’t being manned by any human beings which makes watching the video much less terrifying but it is a major step backward for the aerospace company which has been hard at work for years on this project. But, when it comes to rocket design even a step back is good as it proves that you can only go up from here.
In the clip, we see the SpaceX Starship barely make it off its launching pad when it goes up in a fiery blaze in the sky. Following the initial explosion, bits and pieces from the failed rocket come plummeting to the ground in a large plume of dust and smoke, letting off some more flames as, presumably, the ignited fuel tanks burn out. With this blunder, it’s back to the ol’ drawing board for Musk and the rest of his tech team hoping to be at the forefront of the way we approach space technology.
SpaceX’s Starship holds (or held, before it exploded) the bragging rights of the company’s largest and mightiest rocket built but the vessel has been causing more of a headache for the design team than the celebratory step forward that they were hoping for. Before its explosion, the rocket was given a debut launch on Monday but due to a pesky frozen pressure valve, the flight never took place. After putting their heads together, the crew behind the Starship made some adjustments and came back more confident on Thursday with their second go.
Of course, we now know how this try went with the rocket crashing down in a blaze of glory. Not willing to throw their towels in, the SpaceX Starship team quickly reminded followers that even getting the rocket off the launchpad was considered to be a monumental step forward with only better things to come from here hoping to reach their final goal of transporting goods and people into space.
Seeing the promise in what SpaceX’s Starship and its other programs and inventions could mean for the scientific community, NASA granted the company an almost $3 billion contract to pour its resources into Starship. Hoping to eventually get astronauts back on the moon, Starship will be a very important part of NASA’s Artemis moon program and exploration moving forward.
While Elon Musk’s attention may have been pulled elsewhere over the last few months with the forward-thinking and divisive entrepreneur taking a stab at standing at the helm of Twitter and facing less-than-savory claims about his Tesla vehicles, he may want to focus more energy on SpaceX’s Starship to ensure its fruitful progress. But, as SpaceX said and we echoed above, any step forward in the creative process is still a major one for how technology will shift in the future. Hopefully, the company will learn from its mistakes and come back bigger and better than ever next time.
