Starship intentionally self-destructs, SpaceX’s ‘successful failure’

spectacular explosion of SpaceX’s new Starship rocket Minutes after it took off from its launch pad on the maiden flight test, it attracted global attention as Elon Musk loyalists and many others glued to their screens to watch the lift-off, which was earlier postponed.

However, experts have suggested that the blast was ‘deliberate’.

what happened here

The SpaceX rocket called Starship exploded three minutes into its maiden flight over the Gulf of Mexico. Starship is the most powerful rocket ever developed and is designed to be fully reusable.

SpaceX said in a tweet starshiP experienced “a rapid unscheduled disassembly prior to stage separation”, the rocket was intentionally destroyed by its self-destruct system, exploding and falling overboard.

starship building

Elon Musk led spacex starship Composed of two distinct phases, or sections. Starship is approximately 400 feet (120 m) long and weighs 11 million pounds (4.9 million kg).

The first stage, called the Super Heavy, is a collection of 33 separate engines and provides more than twice the thrust of the Saturn V, the rocket that sent astronauts to the Moon in the 1960s and 1970s.

The first stage is designed to bring the rocket to about 40 miles (65 kilometers) above Earth.

Once the Super Heavy is done, it must separate from the rest of the craft and safely descend back to the surface to be used again.

At that point the second stage, called the Starship spacecraft, has to ignite its own engines to carry a payload — whether people, satellites or anything else — into orbit.

Could the Starship Explosion Have Been Intentional?

SpaceX admitted that several of the Super Heavy’s 33 powerful rapport engines malfunctioned on ascent and that the booster failed to separate the rocket and Starship as designed before the ill-fated flight ended.

An out-of-control rocket filled with highly flammable fuel is a very dangerous thing, so to prevent any damage, SpaceX engineers triggered the self-destruct mechanism and blew the entire rocket over the Gulf of Mexico Gave.

All modern rockets have mechanisms that allow engineers to safely destroy the rocket in flight if needed. SpaceX itself has flown many of its own rockets during testing.