SpaceX Starship explosion - Elon Musk's rocket goes up in flames

A SPACEX Starship rocket crashed and exploded in a huge fireball on Wednesday after narrowly missing its landing pad.

Dramatic footage shows the unmanned test capsule blowing up as it smashed into the ground having soared to 40,000ft, in its first high-altitude flight.

However, it gained too much speed to land successfully, and went out in explosive flames.

The Starship milestone on Wednesday puts SpaceX closer to replacing its Falcon spacecrafts.

About two minutes after launching, one of the Starship's three Raptor engines gave out.

A minute later, a second engine cut off, but the prototype rocket continued its journey upward.

The Starship lost its third engine around four-and-a-half minutes into the flight, and the rocket moved to a horizontal position and pointed back down towards Earth.

As the Starship got closer to the ground, its engines fired up again and flipped it back into a vertical position and slowed it down.

The prototype still landed at a faster than ideal speed, causing it to explode.

On its website, SpaceX wrote that the flight was "designed to test a number of objectives, from how the vehicle’s three Raptor engines perform to the overall aerodynamic entry capabilities of the vehicle (including its body flaps) to how the vehicle manages propellant transition."

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[Dagoth_Ur_]

Up in flames, after successful test.

There, fixed it.

[andrewcliffe]

This was a 95% success at doing the impossible. No one else is near this development level, no one

[NAMOBHARATNEWS]

this will keep spacex motivated and teach new things..

[ayeeman]

The engines were meant to switch off in sequence on the ascent... God the media is poor

[Ralph]

Everything went PERFECTLY to plan, except there was a fuelling issue at the very end resulting in' a harder than optimal landing'. This was a very successful test, get your facts straight.

[coolmantay]

All these 'news' outlets missing the important parts of the launch. Where's max altitude and BELLY FLOPPING A FRICKING ROCKET back to earth? We see explosions all the time, how often do we see bellyflopping rockets?

[lgbtdestruction.]

How can you make this put to be bad. Look at the moves it pulled off.

[Charlievans]

That'll do for me, book me on the first flight.

[DbeeM]

The fact that Starship pulled off the “bellyflop” maneuver is unbelievable, the hard and explosive landing was inconsequential and was pretty much expected . This is a prototype mind you.

[thoughtful_criticiser]

They had an engine failure during the landing burn but the flight was a success. Nobody else has done this.

[Sid_Personal_]

Totally misleading tittle but yeah it’s common for The Sun, they are doing this for years.

[davros_adl]

Keep in mind that the people at SpaceX including Elon said it was around a 33% chance of sticking the landing and staying upright. They actually managed to do the very complicated part which was what the test was actually for: Aerodynamic descent control & belly-first to tail-down. That was successful. They also found a flaw in the header tank pressure, meaning they still managed to learn from the test. It would be worse if they stuck the landing first try and the landing failed with humans on board since they didn't learn from the mistake.

Also, the only expensive loss in the landing anomaly was the Raptors, SN8 would have been retired anyway. The Raptors could have been used for another flight, but then again, they would likely be inspected heavily to see the effects of long duration burn time and mid-flight re-ignition. So all in all, the test had a positive outcome.

[mattpotter]

Trust the media to portray this as a failure! It was a spectacular success!! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

[sheriffm]

This has been misrepresented, this is in fact a huge success, Please correct the title!!!

[aminostruth]

"You know it's real, cause it looks so fake" - Elon Musk

[krmkillr]

I heard someone say that SpaceX said there was a 14% chance that it would get as far as it that to me is a success. The title makes it sound like Elon was onboard XD

[snuffeldjuret]

"don't forget to like and ..."
yea not gonna happen with dishonest reporting :)

[fgfghh]

Congratulations Elon, you’ve done it again. Shame on the Sun for once again putting there own spinned narrative on things lol 😂

[electricsnut]

Sick of news outlets sensationalising BS headlines. Everyone knew this would blow up... the amazing part is it lasted to the very end.

[SystemF]

The Green flames is due to copper when one of the engines fail the last engine is supplied with extra oxygen which oxidizes the copper around the fuel injectors, When this happens its called "Engine Rich Exhaust" this is when the engine itself is being used as fuel and being thrown out the back, Copper burns with a bright green color, People are saying its was Triethylborane which is used as a Starting ignitor for rocket engines that does burn green, These engines do not use Triethylborane since they use a full flow staged combustion engine running on methane and use a spark, Triethylborane Is used on the other SpaceX engines like the merlin on the Falcon 9