Elon Musk’s baby flew, but not quite as high or far as he might have liked.
About 8:33 a.m. local time, SpaceX ignited over two dozen Raptor engines on the butt end of its massive Super Heavy booster, topped with the actual Starship vehicle.
The rocket, designed to be the most powerful ever, cleared the launch pad at Starbase, Texas and successfully flew high into the atmosphere for a few minutes. It passed the perilous point of maximum aerodynamic pressure, reaching the moment when Super Heavy should separate and send Starship on its way past the Karman Line, officially crossing into space.
But then, nothing.
Instead of separating, the tandem of Super Heavy and Starship remained connected and spinning. Then they began to fall back to Earth. Around this point is when we saw a dramatic Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly, or RUD, the cheeky SpaceX term for an explosion.
It’s not yet clear if the explosion was caused by pressures on the vehicle after failing to separate or if mission control opted to destroy the vehicle to protect people and property on the ground. My bet is on the latter. Once a flight goes off its planned trajectory, the risk begins to increase quickly and controllers tend to be quick to detonate.
So how close did Starship get to space on this attempt? The answer is that it flew much higher than the previous high altitude test flights done without Super Heavy, but it still had a long way to go to get to space.
According to astronomer Jonathan McDowell, one of humanity’s chief watchdogs of all things orbital, the highest point Starship reached Thursday was an altitude of about 39 kilometers. The Karman Line is traditionally accepted to be at 100 km, although it’s worth noting that NASA considers the edge of space to be a little lower, at 80 km.
Had Starship separated, successfully ignited its own half-dozen Raptors and continued on, it could have made it space mere moments later. Instead, something went wrong during separation about four minutes after launch and Starship went the other way.
McDowell says it had already fallen 10 km back to Earth by the time it exploded. All the more reason I would guess it was intentionally detonated.
We don’t yet know when Starship will make another attempt at getting to space, but SpaceX is already declaring Thursday’s test a success. Musk and others in the company have long said that if Super Heavy were to lift off without damaging the launch pad infrastructure, it would be considered a win.
Starship got much farther than that and delivered the excitement Musk guaranteed months ago.