400-Foot SpaceX Rocket Explodes Over Gulf of Mexico

Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched its first Starship rocket on the morning of April 20 in an uncrewed test flight that ended minutes later with the craft exploding in the sky over the Gulf of Mexico near Texas.

“As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation,” the private space exploration company wrote on Twitter. “Teams will continue to review data and work toward our next flight test.”

The company wrote that with the failed test, the firm will “learn” from its mistakes. “Today’s test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multi-planetary,” it said.

“Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on an exciting first integrated flight test of Starship!” SpaceX wrote.

Live video footage of the test showed the rocket traveling for several minutes before it appeared to fail. The unmanned rocket later exploded in midair.

Musk’s firm was looking to send the nearly 400-foot rocket on a round-the-world trip from the southern portion of Texas, located near the Mexican border. Both the booster and spacecraft were slated to fall into the ocean.

Musk wrote on Twitter shortly after the 3-plus-minute test flight that the firm “learned a lot” and suggested that the company will perform its “next test launch in a few months.”

Large numbers of spectators watched from South Padre Island, located a few miles away from the Boca Chica Beach launch site. SpaceX’s first attempt to launch the Starship rocket was called off on April 17 because of a frozen booster valve.

“A mishap is part of our businesses, and it’s a pretty realistic possibility,” an FAA official told reporters before the launch on April 20. “We see this quite often with first time launches of new and somewhat unproven space vehicles, [at] the rate of about 11 percent. So to see a mishap here would not be particularly unusual.”

“Our job, of course, is to ensure that if a mishap occurs, that that mishap does not impact the public in an adverse manner. So that’s the focus that we have in our licensing activity.”

By Jack Phillips

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