Engine rich fuel.....

Elon Musk’s Starship rocket blows up minutes after launch

Starship suffered ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly,’ according to SpaceX.

BY ALI WALKER

Starship, Elon Musk’s space rocket, exploded shortly after launch in Texas on Thursday.

The Starship rocket’s booster attempted to separate, at which point its systems failed and Musk’s company SpaceX was forced to blow up the rocket, which was uncrewed.

“As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation,” SpaceX said in a statement.

Billionaire entrepreneur Musk had said that anything that got off the launchpad would be considered a win. The rocket is being tested with the aim of one day being used to shuttle passengers to Mars.

“Congrats SpaceX team on an exciting test launch of Starship!” Musk tweeted. “Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months.”

Starship’s original launch date Monday was delayed after a frozen valve caused issues with the booster.

(Additional info not by author: The ship lost a number of engines on flight, a few blew-up while on assent. The ship was still able to fly, but when the ship was to separate, the mechanism failed. The ship continued, but with the main engine shut down the ship was doomed and it was destroy once it dropped below 30 KM in altitude. Also the launch site was damaged by the 32 engines at launch.)