Starship was meant to fly

SpaceX’s Starship, the world’s most powerful rocket, exploded yesterday morning in its first-ever test, roughly four minutes after a successful launch.

The uncrewed Starship test blasted off at 9:33 am ET, flying about 22 miles into the air before tumbling out of control and exploding into a cloud of flaming debris – or, as SpaceX put it, the rocket underwent a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.”

But untimely demise aside, SpaceX officials consider yesterday’s test to be a success. CEO Elon Musk publicly congratulated his team, saying the company learned a lot for its next Starship launch in a few months.

• SpaceX’s Starship program is part of the company’s effort to make space travel more akin to air travel, with launches every day and greater accessibility to the public.
• Musk has said that if SpaceX can get the fully-reusable, 100-passenger Starship to fly regular missions, it could bring down the cost of each launch by a factor of about 7. (For context, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket currently costs $67 million/launch.)

👀 Looking ahead… Starship, once fully operational, is set to be busier than Santa on Christmas Eve. The rocket is scheduled to carry a crew of NASA astronauts to the Moon in December 2025, as part of the Artemis III mission. And SpaceX has also announced plans for future private missions to the Moon and Mars using a fleet of Starships.