Spacex just lost their Starship SN9 which was destined to fly manned missions to the moon and to Mars in the future.
First, here’s the beautiful takeoff (cued up at 5:17):
And here’s the disastrous landing (cued up at 11:23):
Here’s another angle with a ‘narrator’:
Holy!. Starship explodes. Great effort @SpaceX pic.twitter.com/ZKSLRm1JLS
— bottleponics (@bottleponics) February 2, 2021
It looks like what happened is that they overrated and….boom.
Here’s a bit more from CNBC:
The latest prototype of SpaceX’s next-generation Starship rocket launched successfully on Tuesday but exploded on impact during an attempted landing after the company’s latest development test flight.
Starship prototype Serial Number 9, or SN9, aimed to fly as high as 10 kilometers, or about 32,800 feet altitude. The flight was similar to the one SpaceX conducted in December, when it launched prototype SN8 on the highest and longest flight to date.
The rocket prototypes are built of stainless steel, representing the early versions of the rocket that CEO Elon Musk unveiled last year. The company is developing Starship with the goal of launching cargo and as many as a 100 people at a time on missions to the moon and Mars.
Musk previously said that Starship could potentially fly people in 2020, but he’s since acknowledged that the rocket still has many milestones, including “hundreds of missions,” to go before that happens.
Milestones and…obstacles I’d say. This is the second Spacex craft to explode in a couple months.