Headline Roundup • April 20th, 2023
Unmanned SpaceX Starship Launches Successfully, Then Explodes
Summary from the AllSides News Team
The unmanned SpaceX Starship launched successfully on Thursday morning around 8:30 a.m. local time from a launchpad in South Texas, then exploded a few minutes afterward.
The Details: SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted shortly after the explosion, saying they learned a lot for the next test launch. It's unclear what caused the rocket to come apart, according to SpaceX's Quality Systems Engineering Manager Kate Tice, but the data will be reviewed and SpaceX will work toward their next flight text.
Key Quote: If the rocket gets “far enough away from the launchpad before something goes wrong, then I think I would consider that to be a success,” Elon Musk said before the flight. “Just don’t blow up the launchpad.”
For Context: The first attempt at a launch was scrubbed on Monday due to a problem during fueling. Thursday's launch was the first of the Starship's two sections together, and during the flight, the first-stage booster was expected to drop into the Gulf of Mexico. The flight was expected to last an hour and a half.
How the Media Covered it: Sources across the political spectrum covered the launch and explosion of the SpaceX Starship, with some right-rated media focusing more on the successful launch, and noting that Musk estimates an 80% chance that one of the Starships under construction will reach orbit in 2023.
Featured Coverage of this Story
SPACEX/Via REUTERS
SpaceX’s Starship exploded a few minutes after launching an initial, uncrewed test flight on Thursday morning, abruptly ending the inaugural flight of a vehicle that Elon Musk wants to use one day for pioneering deep-space missions.
The company launched the uncrewed rocket at roughly 9:30 a.m. ET from a launchpad in South Texas, according to a SpaceX live stream. A trail of flames poured out of the engines installed on the booster used for the first stage of the flight.
The rocket began to spin in the air not long after liftoff....
SpaceX’s Starship lifted off the pad in Southern Texas and cleared the launchpad, its first milestone, but then began tumbling as it was preparing for stage separation and the vehicle came apart some four minutes into flight.
“Obviously this does not appear to be a normal situation,” SpaceX’s John Insprucker said during the broadcast.
Starship may have exploded, but it still met one of the major milestones SpaceX set out for the flight: It didn’t blow up the launchpad. The massive rocket was able to lift off successfully and didn’t...
SpaceX's Starship – the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built – blasted off from the southern tip of Texas on Thursday morning.
However, just minutes later and awaiting stage separation, it experienced a failure – what SpaceX livestream hosts described as a "rapid unscheduled disassembly."
The rocket began to tumble and then exploded four minutes into the flight, tumbling down into the Gulf of Mexico.
The cause of the failure was not immediately clear.
"Congrats @SpaceX team on an exciting test launch of Starship! Learned a lot for next...
