Massive SpaceX rocket explodes minutes after takeoff from Texas

South Padre Island, Texas: Minutes after taking off on its first test flight on Thursday, SpaceX’s massive new rocket caught fire and plummeted into the Gulf of Mexico.

From the southern edge of Texas, close to the Mexican border, Elon Musk’s business planned to launch the almost 400-foot (120-meter) Starship rocket on a round-the-world journey. Neither humans nor satellites were aboard.

As the rocket ascended from the launch pad and reached a height of 24 miles (39 kilometres), images revealed that a few of the 33 main engines were not functioning. How many engines failed to start or shut down early was not immediately known from SpaceX.

Minutes after liftoff, the rocket was expected to separate from the spaceship, but that didn’t happen. Four minutes into the flight, the rocket started to tumble before exploding and falling into the gulf.

The spacecraft was planned to attempt to circle the earth after detaching before crashing into the Pacific Ocean not far from Hawaii.

Throngs of spectators watched from South Padre Island, several miles away from the Boca Chica Beach launch site, which was off-limits. As it lifted off, the crowd screamed: “Go, baby, go!”

Musk, in a tweet, called it “an exciting test launch of Starship!”

In the weeks leading up to the flight, Musk gave 50-50 odds that the spacecraft would reach orbit.

“You never know exactly what’s going to happen,” said SpaceX livestream commentator and engineer John Insprucker. “But as we promised, excitement is guaranteed and Starship gave us a rather spectacular end.”

The company plans to use Starship to send people and cargo to the moon and, eventually, Mars. NASA has reserved a Starship for its next moonwalking team, and rich tourists are already booking lunar flybys.

It was the second launch attempt. Monday’s try was scrapped by a frozen booster valve.

At 394 feet and nearly 17 million pounds of thrust, Starship easily surpasses NASA’s moon rockets — past, present and future. The stainless steel rocket is designed to be fully reusable with fast turnaround, dramatically lowering costs, similar to what SpaceX’s smaller Falcon rockets have done soaring from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Nothing was to be saved from the test flight.

The futuristic spacecraft flew several miles into the air during testing a few years ago, landing successfully only once. But this was to be the inaugural launch of the first-stage booster with 33 methane-fueled engines.

SpaceX has more boosters and spacecraft lined up for more test flights. Musk wants to fire them off in quick succession, so he can start using Starships to launch satellites into low-Earth orbit and then put people on board.

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