It certainly looks that way. I wonder if that was due to the crater that it created underneath the launchpad.

I also wonder if that damage has anything to do with the 6 rocket engines that were not active. That is nearly 20% of the power they were expecting to use.

We are going to need a bigger launch pad

At a minimum, they need a heavily-reinforced flame trench.

Yeah, I wonder if it was intentional though just to make sure the tower didn't get damaged.

0:34

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">My Autotrack software captures the moment that Starship lost control. Excitement was very much guaranteed. Great first attempt by the SpaceX team!<br><br>Tune in to hear our live reaction! <a href="https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NASASpaceflight</a> <a href="https://t.co/uutBwWSABz">https://t.co/uutBwWSABz</a> <a href="https://t.co/in201JaOiU">pic.twitter.com/in201JaOiU</a></p>&mdash; Michael Baylor (@nextspaceflight) <a href="https://twitter.com/nextspaceflight/status/1649052544755470338?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 20, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Liftoff from Starbase <a href="https://t.co/rgpc2XO7Z9">pic.twitter.com/rgpc2XO7Z9</a></p>&mdash; SpaceX (@SpaceX) <a href="https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1649097087248891904?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 20, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Crazy shot. It looks like it came from the spot where one of the burned-out engines was located, but that's by no means a confirmation that it was an engine failure.

It definitely seems like engine reliability is a bit of a problem for now. It could just be debris getting kicked up at launch, but one way or another, I don't think losing all that thrust is ideal.

So, it was supposed to explode?

Sort of. The flight termination system worked perfectly.

Okay. Seems like a huge waste of materials/equipment, but if they planned on the thing exploding, can't criticize. Yet.

It's not that they WANTED it to explode. It's that SpaceX's way of doing things often means things will blow up along the way.

NASA (and some others) spend years and years and years working everything out on paper and only build when it's ready to roll. They perfect every little thing (in theory), which does work (usually) but tends to be very expensive and time-consuming.

SpaceX believes that they can move a lot faster if they put together a minimum viable product, launch it, and see what happens. They build stuff cheaply, put sensors all over the place, and use what they learn each time to figure out what needs to be fixed. It's messy and destructive, but they tend to end up with VERY solid results at a much lower cost and timeline (or at least that's what happened with the Falcon 9).

Would they have loved to reach orbit today? Absolutely. Is it possible that there's a design flaw, and Starship will never be successful? Doubtful based on SpaceX's track record, but it's possible. But was today a failure? Nah. No matter what happened, this launch was ending with the rocket either blown up in the air or scuttled at sea. The only thing that really failed was they didn't get as much data from the second stage as they would have liked.

Musk said that anything better than blowing up on the pad would be a success. He may have even meant it.

Don't forget that SH had never flown at all until today, let alone with Starship attached to the top of it.

I read that the plan was not to reach orbital velocity today. Not sure why not. Still planned on Starship "landing" NW of Hawaii so that's still moving at quite a clip.

To give you the idea, NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) has been under development since 2011, has cost $24 billion dollars on development, and launched successfully in November of 2022 with an estimated ongoing cost of $2 billion per launch.

SpaceX has spent an estimated $3 billion on development over about 5 years so far, and they hope to get the per-launch costs down into the single-digit millions (though that's admittedly a lofty goal).

It looked like a good launch until it started doing the pirouettes and losing altitude; If they never planned on recovering the equipment, then it looked like a good launch right up to 1st stage sep (which obviously didn't occur).