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upstart writes:

Perhaps not all booms are bad:

About four minutes after SpaceX's gargantuan rocket lifted from its Texas launch pad, it burst into a fireball over the Gulf of Mexico, never reaching space.

Though SpaceX hasn't shared many details yet about what happened during Starship's maiden voyage, one fact is known: It was intentionally ordered to explode.

Rockets are destroyed in the air when people's lives could be even remotely at risk of falling debris. In the days since the uncrewed test, no injuries or major property damage appear to have been reported.

When the rocket launched at 9:33 a.m. ET April 20, 2023, some of the rocket's 33 booster engines had either burned out or failed to light from the start. As Starship ascended, cameras caught views of the flames underneath it, appearing to show some of the engines had cut out.

In a statement released after the incident, SpaceX said Starship climbed to about 26 miles over the ocean before beginning to lose altitude and tumble. Then, self-destruct commands were sent to the booster and ship, which hadn't separated as planned, the company said.

What ultimately initiated that disintegration isn't completely clear, Dan Dumbacher, executive director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, told Mashable.

"Now it's a pure race as to whether the aerodynamic pressure breaks the vehicle up or the flight termination system does," he said, "but it really doesn't matter because the end result is the same."

As Starship ascended, cameras caught views of the array of flames underneath it, appearing to show some of the engines were out.

"There's a lot of risk associated with this first launch, so I would not say that it is likely to be successful," [Elon Musk] said during a video conference with a National Academies panel in 2021. "But I think we will make a lot of progress."

Despite Starship never having reached space, industry experts largely regarded the launch as a partial success because the rocket managed to clear the launch tower and traveled higher than any Starship prototype had before.

Meanwhile, the general public seemed unsure of how to think of the whole thing: After all, usually, when something big and expensive goes boom, it's considered bad. But SpaceX has always approached rocketry differently from NASA, working a little messier and faster to achieve its goals.

In terms of the explosive ending, Dumbacher said spaceport safety officers are required to terminate a flight if a rocket meanders into an area where the risk of debris hitting someone on the ground could exceed a probability of one in 30 million. "People ought to be looking at this as good — the flight termination system, if it was needed, actually worked," he said.

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