Hey Hey, Marcus House with you here.
Well, the day has finally come where this magnificent beast has taken to the skies!
After all the buildup to this colossal event it was time for it to fly on Thursday, the
20th of April 2023.
That is a date for the history books right there.
Now obviously SpaceX did first attempt to launch a few days earlier, on Monday.
However that attempt was soon scrubbed, as one of the valves for the pressurization system
of Booster 7’s Liquid Oxygen tank froze up.
Teams did take advantage that day however and modified the testing to a Wet Dress Rehearsal
and proceeded all the way up to T minus 10 seconds.
After that attempt the propellants were detanked from the vehicles and soon the crews returned
en masse.
An interesting point of note is that they could soon be seen working on Booster 7’s
Hydraulic Pressure Units.
A lot of attention there as well as the Booster Quick Disconnect.
Just look at those people here, waving to Hoop Cam!
Anyway, soon enough SpaceX confirmed that they were still good to go for a launch attempt
on 4-20.
Yep, Elon’s hint a few weeks ago would indeed end up being true after all.
The new time arrived pretty darn quickly too.
There we were Wednesday evening.
Just after midnight the road closed and a few hours later SpaceX performed another test
with the fire suppression system.
Not long after that the Chopsticks let go of Ship 24 and moved into the Launch Position,
looking just a little like Christ the Redeemer in Brazil.
It was still on!
The Orbital Launch Mount started venting, so things were still progressing very nicely.
Right on target SpaceX teams announced they were GO for propellant load!
And just like predicted on the timeline, not long after that the loading of propellants
onto the upper stage started as well.
SpaceX’s stream went live with the audience around the world cheering them on, and man
they really did go all out on the webcasts.
Insane visuals, so do watch it if you missed it.
The old Starhopper footage always fun, but just the drone shots of the launch site itself.
Simply amazing!
Engine chill started on the rocket, but at T minus 15 minutes the hold down clamps were
unlatched.
Wait, what?!
Yes, that was unexpected.
We had all assumed they would release those after the engines fire up, but it seems like
SpaceX first fires up the Raptors at a low thrust with the rocket just sitting on the
clamps.
Once the data is all looking good SpaceX must then just throttle up to lift off!
I’m going to need to digest all that a little more next week.
Now we did have that hold with all of us out there feeling massively disappointed.
Only for a moment though because the count popped back up.
Oh my..
We were still go.
All this time, I couldn’t help but think there would still be an abort in the final
few seconds.
The engines ignited though.
Could you believe it!?
The massive plume burst out from under the pad hurling debris everywhere.
It wasn’t moving though.
No way would it lift off.
Right?
Wrong!
Jst check that out!
[PLAY CLIP] The largest and most powerful rocket ever
created had just taken flight for the first time.
That is one of the history books right there as the Super Heavy booster together with Starship
on top took to the skies!
After what seemed like an eternity the behemoth had cleared the tower!
And look what popped up there, this really gorgeous overlay showing the all this great
information!
Oh, wait a second though.
Three raptors had already shut down on the Booster.
Looks like those went out basically right through the liftoff sequence.
Assuming of course they fired up at all.
In fact, if we replay this, the rocket took off almost diagonally!
This doesn’t look good either.
I think that was one of the Hydraulic Pressure Units which controls the central engine thrust
vector control.
Hard to steer the rocket without that.
I think it’s very safe to say that SpaceX made a good decision moving away from hydraulic
to electric with the upcoming vehicles!
40 seconds in, there goes another engine, but powering on.
And more engines going out past the one minute mark.
Yea.
That was starting to get concerning, but thankfully the pointy end was still up.
It seemed that the Starship though was accelerating slower than expected though.
Right up past the 2 minute mark, they still seemed to have control.
As it passed about 1700 kilometers ot 1000 miles per hour, the camera view on board popped
up.
Ah… the control there was looking a little shaky.
Starship was slowly rolling.
Beautiful views from cameras between the stages awaiting the next big event.
Stage separation!
Stage separation!...
Ahhh.. yea… that more violent roll certainly wasn’t good.
In fact, it became clear in the upcoming seconds that SpaceX had lost control.
Starship had started to flip around.
Both stagest seemed certainly doomed at this point.
But here is one thing that I think is good to note.
It was all holding together.
This colossal beast flipping around in still reasonably low atmosphere and holding together.
I was sure it would rip itself apart, but no.
This thing is structurally super strong, holding together incredibly well making for some pretty
mind blowing views.
SpaceX were going to need to detonate this beast with the Flight Termination System.
Took a while before they did it, but wow!
Just check that out!
[PLAY CLIP] And that was it.
Booster 7 and Ship 24 remains fell from the sky.
As stated many times, everything past clearing the launch site was icing on the cake.
Although SpaceX weren’t able to make the stage separation work as intended, this was
indeed quite the spectacle.
The vehicles made ended up making it to an altitude of around 39 kilometers, and a top
speed around 2,150 kilometers per hour before the end of the mission.
But how did the launch site look after the incredible thrust of all those Raptor engines?
Not long after the event SpaceX shared this awesome drone shot, just look at all the debris
not just on the wetlands near the launch mount, but even in the ocean!
That really suggested that there was a lot of concrete had gone flying.
Where was most of that from?
Well, check this out.
Yikes!
Down there under the pad there was now a massive crater.
Indeed the more substantial water deluge system is needed, and I think a flame diverter wouldn’t
go astray.
I guess booster 7 thought so too as it had commenced a great deal of the digging work.
Now before you all start to worry too much, I think it’s best if we just let the dust
settle before drawing conclusions without the necessary information.
Some interesting insights that were leaked out though were interesting such as this shot.
A great view from the Ship forward flaps looking downward onto the full stack.
Looks like a few tiles went missing from Ship 24, but overall they seemed to hold pretty
well considering this was the first flight.
Then there was this.
Wow.
That must be during those few seconds between the Booster exploding and the Ship!
Insane that they actually managed to stream that to the downlinks!
So yes, after more than a year of being with us, Booster 7 and Ship 24 finally got to put
on quite the show.
Even with all of its quirks, it still managed to show what the Starship vehicle will be
capable of in the future!
Now look, there is a lot to digest.
The real damage around the pad which will become clearer in the upcoming days.
We’ve always said that Stage Zero, everything that supports the rocket launch at Starbase
was just as complex as the rocket.
That is certainly true.
But you know what?
SpaceX is the master of iterative design and I think you might be quite surprised as the
future unfolds.
With the long awaited Orbital Flight of Starship now complete, there is yet another fun Starship-related
launch that has also just occurred.
The creators of the card game ‘Starship Shuffle’ have released their new full board
game Starship: Stage Zero.
It's got tons of tokens, cards, and boards to relive the Starbase development experience.
All with loads of input from the space community, this is definitely a great memento to pickup.
And of course, we’ve got a range of merch to celebrate this massive milestone too.
Links for all of that is below.
Also, remember we’ve been working hard on the new deep dive video to be released this
very weekend.
Super excited to see what you think of that one.
Other deep dive videos there on the right too.
Thank you for watching all this way through.
I'll see you all in the next video.