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SpaceX Starship Flight 1

Starship experienced a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" [RUD] before stage separation during the first launch attempt on 20 April 2023. Starship was supposed to separate and THEN flip. But some live commentary mistakenly stated "flip before stage separation". It was clear that they lost attitude control before stage separation. Maybe the loss of one of the central steerable engines caused the loss of control, after which the stack tumbled several times.

Impacts from the launch include numerous large concrete chunks, stainless steel sheets, metal and other objects hurled thousands of feet away along with a plume cloud of pulverized concrete that deposited material up to 6.5 miles northwest of the pad site. Although no debris was documented on refuge fee-owned lands, staff documented approximately 385 acres of debris on SpaceX’s facility and at Boca Chica State Park, which is leased by the Service and managed as a component of the Lower Rio Grande National Wildlife Refuge. Additionally, a 3.5-acre fire started south of the pad site on Boca Chica State Park land.

The Super Heavy booster is powered by 33 Raptor engines, with 13 in the center and the remaining 20 around the perimeter of the booster’s aft end. However, on the first launch, three engines were inoperative within seconds after liftoff. After about another minute and 20 seconds, three additional outer engines shut down, with a total of six engines eventually failing. The probability of such "engine out" situations was recognized from the outset as a distinct possibility with a design using so many engines. The American Saturn V, whch had only five engines each on the first and second stage, experienced only a single engine out anomaly - famously, one engine on the second stage failed during the Apollo 13 mission. The Soviet N-1 booster, which like the Super Heavy had a large number of smallish engines, failed in all four flight attempts, three of which were attributed to engine problems.

The Raptor engine is a reusable methane-oxygen staged-combustion engine that powers the Starship system and has twice the thrust of the Falcon 9 Merlin engine. Starship is powered by six engines, three Raptor engines, and three Raptor Vacuum (RVac) engines, which are designed for use in the vacuum of space. The spacecraft and rocket have never flown together, so the test flight had aimed to assess their performance in combination.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk congratulated the SpaceX team for "an exciting test launch" and said on Twitter — the social media platform that he bought for $44 billion — that he had "Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months." He has set his sights on making Starship reusable and bringing down the price per flight to a few million dollars. This was the second liftoff attempt of the Starship spacecraft, after a first test flight was aborted on Monday due to an issue with a pressurization valve.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will have to oversee SpaceX's investigation into the rocket’s malfunction before it can be launched again. "A return to flight of the Starship/Super Heavy vehicle (will be) based on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety,” said the FAA.

Although its origins are uncertain, April 20th (more commonly known as 420) has become synonymous with marijuana use and, in some circles, this date is considered is a "marijuana holiday”. April 20th, 2018 is the unofficial national day of action calling for responsible cannabis policies. Tesla stock plunged 9 percent on 07 September 2018 after a bizarre podcast in which CEO Elon Musk smoked weed and sipped whiskey, and two high-profile executives abruptly announced they were leaving the company. No one mentioned anything about Elon and Joe drinking multiple rounds of whiskey (a "legal" and more dangerous drug). Musk said 21 April 2023 the water-cooled steel plate the company is developing to reinforce the Starship launch pad was not ready in time for April 20 launch. "3 months ago, we started building a massive water-cooled, steel plate to go under the launch mount. Wasn’t ready in time & we wrongly thought, based on static fire data, that Fondag would make it through 1 launch. Looks like we can be ready to launch again in 1 to 2 months."