SpaceX Blows Rocket Blows Up, Company Still Calls It A Success

SpaceX launched the most powerful rocket ever made only to have it blow up shortly after lift-off.

Starship is the name of the company's massive rocket, and it lifted off from a launch pad in Texas. It was the first time that a fully-integrated version of Starship was complete with a "Super Heavy" booster.

This complete spacecraft is capable of twice the thrust of a Saturn V rocket.

That's a lot of thrust.

Things were looking good until about 239 seconds after they lit this candle. At that point, the rocket appeared to separate and tumbled through the sky in a ball of fire above the ocean.

Now, I'm no rocket scientist, but this is less than ideal.

Seems like an abject failure, right?

Nope, they're making lemons into lemonade and tweeted out what sounds like grade-A inspirational poster drivel.

It wasn't what they wanted, but SpaceX says there's a lot to learn from their Starship rocket blowing up shortly after launch. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)

SpaceX Found A Silver Lining

Despite the loss of equipment and lots and lots of money, the company tried to find the silver lining in the situation.

"Success comes from what we learn." Print that on t-shirts and put it on posters that will hang in high school guidance counselors' offices.

Even the boss man seemed pretty pleased with how things went.

I understand that this kind of successful launch that morphed into a fireball over the ocean can teach people much smarter than me a lot. However, if I had just sold tons of Tesla stock to buy Twitter, I'd want to see some mileage out of my spacecraft.

That's not to say that they'd need to run them into the ground, but two launches would be nice.

I guess this comes with the territory for developing a spacecraft the likes of which we've never seen. SpaceX says that when fully-developed Starship will be able to carry 100 people on interplanetary missions.

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