SpaceX Starship rocket lost in second test flight

The first attempt to send Starship spaceward generated what Musk referred to as a "rock tornado" at liftoff as the sheer force of the rocket blew apart the launchpad. It spewed debris up to 20 acres outside the area that federal regulators initially expected.

And that all happened before the rocket exploded over the Gulf of Mexico.

In the hopes of avoiding a repeat, SpaceX has spent the last several months making some changes at the launchpad.

One key addition is a new water deluge system.

Essentially, it's a massive steel plate that has holes in it, allowing water to shoot up. The "massive super strong steel shower head" — again, Musk's words — will spray water when it's time for liftoff in order to dampen the jarring vibrations and heat given off by Super Heavy's monstrous engines.

The Federal Aviation Administration described the new system like this:

SpaceX's launchpad at Starbase — the name of the company's sprawling facility that has popped up by the Gulf of Mexico at the southernmost tip of Texas — has some unique features.

The large metal arms that look like they're giving the rocket a hug aren't a typical launchpad feature. SpaceX has a unique plan for this structure, which CEO Elon Musk has dubbed "Mechazilla."

Eventually, SpaceX hopes these arms will catch the Starship spacecraft mid-air as it flies back home from a trip to space.

That maneuver has never been tried before — but it's not entirely unlike the method SpaceX uses to land and recover its other rockets.

The company's Falcon 9 rocket pioneered propulsive landing: It became the first to complete a soft touchdown of its booster after a flight in April 2016.

It used its engines, a set of hardware called grid fins to steer itself, and four legs attached to the base to make a gentle landing on a seafaring platform, called a droneship.

SpaceX has since perfected the maneuver, with 230 booster landings under its belt. (And that doesn't even count Falcon Heavy booster landings.)

The main difference for Starship is that — instead of relying on landing legs — SpaceX plans to fly the rocket booster straight into Mechazilla's giant metal arms, catching it before it hits the ground.

SpaceX won't attempt to land Starship or Super Heavy today. Both will instead be discarded into the ocean.

But, before it hits the water, SpaceX will attempt to test out a landing maneuver by reigniting Super Heavy's engines.

That should happen about six minutes and 30 seconds into flight — if all goes well.

Later, the Starship spacecraft may attempt something similar, making use of a belly flop maneuver as it heads in for landing over an hour into its flight.

SpaceX is trying out something new today.

It's called "hot staging," which is a method for separating the Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket after liftoff, when Super Heavy has burned through most of its fuel and is ready to break away.

Almost all rockets go through a process during launch called "stage separation," in which the bottommost rocket booster diverges from the rest of the rocket or spacecraft.

When SpaceX launches its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, for example, the first-stage booster — or the bottommost portion of the rocket — breaks away from the upper part of the rocket less than three minutes into flight.

The Falcon 9 does so using “pneumatic pushers" that are housed within the rocket's interstage. That's the black band that can be seen around the middle of the Falcon 9.

Starship, however, won't use pneumatic pushers. Instead, the Starship spacecraft will simply fire up its own six engines to push itself away from the Super Heavy booster.

Essentially, it's separation by blunt force trauma.

So, Starship's interstage has some large vents installed to direct the blow of the engines — aiming to make this method safe for the booster.

No one is quite sure whether all this will work.

Starship's attempt at hot staging should occur two minutes and 41 seconds into the mission.

SpaceX has started its live coverage of the launch. It's streaming on X — the website formerly known as Twitter, which SpaceX CEO Elon Musk purchased last year.

A viewing site in South Padre Island, which lies about 5 miles from the launch site is now lined with spectators. Small boats are circling the water nearby.

SpaceX has the option to hold the clock at T-40 seconds if boats don't clear out of the exclusion zone.

With only a 20-minute launch window today, however, the pressure is on.

Ask someone in the space industry, and they'll likely tell you we're in the midst of a modern space race — a new incarnation of the 20th-century competition between the US and the former Soviet Union that culminated in the Apollo moon landings.

That's why NASA wants to put boots back on the moon as quickly as possible.

What's changed since the Apollo era is how NASA aims to do it: Unlike its efforts in the 20th century, the space agency is putting quite a bit of control in the hands of the private sector.

SpaceX's Starship is just one element of NASA's Artemis moon landing program that involves creating a spacecraft designed — and largely funded — by a corporation, rather than NASA itself. (Though the space agency is investing about $4 billion into Starship.)

So, as much as China and the United States are competing in a race to the moon, private companies within the United States are also battling it out for lucrative government contracts.

Three billionaires have generated the most buzz in the private sector's push toward the cosmos: Elon Musk with SpaceX, Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin, and Richard Branson with Virgin Galactic.

SpaceX is still the only company of the three that has sent a rocket to orbit. Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin have been focused on flying tourists on brief trips to the edge of space.

But Blue Origin notably has its own lunar ambitions — and, as of this year, a NASA contract to go with them.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is no stranger to garnering widespread media attention for his statements on social media.

The billionaire, who purchased Twitter last year and has since renamed the platform X, is under fire for his behavior on the platform after he publicly endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory that claimed Jewish communities push “hatred against Whites.”

Even the White House weighed in.

NASA deferred to the White House when reached for comment.

It's not the first time Musk's behavior has raised concerns within the federal government, which is a dynamic complicated by the fact that Musk's SpaceX has billions of dollars in government contracts. NASA has paid the company nearly $12 billion to date, according to the space agency.

The Super Heavy booster is already being loaded up with all the propellant it'll need for takeoff, and now SpaceX is moving on to the Starship spacecraft, which sits atop the booster.

The propellant includes liquid methane and superchilled liquid oxygen — or "LOX" — which serves as the oxidizer. Both are pumped into the rocket from nearby tanks.

SpaceX — and NASA — have huge goals for this rocket.

NASA wants to use Starship to carry out the final leg of the journey to put astronauts back on the moon for the first time in five decades as part of its Artemis program. The space agency gave SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract in 2021 to get the job done.

Starship is also the linchpin of SpaceX's goal of getting humans to Mars. The company's founding purpose is to make humans a multiplanetary species, sending them to live on other planets in case Earth becomes unsuitable for life.

That task would require a rocket that is truly massive.

Whether that goal is feasible — economically, technologically and politically — remains to be seen. But Musk and SpaceX have garnered a diehard fanbase rallied around the idea.

Other items on the agenda for Starship:

You may have heard Starship is the biggest rocket ever created. And it is. By a long shot.

Starship stands at nearly 400 feet (121 meters) tall and packs 16.7 million pounds (7,590 tons) of force.

Let's compare that to some of the other largest rockets ever constructed — past and present.