on Thursday January 16th we saw the first ever launch of spacex's new and improved Starship block 2 vehicle while no one can deny that this rocket put on one hell of a show it also failed catastrophically so what happened there well let's figure it out in the leadup to Starship flight number seven everything was looking beautiful at Starbase we had nice late afternoon sunlight clear skies a little bit of wind but nothing to be worried about we're all very excited to get our first look at the capabilities of this upgraded V2 Starship vehicle The pre-launch
Rundown showed off some new video of the ship's payload being fitted in through a slot on the back those are starlink mass simulators essentially just chunks of metal in the same shape and weight of a starlink V3 satellite those are being loaded into the ship's Pez dispenser for deployment while in space this block two Starship has been fitted with longer propellant tanks that hold 25% more volume than before amounting to about 300 metric tons of additional Rocket Fuel to help carry that new payload weight we also got a really cool look at the new heat
shield tiles that are being tested on this launch yet again SpaceX has made the call to remove several of the black hexagonal tiles from areas all over the body of the ship they've also dedicated one section to experimenting with new metallic tiles one of of which has an active cooling system which essentially means that cold liquid probably Rocket Fuel is being flowed through the tile to expel heat very similar to the water cooled steel plate that's below the Starship during launch and even though the super heavy booster for this launch is not a new design
like the ship there is something very special about this booster it's been fitted with the Raptor engine that was previously flown in October 2024 on a super heavy that was caught by the mechazilla tower rap number 314 the pi engine ready for round two and on booster ignition everything is going smoothly we get all 33 Raptors igniting and the rocket moves quickly off the pad the sound on this stream is excellent we get that very clear crackle from the rocket engines that comes from the exhaust plume breaking the sound barrier we also get a much
better downward-facing camera angle this time we can see more of the rocket body as it ascends and that also gives us a view of this little piece of sheet metal on the far left side of the screen that seems to break loose and start flapping in the wind remember that one for later but Flappy metal aside everything continues to go beautifully we get a clean hot stage separation as the ship engines ignite with the booster still attached the energy from those upper stage engines pushes the booster into a backflip maneuver and shortly after that we
get our boost back burn this time around one of the middle ring engines fails to restart for the Boost back but that doesn't seem to bother SpaceX at all because we very quickly get the call out that booster is go for return to launch site after making a final separation from The interstage Ring that's clamped to the top of the booster it gradually steers back towards Starbase the heat from all of the air pressure built up underneath the booster as it freef falls makes the engine nozzles glow red but that doesn't stop them from lighting
up to begin the final Landing burn this time we get all 13 of the middle and Center engine so we've learned something new here the engine that failed to restart for the Boost back managed to fire up just fine for landing and from here we get a pretty spectacular view of the second ever mechazilla Chopstick arm catch of a super heavy booster this time around looks much more clean than what we saw back in October very minimal fire involved just a bit of smoke coming off the booster which would not be unusual given everything it
just went through this time around the Chopstick arms seem to close in on the bo booster much faster and more confidently than before the SpaceX presenters mentioned earlier that the arms are now equipped with radar sensors to help in measuring the distance to the rocket in the vast digital landscape your privacy is as important as your safety in space cyber GH VPN is your Shield against online threats encrypting your data and keeping hackers snoopers and prying eyes at Bay with its military great security and a strict no logs policy your online activities remain completely private
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engine Telemetry from ship at 8 minutes and 30 seconds turns out this was a little more than just weird Telemetry readings which is clearly what our SpaceX presenters are hoping for but if we take a closer look at how the information on screen plays out we can watch the beginning of the end for the first St Starship block 2 at t+ 7 minutes 40 seconds the first ship engine goes down it's a raptor boost in the center cluster of three engines that's the same type of raptor used on the super heavy booster for launch at
the time of the engine out the ship is 141 km above the Earth traveling at 17,800 kmph shortly after that first engine dies we can see another important clue in the little illustration of the start ship this shows us the attitude or angle of the rocket and we can see the nose begin to move in a downward Direction at t+ 755 we go back to a camera view from the ship this is pointed directly at the backs side of the rear flap and if you look at the bottom edge of the frame just to the
right of the time clock we can see a hinge mechanism and if you look closely you can see Flames looking up from inside the Starship and coming out through that hinge this is is not good even with all of this going on Starship continues to gain speed and altitude at 8 minutes 3 seconds the second of the Raptor boost engines goes out that's followed quickly by one of the outer ring vacuum engines going down these are unique to the ship stage and have big wide nozzles for higher efficiency in the vacuum of space we are
now at 144 km altitude and 20,000 kmph looking closely again at the Telemetry we can see that the the angle of the ship is now totally flat the nose is no longer pointing up and it starts to even pitch down a little bit back towards the Earth at the same time we can see that the ship is depleting its methane tank at a much higher rate than its oxygen at 818 the second Raptor vac engine goes out the ship is 145 km altitude 21,000 kmph the nose actually begins to pitch back up towards the correct
angle but then we lose the third Center boost engine at 8:24 the methane tank is now showing nearly empty the Telemetry then freezes at T Plus 8 minutes 27 seconds and shows the rocket at an altitude of 146 km from here there's a very short-lived mystery about what happened to the Starship but thanks to the xplatform we quickly start to uncover amateur videos that capture the truth the ship blew up in space and quite spectacularly too apparently there was at least two Caribbean cruise ships below the rocket at the point of explosion and this is
what the passengers on board were able to see it's obviously very far away but we can make out that there was a trail of fire being dragged behind the ship in the seconds before the big boom which sends a massive cloud of gas out into the upper atmosphere and we can also make out that one big chunk of Rocket actually continues to fly straight after the explosion best that we can tell the explosion didn't happen at the same moment that telemetry froze from the ship but it probably coasted for about 2 minutes after that point
before blowing up so this would be around t+ 11 minutes for what comes next we can flip over to video captured by people on the ground on the islands of Dominican Republic and Turks and caos this is pretty spectacular the clouds of debris from Starship has hit the atmosphere and is raining down streaks of orange fire across the evening Sky it's beautiful to watch but why did that happen happen well remember our little piece of flappy metal that was a red herring it had nothing to do with the ship exploding this is part of a
cover on the side of the ship it's a raised section just below the catch pin that has a dark Keyhole shape on the middle that Keyhole is the point where the Chopstick support brackets slot into the ship these triangular supports that hang down below the main arms are just there to prevent the ship and booster from swaying around when they're being lifted up so that little bit of metal that came loose is not part of the ship's actual body it's just an extra bit that was tacked on and not very well so now we can
get back to the real culprit we know that there were engines out and fire in the lower segment of the ship that flap hinge where we saw the Flames licking out is located just above the engines and below the main oxygen tank bad place to have excess fire so from this point on the ship is doomed and without engines it's going to be heading way off course from where it's supposed to be so it wouldn't be crazy to think that what we saw was a self-destruction this wouldn't be the first time that Starship has had
to activate the flight termination system now at this point it's worth contemplating which is worse letting the ship fall down in one giant piece or blasting it into a million tiny pieces honestly I'm not 100% sure but I'm guessing they know what they're doing but it's also possible that this explosion was totally beyond the control of SpaceX which might explain how we ended up with that one big chunk continuing on after the blast the self-destruct is designed to explode the rocket as completely and efficiently as possible it probably wouldn't leave that much behind as always
we turn to Elon Musk for the answers and after a period of radio silence Elon starts to deliver his first response on X reads improved versions of the ship and booster already waiting for launch ever The Optimist then he follows up with a more technical explanation preliminary indication is that we had an oxygen fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall that was large enough to build pressure in excess of the vent capacity apart from obviously double-checking for leaks we will add fire suppression to that volume and probably increase vent area nothing so
far suggests pushing next launch past next month so that lines up with what we saw ourselves the fire that came out through the hinge was trapped in between a shield that's placed at the top of the engine nozzle and the bottom of the oxygen tank T that fire killed off the engines one by one until the pressure built up too high and boom of course now everyone is wondering what will the federal Regulators say about this one we can see clearly that the Starship explosion had a disruptive effect on commercial airlines flight trackers show multiple
Jets were redirected to avoid the debris field which would indicate that there was an amount of debris that fell outside of the airspace that had already been closed for Starship meaning stuff ended up where it was is n supposed to be and that's further reinforced by new reports that relatively large pieces of Starship debris have been found on the islands of Turks and Kos an initial statement from the Federal Aviation Administration reads the FAA is aware an anomally occurred during the SpaceX Starship flight 7 mission that launched from bachik Texas on January 16th the FAA
is assessing the operation and will issue an updated statement the agency Then followed up the next day by reporting that a mishap investigation into Starship flight 7 has been initiated this effectively grounds any Starship activity until the investigation is concluded the agency wrote in a statement on Friday a return to flight is based on the FAA determining that any system process or procedure related to the mishap does not affect Public Safety meanwhile outgoing NASA administrator Bill Nelson doesn't seem too worried about it he wrote on X congrats to SpaceX on starship's 7eventh test flight and
the second successful booster catch space flight is not easy it's anything but routine that's why these tests are so important each one bringing us closer on our path to the moon and onward to Mars through emis so we know that SpaceX has some work to do on their next Starship block before trying that again and it means that flight 8 is going to have to be a do over for all of the tests that were supposed to have been done but never made it we'll see how things shake down with the feds but it's looking
right now like this is just a minor setback in the much bigger mission of Starship thanks again to cyber ghost VPN for sponsoring this video be sure to take advantage of their incredible deal right now using the link Down Below in the description
