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.

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1880060983734858130

> (as seen from ground)

As seen from a plane in the air with the break up right in front of it:

https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1i34dki/starship_...

What a strangely beautiful sight. While I was excited to see ship land, I'm also happy I get to see videos of this!

Inadvertently perfect timing for this footage. Glowing and backlit by the setting sun, against clear and already darkening evening sky... couldn't plan the shot any better if you tried.

Let's hope no debris came down on anyone or anything apart from open water.

Given that the engine telemetry shown on the broadcast showed the engines going out one by one over a period of some seconds, I could easily imagine some sort of catastrophic failure on a single engine that cascaded.

Most Sci-Fi real footage I have ever seen.

Edit: Reminds me of "The Eye" from star wars Andor

https://youtu.be/9lrr0CWHDGA?t=43

Wow. It reminds me of the comet scene from Andor. I wonder if suborbital pyrotechnics will become a thing one day.

Watching those videos, my hand naturally looks for the roller ball from too much time playing missile command

Probably one of the most expensive fireworks (but probably still cheaper than the first Ariane 5 launch), but it looks very cool.

More views:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=-S8CK6LgnD4

https://x.com/DavidCaroe/status/1880036195985682710

I think this was the first test of StarShip v2. I'd be surprised if everything worked after they redesigned the whole StarShip. That would be like refactoring Microsoft Windows by hand-typing new code and expecting it to run without errors on the first try.

I'm not worried about the Starship itself, but it looks kinda dangerous. Is it?

Does anyone know the timing of when the breakup actually occurred?

I’m curious because I was on a flight to Puerto Rico from Florida at 3pm ET they diverted our flight. They didn’t really give us many details but said the “landing strips were closed”. Our friends on a slightly early flight diverted to ST Thomas. We were going to divert to a nearby airport in Puerto Rico (we were going to land in Aguadilla instead of San Juan) so I feel like these diversions wouldn’t be related but the timing seems pretty odd.

Where will this debris land? Can it impact airplane routes?

Is there a video you don't need to log in to view?

The last one is stage separation, not an explosion. You can clearly see the "exploded" rocket continuing to fly afterwards.

It’s crazy how fast that ship is moving and how big the explosion was that it looks like something much, much lower in the air went boom. It was transitting the sky faster than a commercial aircraft does. So it gives an impression more like a private aircraft breaking up at 5-10k feet.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DE54iL7xbZL/?igsh=dTNtZ2Q4aHl...

It's beautiful. Looks like something out of a sci-fi movie.

I have a boat and want to pick up floating heat tiles in the ocean, do you think we can find the parts by Puerto Rico?

Does anyone know where the debris landed? In the ocean? Or just burnt out in the atmosphere?

Looks like work of the Flight Termination System. Something measurable had to go very wrong.

Where can I find the heat tiles? Will they be landing near Puerto Rico?

What a show

Another failure, another few months of figuring out why this isn't working and can't stick to its flight path. They caused chaos for many commercial planes, so they'll definitely need some full reports to the FTA to know what they're doing about this, why the debris is falling over flight paths, and so on.