Elon Musk Congratulates SpaceX For ‘Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly’ After Starship Explodes

After launching the most powerful rocket yet developed in the ongoing saga of SpaceX leading to its “Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly,” Elon Musk and his venture into rocketry made Twitter trends and headlines by proclaiming the mission a success. And they weren’t wrong.

As reported by The Daily Wire, the newest SpaceX rocket carrying the Starship design failed to separate from its main thruster minutes after clearing the tower at the Boca Chica, Texas ‘Starbase.’

The tallest and most powerful rocket ever built launching. The liftoff of SpaceX Starship pic.twitter.com/meav59yVmn

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) April 20, 2023

As the error began to become apparent with an uncontrolled spin impacting the 400-foot tall craft, SpaceX commentators addressed the situation in real time during the launch broadcast.

According to Daily Wire, a female commentator can be heard explaining, “As of right now, we are awaiting stage separation where the Starship should separate from the super-heavy booster,’ right around the 4-minute mark of the video.

Shortly after, the commenters began to note the thruster’s failure to separate from the Starship module.

“Right now, it looks like we saw the start of the flip, but, obviously, from what we are seeing from the ground cameras, the entire Starship stack continues to rotate. We should have had separation by now. Obviously, this does not appear to be a nominal situation,” a male commentator can be heard saying.

His colleague concurred, “Yeah, it does appear to be spinning,” though she added, “but I do want to remind everyone that everything after clearing the tower was icing on the cake.” This seemed a bit prophetic when as she ended her sentence, the rocket exploded brilliantly.

BREAKING: WATCH ELON MUSK’S SPACEX LAUNCH MOST POWERFUL ROCKET EVER BUILT

Another video from the National Science Foundation indicated that the “Automated flight termination system” was activated, self-destructing the malfunctioning craft before it could veer off its pre-planned course.

According to the Associated Press, the original SpaceX flight plan had the rocket launching, separating from its booster, accelerating east, and circling the Earth before a controlled crash into the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.

In a tweet shortly after, Musk congratulated his team “on an exciting test launch of Starship!”

Congrats @SpaceX team on an exciting test launch of Starship!

Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months. pic.twitter.com/gswdFut1dK

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 20, 2023

In a lighthearted post-explosion statement on Twitter SpaceX wrote, “As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation,” adding, “Teams will continue to review data and work toward our next flight test.”

“With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multi-planetary,” the company added.

As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 20, 2023

“Rapid unscheduled disassembly,” trended on Twitter for hours afterward.

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