China’s space enthusiasts debate Elon Musk’s Starship explosion: expensive failure or partial success?
- One Beijing-based engineer says the explosion shortly after lift-off highlights the risks of relying on multiple engines to get the rocket off the ground
- Hong Kong-based academic argues that getting the world’s largest rocket off the ground counts for something and SpaceX would learn valuable lessons
The 120-metre (393ft) rocket blasted off from SpaceX’s launch site in Boca Chica, Texas on Thursday morning local time with thousands of tonnes of fuel on board, climbing slowly for two minutes, before its engines started to fail until it exploded – an outcome the company described as as “rapid unscheduled disassembly”.
Hundreds of thousands of people in China watched the launch online. On the social media platform Weibo, some described it as “a specular firework that’s worth US$3 billion”. One scientist speculated that it might have a knock-on effect on Nasa’s Artemis project, by setting back its timetable to return to the moon.
Others argued that the flight went beyond SpaceX’s expectations, citing the company’s comments that the main goals were to “clear the launch pad, collect data, and get ready to go again”.
Astrophysicist Quentin Parker, who leads the Laboratory for Space Research at the University of Hong Kong, said it was a truly awe-inspiring sight to see the largest rocket ever built take off.