Intro [Music] SpaceX has experienced a huge catastrophe as their famed Starship exploded just a few minutes after it was launched for the first time ever this incident is gaining a lot of traction with the general public and it could cost both SpaceX and Elon Musk dearly there are many speculations about what could have gone wrong but what's the real reason behind the explosion and how could this impact the company in the long run join us as we take a look at the real reason why spacex's Starship exploded SpaceXs Starship exploded the newest generation of spacex's Starship exploded on the 20th of April over the Gulf of Mexico during its first test flight only four minutes after it launched during the flight the Starship managed to cover only a mere 24 miles in the air before it erupted into flames SpaceX originally wanted the Starship to go on a trip around the world however their plans were most definitely spoiled by Fate itself the development of the spaceship began in 2016 albeit the ship had a different name at the time it was called the interplanetary transport system taking a look at the spacecraft itself the Starship is actually designed to be one of the most utilitarian spaceships ever it's by far the most powerful one as it uses seven and a half thousand tons of thrust that are produced by a whopping 33 engines this huge 400 foot tall Behemoth of a ship is designed to carry huge amounts of people and cargo over extremely long interplanetary distances primarily cars the spaceship uses methane as a propellant which is fairly uncommon to see on a spaceship due to the fact that it's not really efficient especially compared to liquid nitrogen however Elon Musk believes that it can be produced from the Earth's natural sources which is why it was to power the starship's engines oh and let's not forget about the price of the Starship the development cost SpaceX more than 3 billion dollars to develop while the production of a single rocket surpassed the 4 billion dollar price tag so it's understandable why the destruction of the famed spaceship caused the entire SpaceX Community to grow worried as the company projected the Starship as one of the primary ways of transporting people from Earth to Mars in the future just turned into a whole bunch of nothing in front of the cameras seemingly without any reason four billion dollars years worth of development gone in a matter of seconds imagine seeing the new Noah's Ark Humanity's Only Hope for survival just disappear in a fiery it's a really scary thought if we're being honest would you ride in a Starship or has this new occurrence scared you from ever boarding one be sure to let us know in the comments section below thankfully no one was hurt however things could have got a lot worse if the Starship managed to start its World trip as it could have exploded over populated areas or even worse fallen on them in one piece this then begs the question what was the Why did the Starship explode reason behind the explosion at first it was unclear why the spaceship decided to unalive itself however further analysis revealed that the Starship exploded during the separation process the video feed showed the Rockets spinning as intended but the two parts the rocket and the spaceship failed to separate you see the Starship is connected to the super heavy booster rocket which is used to propel the spaceship into the air and after a certain amount of time the Starship should separate itself from the booster rocket however the Starship doesn't use an active mechanism to separate itself from the rocket no it actually unscrews itself just enough so that the connection clamps are exposed after which it relies on the centrifugal force to complete the separation process after the Starship and the rocket refused to separate the mission control team had no other choice but to issue a command to detonate the explosive charges which were located between the oxygen and methane tanks and were set on both the rocket and the spaceship this mixed the two liquids that then exploded and subsequently destroyed the rocket preventing an uncontrolled and dangerous fall to Earth this self-destruct procedure is nothing new as every launch since the early years of the space race has had a similar safety mechanism the Starship unfortunately had to be destroyed as it was literally welded to the super heavy booster rocket which quickly burned its Fuel and the 400-foot spacecraft simply could not break free from it if the SpaceX Mission Control team decided against blowing it up the ship would have fallen to the ground in one piece causing significant risks to life and property below even though this system was the reason behind the controlled explosion it was probably the least expected failure point as it is a relatively uncomplicated design due to its mechanical nature and especially because rocket explosions in-flight disintegrations and flight path deviation are more common setbacks no one even gave a thought to the clamps and their possibility to fail to open as they had been tested a thousand times over and they've proven to be quite reliable we can expect that this system will be replaced on the next version of the Starship by the aforementioned active mechanism that can be found on other spaceships and we're all glad that such a minor defect occurred during the first ever test flight as it could have easily been dismissed and the Starship could have possibly went into mass production with such a fatal flaw which could have resulted in a much more tragic event than this one despite the fact that the rocket had to be destroyed the whole experience proved to be a very important checkpoint for the development of the Starship however spacex's reputation could hypothetically be permanently ruined which is why we need to answer the next question and that is how could this impact the company in the Impact on SpaceX long run well that's the fun part actually as SpaceX officials really consider this a Successful Failure and they believe that it's a good thing that it happened well at least in their eyes it is the company keeps joking about the incident calling the explosion a rapid unscheduled disassembly which If we're honest is a funny way of looking at it it's always better to have a light-hearted approach to a serious situation than not Elon Musk himself complimented spacex's efforts and even said that he learned a lot from the botched flight many have applauded the semi-successful launch of the Starship even NASA's administrator Bill Nelson congratulated SpaceX on their first successful integrated flight test stating that every great achievement throughout history demanded some level of calculated risk because with great risk comes great reward as for SpaceX itself a successful liftoff and flight to the required altitude for stage separation were more than enough to satisfy them this was a test flight after all and the job of test flights is for the researchers to gain experience the next Starship will be refined and the flaws concerning the separating mechanism will be fixed after which will the tests continue SpaceX engine engineer John insprucher who was serving as a launch commentator on the company's webcast said now this was a development test this was the first test flight of Starship and the goal is to gather the data and as we said clear the pad and get ready to go again the Starship is an enormous vehicle after all which also means that it's much more complicated to engineer compared to smaller spacecraft which is why we're thankful for the fact that the engineers keep as much room for failure as they do for Success Elon Musk announced that this accident won't have a significant impact on the development process of the Starship and that in a few months they'll simply try again in fact he even said that he believes that they can reach orbit by the end of the year so even though the whole ordeal seems catastrophic at first the truth is that the destruction of the Starship was a completely expected possibility especially if we take into consideration that this was a true baptism of fire for the spacecraft as it has never been launched before sure it could have got a chance smoother than it did but hey at least nobody was hurt and the mission control team did a great job blowing it up and yes even though the fact that a four billion dollar spacecraft just got eradicated from the face of the Earth sounds extremely depressing you probably shouldn't be worried as Elon musk's top priority is to make these as affordable as possible quoting a price of around 9 million dollars which is much cheaper than this one all in all we're glad that everything was under control and that SpaceX will actually be able to turn this unfortunate event into something productive and we wish them all the luck in doing so