SpaceX crew cheer explosive end to test flight

It’s a measure of what progress Elon Musk’s SpaceX thinks it has made towards creating the world’s most powerful space rocket system, that the entire staff which had gathered for Thursday’s historic launch cheered wildly when it exploded soon after lift-off.

And while a BC space exploration expert says he wouldn’t react with such overt enthusiasm, what happened above the skies over Texas is indeed a big step forward for the ambitious goals Musk’s company has set.

“It’s kind of a Hollywood thing I think,” BC based space exploration historian and editor of Quest: History of Spaceflight magazine, Chris Gainor told Kelowna10. “You see a lot of movies about space exploration and there’s lots of cheering,” he said, noting in the old days of space flight you wouldn’t hear cheers until the mission was over, successfully.

“I don’t know if I’d be cheering out there … but I kind of relate to the previous generation,” he said.

But he still figures today’s first test flight of the 400-foot (120-meter) Starship rocket was a success.

“Oh yeah, Elon Musk would not say he’d be happy if it gets off the launch pad just for the hell of it. It’s his money on the line. I think today was a step forward. It’s still a good day. I’m not sure I’d be cheering though.”

Thursday’s test called for the booster to peel away from the spacecraft minutes after liftoff, but that didn't happen. The rocket began to tumble and then exploded -something Musk has coined a ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly’ in the past- four minutes into the flight, plummeting into the gulf.

SpaceX plans to use Starship to take people and cargo to the moon and, eventually, Mars. NASA has reserved a Starship for its next moonwalking team, and rich tourists are already booking lunar flybys.

Gainor said the Starship has the potential to revolutionize access to space because it would be able to take heavy payloads into orbit and both stages would be fully reusable for quick mission turnarounds.

With files from The Canadian Press