Email To My Kids And Grandkid About The SpaceX Starship Prototype SN8 Test Flight

 Here's a view of the SN8 flight taken from the home of Mary the "Boca Chica Gal", who lives right outside the exclusion zone around the SpaceX Boca Chica, Texas production and test sites and launch pads. Mary makes lots of SpaceX videos. She stayed instead of moving away because she wanted to see it all despite the noise, danger, possible people intruding to get a good view, etc. 

This video has several recordings of the flight. My link should start it right at Mary's view, which I thought looked nice. 

SN8 has 3 Raptor engines, which are different from the engines in the Falcon 9, which uses engines called Merlins. The completed Starship will have a lot more Raptors; I don't recall exactly how many. 

This part of the whole Starship system is called Starship, but this is the second stage. This second stage is a bit taller than the old Space Shuttle standing vertical attached to its main booster with two solid rocket engines attached. The first stage of the two part Starship system is called Super Heavy. When Starship is on top of Super Heavy, they will be a bit taller than the Saturn V Apollo and Skylab launch systems.  

One engine cuts off fairly early. That was planned, i.e., not a flaw. A second engine cuts off shortly before the highest point, also planned. 

When it turns to horizontal, that is also planned. Starship missions to the moon or Mars will be reentering Earth's atmosphere at extremely high velocities. The turning sideways slows the rocket down without using fuel, and not using fuel is extremely important. This makes the rocket serve as its own parachute, so to speak. The turning and falling down sideways is called the belly flop maneuver. 

There was a problem with the pressure in the fuel tank just before landing, I think it was, which caused an engine to not put out enough thrust for a safe landing. There was a lot of fuel left in the tanks, thus accounting for the huge explosion. 

You will see headlines talking about the crash and explosion like this was a failure. This was not at all a failure. This was a tremendous success for both humankind and Elon and all the SpaceX team. We're the only known life, just a tiny speck, in a vast but possibly unliving universe. Our job is to spread life through all the galaxies.