This description ('rapid unscheduled disassembly') probably deserves an award of some sort for being the driest possible description of a spectacular event.
>>>A fully stacked Starship left the ground today (April 20) for the first time ever — and it came to an explosive end high in the Texas sky.<<<
https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-first-space-launch
I'm not a Musk fan, but his efforts to create a heavy lift rocket to go to Mars remind of the statement by JFK: "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
This rocket is truly huge. From the article:
>>>To put the vehicle's brawn into perspective: Super Heavy's 33 Raptors generate about 16.5 million pounds [
tons] of thrust at liftoff. That's nearly twice as much as the previous record holder, NASA's
Space Launch System megarocket, which flew for the first time last November on the
Artemis 1 moon mission.<<< (the article uses the units "tons" but it should be pounds)
Another point of comparison is that the Space Shuttle engines (main plus solid boosters) produce about 3.5 million total pounds of thrust at liftoff.
I was somewhat surprised when I first heard that this rocket is powered by liquid methane and liquid oxygen because these fuels result in a lower specific impulse than liquid hydrogen/LOX (e.g. 321 seconds for the raptor vs 366 for the Space Shuttle main engine)(both at sea level). One the other hand, it makes sense if the goal is to refuel on Mars. From the space.com article:
>>>And SpaceX's new Raptor engine is powered by liquid methane and liquid oxygen, a combo also chosen with
Mars in mind: Both can be produced on the Red Planet, allowing Starship to launch efficiently from Mars as well as Earth.<<<
It might be slightly less efficient to use these fuels, but if one builds a big enough BFR (Big Falcon Rocket) it will still produce plenty of thrust.
