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Unexpected Disassembly of Seventh Starship Launch

On January 16, 2025

At 7:05 pm

In General

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Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched their large spaceship today, and it broke apart during its ascent burn. Not clear yet what the cause was. It could have gone out of control and was destroyed to prevent an uncontrolled drop. Let’s see if video embeds in Bluesky posts.

Astonishing video of Starship apparently breaking up over the Caribbean. Source: x.com/deankolson87…— Geoff Brumfiel (@gbrumfiel.bsky.social) 2025-01-16T23:20:21.474Z

SpaceX confirms that Starship broke apart during its ascent burn.A passenger on the Royal Caribbean cruise ship "Icon of the Seas" posted this video, with the ship's current location in the Atlantic matching other debris sightings.Video source: x.com/FlyerXT/stat…— Michael Sheetz – Space Reporter (@michaelsheetz.bsky.social) 2025-01-16T23:28:32.886Z

Looks like it does! Those are from Geoff Brumfiel’s thread with more information about the launch.

In contrast, Jeff Bezos’s New Glenn rocket achieved orbit last night. Josh Marshall makes the point that while having billionaires run our space program is suboptimal, it’s better to have them duking it out than giving it all to Musk.

Unexpected disassembly is part of rocket development, so this is not necessarily a setback for Musk.

Update:

This is what it looks like when you lose a massive spacecraft on its way to orbit right over the Caribbean. Lots of commercial flights turning/holding/diverting to avoid falling debris from SpaceX's Starship.— Jon Ostrower (@jonostrower.com) 2025-01-17T00:00:58.784Z