The good news is that Starship cleared the tower and didn’t blow up the launch pad. That was the minimum criteria Space X had set for success for this test. The bad news is that about four minutes into the test flight the ship itself wasn’t able to separate from the super heavy booster and the whole rocket was destroyed.

Space X tried to set expectations before the launch.

With a test such as this, success is measured by how much we can learn, which will inform and improve the probability of success in the future as SpaceX rapidly advances development of Starship pic.twitter.com/y9fF6bgMDf

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 20, 2023

This little clip gives you a sense of the scale. This is a massive rocket.

Starship is the largest, most capable rocket ever developed and will allow us to achieve a shared vision of a future where humanity is out exploring stars → https://t.co/gOrrujHxMO pic.twitter.com/pmrpmivsWZ

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 20, 2023

The rocket was loaded with 4500 metric tons of propellant and the countdown continued. It came to a halt at 40 seconds to give Space X time to check everything one last time. Finally, the green light was given and the liftoff took place. Watch how slowly this clears the tower compared to smaller rockets like Falcon 9.

Liftoff of Starship! pic.twitter.com/4t8mRP37Gp

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 20, 2023

Elon was there watching of course.

A happy ⁦@elonmusk⁩ watching out of the window and on screen as Starship clears the launch tower. pic.twitter.com/SA8l6IiFMa

— Walter Isaacson (@WalterIsaacson) April 20, 2023

A lot of other people had gathered to watch the launch. I love this photo. It’s worth clicking on it to see the whole image.

Excitement Guaranteed

Crowds cheer as SpaceX's massive Starship Super Heavy launches from Starbase, TX

By @erikkuna for Supercluster pic.twitter.com/Hugqbdu4nt

— Supercluster (@SuperclusterHQ) April 20, 2023

Here’s what the liftoff looked like from closer to the ground. There are large chunks of something flying toward the camera here. Wondering if the engines scoured those out of the ground or if it was something else.

Wild Rover 2 war zone footage with audio. Good stuff! #SpaceX #Starbase #Starship #Superheavy pic.twitter.com/Y8loOualXR

— LabPadre (@LabPadre) April 20, 2023

From there the ship climbed quickly.

Starship Super Heavy pic.twitter.com/cUigk9Iv46

— John Kraus (@johnkrausphotos) April 20, 2023

There were shots of the engines themselves which suggested maybe six of them weren’t operating.

The most bad-ass thing I've seen.

Holy Starship! pic.twitter.com/bH4pkZVAIW

— stevenmarkryan (@stevenmarkryan) April 20, 2023

You can see it here pretty well:

Another shot of Starship's first big flight today. A few Raptors were lost on the way up, but she kept going and going and going until she couldn't.

It's hard to describe what it was like to experience the excitement of today. Amazing! pic.twitter.com/b4wPlJs3JM

— John Kraus (@johnkrausphotos) April 20, 2023

The ship made it to nearly 40 kilometers in altitude where it was scheduled to execute an maneuver and separate. This is the view from about 35km up.

If all had gone as planned the ship itself would have separated from the booster and climbed higher and circled the earth once before coming down in the ocean. The booster stage would have attempted to land itself just like the Falcon 9 boosters do. But that’s when things went wrong. Unable to separate the ship from the booster, the rocket just spiraled and finally exploded.

WATCH: SpaceX Starship explodes during test flight pic.twitter.com/H0teyLh4Og

— BNO News Live (@BNODesk) April 20, 2023

Space X took the loss in stride.

Teams will continue to review data and work toward our next flight test

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 20, 2023

Elon Musk tweeted his congratulations.

Congrats @SpaceX team on an exciting test launch of Starship!

Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months. pic.twitter.com/gswdFut1dK

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 20, 2023

The plan is to have another test later this year once they’ve absorbed all of the lessons to be learned from this launch. Finally, here’s the full Space X coverage. I’ve cued this up to the launch itself but you can scroll back if you want to see more.

Update: This guy is such a goon.

Blowed up good!
Blowed up REAL GOOD!#SpaceX pic.twitter.com/zdOw34gxf4

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) April 20, 2023

Update: And this guy.

The Hindenburg encountered a rapid unscheduled heating problem. https://t.co/L9SUcCm8xk

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) April 20, 2023

The Hindenburg explosion killed dozens of people, dummy. This was a test flight.

I cannot believe how many people are falling for "we wanted the rocket to explode actually!"

I realize we are on the app that he spent $44 billion to turn into his fan zine, but come on! pic.twitter.com/DFegY6peXK

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) April 20, 2023

The mission wasn’t a complete success obviously. Would have been great if it had gone all the way. I’m sure they were hoping for that. But it wasn’t a complete failure either and you’re not a rube if you say so.

Um, not exactly an El*n fan, but Space X have been doing this for a while.

The things that went RUD in 2016 are working almost flawlessly now, for example pic.twitter.com/L178acfury

— nameroF maharG (@gj4man) April 20, 2023