Yesterday I wrote about the first launch of Space X’s Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built. There was one particular clip which seemed to show a bunch of debris flying at the camera as the rocket was lifting off. Here’s the clip.

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

— LabPadre (@LabPadre) April 20, 2023

I mentioned that is appeared the rocket itself might be scouring out the ground beneath it, sending those chunks flying in every direction. Today there’s lots more evidence that is what happened. To start, check out this video which may be from the same spot as the one above. But in this one we get a much wider angle including a car which was parked nearby. You can see the car getting pounded with debris.

I wonder if insurance will cover this pic.twitter.com/ZixhEGAYak

— Dylan Dylan (@SemrauDylan) April 20, 2023

And on the other side of the launch, this clip shows big pieces of dirt and concrete hitting the ocean during liftoff (2nd clip below).

Close up on the vast debris field created by the starship/superheavy launch. It's a crop from the video shot from starbase #SpaceX #StarshipLaunch pic.twitter.com/KYaloIFE7n

— MechDesign.xyz (@MechDesignxyz) April 20, 2023

And check out the tank farm which also seems to have taken some impacts.

And speaking of debris impacts, the tank farm isn't looking too happy…#Starship pic.twitter.com/tu79b6ocJE

— DutchSpace (@DutchSpace) April 20, 2023

Another angle:

Gonna need to repair the tank farm pic.twitter.com/b6G2wldVGr

— Raptor 2.0 🇺🇦 (@RaptorRelight) April 20, 2023

So where did all of that debris come from? Well, this photo shows the launch pad. There’s still a bird’s nest of rebar there in the center but the concrete and dirt has just been blasted away, forming a crater.

Had not seen this image before… Found it on the beechtalk forum… pic.twitter.com/f3SseFAoIX

— Paul Breed (@unrocket) April 21, 2023

An aerial shot of the damage.

Here is an aerial view taken today of the damage to the concrete surrounding the OLM. @elonmusk flame trench by the next Starship Launch?

Full gallery will be available at https://t.co/l5nZ12tVTO or subscribe to our twitter pic.twitter.com/vOOjdm1mpv

— RGV Aerial Photography (@RGVaerialphotos) April 20, 2023

So it’s pretty clear what happened and some are speculating that maybe that debris is why five of the booster’s Raptor engines seemed to be dead from the start. Remember this image?

The most bad-ass thing I've seen.

Holy Starship! pic.twitter.com/bH4pkZVAIW

— stevenmarkryan (@stevenmarkryan) April 20, 2023

With chunks of steel and concrete flying around under the rocket at liftoff, it seems possible some of it could have bounced upward and damaged those engines. There are even some folks claiming this might be the reason the stage separation failed.

Same source as the picture claims the hydraulic power pack that was supposed to release starship just before/during the flip got killed by debris and that is why staging failed. Flips were booster trying to do flip and boost back with starship still attached ..

— Paul Breed (@unrocket) April 21, 2023

I can’t confirm that and maybe it’s just speculation on someone’s part but it’s probably something Space X will look at.

So, on the negative side, this launch destroyed the launch pad, damaged the tank farm and probably did a lot of damage to the rocket itself in the first seconds of liftoff. On the upside, this one problem might account for a significant number of the failures that happened yesterday including the separation failure. If so, it’s a relatively easy fix, at least in theory.

What Starship needs before its next launch is what’s called a flame trench, a conduit designed to safely direct the exhaust from the engines away from the pad itself. Here’s a photo of one:

This is the steel blast deflector in the flame trench on pad 39B at KSC. It was built to handle the thrust of the SLS. THIS is what SpaceX has needed at Starbase from day one. I'm convinced that some of the engine outages on Starship were the result of debris. pic.twitter.com/Q3irYbdJLF

— Dennis Yates @[email protected] (@dennisyates) April 21, 2023

I’m not sure they can dig down in that location so they may have to build up and then include a flame trench/flame diverter in the new design. But again maybe it means the rocket itself would have been okay minus whatever damage it sustained at liftoff. The next launch, whenever that happens, will not include all of the flying debris.

One of the things I like about Elon Musk as CEO is that he’s not prone to the kind of corporate PR-speak which attempts to hide failure behind a wall of impenetrable and imprecise lingo. So I’m hopeful that sometime fairly soon he’ll give an interview in which he explains what they did wrong and how they plan to fix it for next time. When I see it I’ll probably post something about it.

Update: Musk says they nearly had a steel plate ready to go under the launch mount but it wasn’t ready in time. He also predicted the site could be ready again for the next launch in 1 to 2 months.

3 months ago, we started building a massive water-cooled, steel plate to go under the launch mount.

Wasn’t ready in time & we wrongly thought, based on static fire data, that Fondag would make it through 1 launch.

Looks like we can be ready to launch again in 1 to 2 months.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 21, 2023

Update: This morning Elon added another tweet about why this might have happened (2nd tweet).

Still early in analysis, but the force of the engines when they throttled up may have shattered the concrete, rather than simply eroding it. The engines were only at half thrust for the static fire test.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 22, 2023

Beautiful shot but you can see some chunks of concrete flying past in this clip.

Starship liftoff in slow motion pic.twitter.com/KqHjqwP88Z

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 22, 2023