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Starship Launch Pad

My son and I visited the SpaceX facilities in Boca Chica, TX recently and we returned with some cool samples of the destroyed launch pad.  I recently donated a chunk of space history to the Club. This write-up contains detailed information about the sample and the story behind it. 

INFORMATION ABOUT THE APRIL 20TH 2023 LAUNCH OF STARSHIP 24

SpaceX launched its very-first orbital Starship … the largest and most powerful rocket ever built … on April 20, 2023, from its launch facility in Boca Chica, Texas (30 miles East of Brownsville, the 5 miles North of the Rio Grande River and Mexico, 6 miles South of South Padre Island).  Starship has been chosen by NASA to be the next vehicle to land on the moon in 2026.  After that Elon Musk will turn his attention to building a colony on Mars.  Each Starship is designed to carry 100 colonists and their gear to Mars.

The flight on April 20th featured Starship 24 sitting atop superheavy booster 7 in what SpaceX calls a “full stack.”  The fully-stacked Starship is nearly 400 ft tall, 29 feet in diameter and carries 33 powerful Raptor engines.

The Raptor engines on booster 7 obliterated the launch pad, sent car-sized chunks of concrete flying into the ocean half a mile away (see photo 3), and excavated a 20-foot-deep crater under the orbital launch mount.  The “rocknado” unleashed by the Raptor engines likely doomed the maiden flight of Starship to failure (see Photo 3 showing the rocknado in action).  Starship 24 reached a height of 32 miles before malfunctioning, tumbling end over end, and eventually self-destructing over the Gulf of Mexico.  It was supposed to reach space and travel halfway around the earth before reentering the atmosphere near Hawaii. 

A seismograph 120 miles away detected vibrations from the launch.

Paul Herr