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The way that we test the readiness of spacecraft changed forever on January 27, 1967, when a flash fire swept through the Apollo 1 command module during a launch rehearsal test.

The three astronauts inside perished despite the best efforts of the ground crew. It would take more than 18 months, and extensive redesigns, before NASA sent more men into space.

This year, SpaceX and NASA celebrated the launch of the Falcon Crew Dragon, making history as the first commercial aerospace company to carry humans into Earth’s orbit, and to the International Space Station.

There were some bugs to work out before that could happen, evident in the number of exploded spacecraft and capsules that the company has reported, each one giving them new information that would lead to an eventual successful launch.

All of these, including the latest one, have been unmanned.

SpaceX in partnership with NASA has its sights set on Mars, but it’s going to take a special kind of ship to get astronauts there safely.

The aerospace company’s latest Starship, SpaceX SN8, lifted off its launch pad at around 2:45PM (Pacific Time) on Wednesday, for its first high-altitude test flight.

A few minutes in, per CNET, one of the three Raptor engines stopped firing, but the rocket continued to climb. Then a second engine shut down and the craft seemed to hover for a while until the final Raptor shut down.

It then started free-falling to Earth. As it approached to land, the Raptors and thrusters situated around the rocket were used to perform a flip manoeuvre and orient it vertically in preparation for a landing burn.

We’ve seen something similar on SpaceX’s smaller Falcon 9 rockets.

Unfortunately, the burn didn’t slow the SN8 down soon enough or fast enough, it hit the middle of the landing pad, and exploded.

I prefer to watch from the countdown at the start, but if you’d like to skip to the juicy bit, fast forward to the 5:14 mark to see it slowly fall to Earth, or the 6:55 mark for impact.

It’s quite something:

The moment was captured on Twitter by some very excited SpaceX fans. Keep the sound on:

This is sci-fi to reality! An epic #Starship #SN8 testflight 🤯 we have lost our minds @SpaceX @elonmusk @Erdayastronaut 🎞️📷 https://t.co/pm7BLvaLYT pic.twitter.com/9zYfnd3yjD

— Cosmic Perspective (@considercosmos) December 10, 2020

SpaceX wrote earlier in the week:

“This suborbital flight is designed to test a number of objectives, from how the vehicle’s three Raptor engines perform, and the overall aerodynamic entry capabilities of the vehicle, including its body flaps, to how the vehicle manages propellant transition.”

While some might view the test flight as a failure, Elon Musk is ecstatic:

Fuel header tank pressure was low during landing burn, causing touchdown velocity to be high & RUD, but we got all the data we needed! Congrats SpaceX team hell yeah!!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2020

Errors, albeit expensive ones (those ships don’t come cheap), allow the company to collect data that assists in identifying and then remedying faults.

Mars, here we come.

[source:cnet]