Post-Mortem on SpaceX Starship Rocket Launch

OK … By now we have all watched SpaceX launch their giant Starship on April 20,2023 …. Cheered when it cleared the launch tower …worried when it began to wobble …. and sighed when it had to be destroyed. The ship was clearly not flying its planned trajectory and engines were winking out.

The “however” is that clearing the tower and obtaining several minutes of data-rich telemetry about the vehicle’s performance (or lack there-of) was SpaceX’s criteria for a good mission. It was clearly announced as a test flight.

Scott Manley is a space-science pod-caster that I have been following for years. Here is his post-mortem of the flight.  It is packed with videos, images, data, analysis and opinion about what went wrong.