SpaceX celebrated Starship's 1st launch. Some locals called it 'truly terrifying'

a massive cloud of dust is kicked up by a huge rocket on a launch pad
SpaceX's Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket launch from Starbase on April 20, 2023. (Image credit: Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

The world's largest, most powerful rocket caused some serious mayhem during its first launch.

SpaceX's massive fully-integrated Starship launch vehicle lifted off from SpaceX's Starbase test facility in Boca Chica, Texas on April 20 at 9:33 a.m. EDT (1333 GMT; 8:33 a.m. local Texas time). Starship then flew for just over four minutes on its first orbital test flight — complete with somersaults — before automated systems initiated a destructive abort procedure and caused the rocket to explode. 

The success of Starship even clearing its launch tower indicates significant headway for SpaceX, which is known for sometimes destroying its vehicle prototypes in the name of progress. In SpaceX's infancy, CEO Elon Musk could been seen strolling through fields of fallen rocket debris, but there's no chance anyone will be traversing the scope of what Starship left behind without at least a helicopter. Dust and debris from the launch was sent flying, sometimes for miles, creating concerns for some local residents.

Related: What's next for SpaceX's Starship after its historic flight test?

One resident of Port Isabel, Texas, just 6 miles north of Starbase, called the noise and debris created by the launch "truly terrifying," the New York Times reported. Other Port Isabel residents reported broken windows, and some described it as "like a mini earthquake." NPR journalist Pablo De La Rosa also posted reports of particles from Starship's launch raining down on residents.

According to a City of Port Isabel Facebook post, it has been confirmed that the spray of Starship detritus that covered locals' cars and homes posed no health risk, and was in fact sand and dust lofted airborne and thrown miles in every direction by the rocket's liftoff. 

A massive cloud of dust is kicked up by the launch of SpaceX's Starship on April 20, 2023. (Image credit: PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)

Closer to ground zero, the 33 engines of the rocket's main booster left a literal crater in the concrete at Starship's launch pad. Debris large enough to crush a car was sent flying in every direction, and while the tower was left standing, the launch complex is in need of some major clean up efforts.

Images from RGV Aerial Photography and Spaceflight Now show construction materials and pieces of old Starship builds strewn across the surrounding area, and VR video from twitter user @LabPadre, which was enlarged by DaneWang, show a NASA Spaceflight van getting mangled by the flying rubble.

Beyond Starbase, debris from Starship spread for miles over the Gulf of Mexico. In one of SpaceX's videos of the launch shared on Twitter, large pieces of debris can be seen splashing into the ocean alongside the pad just seconds after the massive rocket begins to lift off.

When Starship exploded four minutes into its flight, the resulting detonation was so massive, it was picked up on doppler radar systems. 

Similar to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, SpaceX's Starbase complex sits on a national wildlife refuge home to over 2,500 different species of plants and animals. Wildlife areas like this are good pairs for spaceport activities, as rocket launches require a lot of breathing room to adhere to safe-distance requirements, and because measures taken during typical launches largely mitigate any adverse effects on local fauna and flora. 

In fact, prior to Starship's first launch, SpaceX received a 183-page environmental safety notice from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) outlining over 75 mitigative steps the company needed to take to ensure Starship's launch license be granted. 

Now, with a whole town covered in rocket launch remnants, some residents of South Texas are questioning the impact Starship will have on its surroundings. Even before Starship got off the ground, a group of Rio Grande Valley residents and organizations released a unified brief in opposition to SpaceX's activities in the area. They claim SpaceX is "destroying wildlife refuges and sacred lands of the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas and are threatening Rio Grande Valley communities with explosion risks."

Despite these concerns, Elon Musk stated the company is aiming for another launch of a fully integrated Starship in "1 to 2 months."

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Josh Dinner
Writer, Content Manager

Josh Dinner is Space.com's Content Manager. He is a writer and photographer with a passion for science and space exploration, and has been working the space beat since 2016. Josh has covered the evolution of NASA's commercial spaceflight partnerships, from early Dragon and Cygnus cargo missions to the ongoing development and launches of crewed missions from the Space Coast, as well as NASA science missions and more. He also enjoys building 1:144 scale models of rockets and human-flown spacecraft. Find some of Josh's launch photography on Instagram and his website, and follow him on Twitter, where he mostly posts in haiku.

  • Unclear Engineer
    For a system design that intends for super heavy boosters to return directly to their launch towers and be able to fly multiple times in short periods, it seems like there is a lot of work to do on the launch facility itself. Obviously, a water suppression system is going to be needed so that spray instead of concrete gets blasted in all directions.

    But, I have to wonder about the idea of having such a massive vehicle return directly to its launch infrastructure. It seems that it would need to be extremely reliable in its return, or otherwise the cost of the damage from destructive incidents would make the whole system design too expensive to keep operational.

    I'm no Elon Musk, but I think I would have something like superheavy return to a catch tower that is well away from anything to do with the launch infrastructure, and then have it roll a few miles over to the launch pad in some way.
    Reply
  • 76lara
    I think it makes sense for the initial Starship launches to try to recover the super-heavy booster using an autonomous drone ship first and put legs in the super-heavy like Falcon 9. The Chopstick style recovery is going to take time to master.
    Reply
  • skullboy0
    76lara said:
    I think it makes sense for the initial Starship launches to try to recover the super-heavy booster using an autonomous drone ship first and put legs in the super-heavy like Falcon 9. The Chopstick style recovery is going to take time to master.

    They’re going to have to master not DESTROYING the area under the launch pad first
    Reply
  • Unclear Engineer
    skullboy0 said:
    They’re going to have to master not DESTROYING the area under the launch pad first

    Yes, they will need to design a better launch pad to deal with the launch-level thrust effects.

    But, remember, for landing, they are not using all 33 engines and the ones used are not at full thrust, at least not for the same period of time near the landing pad. The launch thrust needs to deal with the weight of a lot more propellant plus the second stage, compared to the landing thrust. And the lift-off is much slower than the landing deceleration period. So, damage from landing should be far less than damage from lift-off.
    Reply
  • Micheal- Angelo
    But of course they are going to try again.
    Reply
  • EricB
    Unclear Engineer said:
    For a system design that intends for super heavy boosters to return directly to their launch towers and be able to fly multiple times in short periods, it seems like there is a lot of work to do on the launch facility itself. Obviously, a water suppression system is going to be needed so that spray instead of concrete gets blasted in all directions.

    But, I have to wonder about the idea of having such a massive vehicle return directly to its launch infrastructure. It seems that it would need to be extremely reliable in its return, or otherwise the cost of the damage from destructive incidents would make the whole system design too expensive to keep operational.

    I'm no Elon Musk, but I think I would have something like superheavy return to a catch tower that is well away from anything to do with the launch infrastructure, and then have it roll a few miles over to the launch pad in some way.
    The idea to return the superheavy to the launch tower is intended to allow a quick relaunch. Having it launch elsewhere would result in having to move the returning vehicle back to the launch pad - adding more cost and time. Better to use this experience to develop a more robust launch pad to meet Musk's goals.
    Reply
  • saychoss
    I hate to say it, but I think SpaceX now has a fully reusable rocket and a fully nonreusable launchpad problem.
    Reply
  • Unclear Engineer
    EricB said:
    The idea to return the superheavy to the launch tower is intended to allow a quick relaunch. Having it launch elsewhere would result in having to move the returning vehicle back to the launch pad - adding more cost and time. Better to use this experience to develop a more robust launch pad to meet Musk's goals.

    I understand the design concept. I am just questioning how realistic it is from a reliability standpoint.

    If a single failure to catch a returning Superheavy booster does enough damage to the launch tower to take it out of the launch business for an extened period, the issue will be whether the net sustainable lauch frequency can be made higher by transporting recoverd boosters from separate recovery towers, or by repairing the damage to the launch towers every time a booster recovery goes awry. And there is also the cost difference to consider.

    I guess we will see how it goes pretty soon.
    Reply