We're Getting Images of the Insane Crater SpaceX's Starship Left in the Launch Pad, and it Could Take a YEAR to Repair

PATRICK T. FALLON. Getty Images.

When the supermassive SpaceX Starship took off last week and then exploded in a giant fireball, I assumed the first images that came out would be the most impressive rocket launch footage you'll see:

I stand corrected. As with practically any live event you get to witness, the experience enhanced by the close up, super-slow motion, high definition, reverse angle replay, which is pure engineering science porn. For real, this should be behind a paywall:

But wait. There's more. If you're a fan of watching absurdly powerful combustion devices inflicting heavy damage - and honestly, what sane, rational person among us is not? - feast your eyes on what all that thrust did to the place it took off from. Despite the fact not all the engines even ignited:

To be clear, blowing stuff up for the sake of destroying shit is great and all, but not a recipe for long term success. But it's never not entertaining. The best parts of Mythbusters came when the myth they tested didn't blow something all to hell. So they'd just get out the C4 and the blasting caps, get a mile away behind some ballistic glass and have their nerd fun. Perhaps the most memorable and rewarding of which was when they just vaporized a cement mixer:

All in the name of advancing science. Sort of. 

The downside of Elon Musk's little $3 billion fireworks show though, is that it set science back. According to some experts, perhaps a year. Because the damage done could be even worse than it looks:

Daily Mail - Tech billionaire Musk had set low expectations in the lead up to lift off, admitting that there was a 50 per cent chance Starship would blow up.

He later added that he would consider 'anything that does not result in the destruction of the launchpad itself to be a win'. …

With the launchpad disaster seemingly averted, Musk was bullish in his timeline for Starship to launch again — vowing to do so in one to two months once SpaceX engineers had pored over all the data from the first attempt.

The maverick entrepreneur is famously optimistic when it comes to setting goals, so this should already be taken with a pinch of salt. …

The problem, many experts have cautioned, is that not only is the planned launch in a couple of months unlikely, Starship may actually lift over for at least another year.

They blamed this on the fact that, while the launchpad wasn't blown to smithereens by the rocket, it did suffer significant damage that will require extensive repairs.

SpaceX is yet to release post-launch photos of the Boca Chica pad, but several have emerged which show the damage done by Starship's 33 first-stage Raptor engines was considerable.

Last Thursday's lift off 'left a large crater in the concrete under the launch mount,' Spaceflight Now said in a tweet that included several photos of the debris-strewn pad, adding that the orbital mount was 'heavily damaged'.

This "heavily damaged":

Holy smokes. I think I just had a nerdgasm. Clean up in Aisle Old Balls.

This looks like a German city wiped out in World War II. Or the crater from the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. And this wasn't just some brick and mortar ball bearing factory or soil in the Yucatan Peninsula. This was steel reinforced concrete. The very thing our engineers and literal rocket scientists design to withstand a blast of this magnitude. And Starship melted it like a Yankee Candle. Without its full compliment of rocket engines. 

It's almost as if the Earth itself is reminding these brainiacs how hard it's going to be to get 100 people into the air and on their way to Mars. That it is not a planet that intends to make sure it's not easy for us to walk out the door and leave it all alone like in Wall-E. It has the Law of Gravity on its side, and it has every intention of enforcing that law. 

Ordinarily when a launch goes wrong, the thing for all involved to do is say "Back to the ol' drawing board" or whatever. But that's easier said than done when the machine you built reduces the drawing board to its individual atoms. And it's sort of ironic, really. These people in the lab coats with the computer models have spent so much of their time focused on what's above the rocket, they haven't solved the problem of what's underneath it. And until they do, we'll never got off this godforsaken rock.