WOW!!!

We are settling into our new digs here on South Padre Island. We really love the spacious site we booked sight unseen on the web. I also love having a small patch of natural growth in between sites as well. We are situated nose in so we face the vegetation giving us a feeling of being more isolated than we are.

As we do most every morning (weather permitting) we go out for a long walk alongside the jetties and then to the beach before closing our loop back at our RV site, One morning I noticed what looked like a space ship across from the jetties so I took a few photos with a full zoom to investigate later.

Back home I discovered that SpaceX has a launch site in Boca Chica which is just across from us. I checked to see if anything was being launched in the time we are staying here. Then there was a WOW moment as we realized that there was a planned test launch of the Starship SN8 (stands for serial number 8) for a flight to 12.5 km any day.

SN8 is a fully-reusable, two-stage-to-orbit, super heavy-lift launch vehicle developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. It was exciting to think we could watch a test launch of SN8 by taking a short walk over to the bay. I found a web site that would update us as a launch time neared and every time  i saw the notification we would run down to the jetty to see if it would launch only to find out it was scrubbed for one reason or another. We kept the faith however that it would eventually happen…

On 9 December 2020 the Starship SN8 would finally perform its first high-altitude test flight. As the clock ticked down we could see the steam was being released and launch appeared imminent. Then it happened, as smoke billowed out from underneath SN8 and it slowly lifted to the sky. There was a sizable crowd socially distanced along the beach cheering as it ascended to the sky.

Executing the launch was just part of the test. Once it reached 12.5 km it performed a “skydiver-like descent using high-drag body flaps” and then it began to fall back to earth. As it was falling back to earth it had positioned itself on its side in a free fall.Then as it was falling, it performed a reorientation burn to upright itself for landing. How cool was that…

As it neared the center of the landing zone it started the propulsion again as it was attempting a propulsive landing on the launch pad.  We noticed it coming in kind of fast but it was oriented right in the center of the landing pad. The landing was too hard and as a result SN8 exploded on the landing pad. The smoke came first and then a fireball with the loud BOOM shortly thereafter. It was a tragic ending to an otherwise successful and spectacular mission.

We read the explanation for the hard landing was the result of lower than expected pressure in the methane header tank, resulting in the vehicle exploding on the landing pad. The press release also stated that the mission was successful in its completion of the many test objectives for this flight and that it was a major milestone for the Starship program

WOW, for us it was truly a magical event we were lucky enough to have seen while on our Road of Retirement…

NOTE:  We are currently in Port Isabel in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas for the winter…