“It’s weird if it doesn’t explode, frankly,” Musk said in 2021, “because we’re trying to develop advanced rockets at a high speed and if you want to get payload to orbit, you have to run things close to the edge.”

However, the rocket system's upper stage, which was packed with upgrades for the flight test, did not survive the launch and appeared to break apart over the Gulf of Mexico or the Caribbean Sea. SpaceX confirmed on the live broadcast that the spacecraft's engines started to go out prior to planned engine cut-off and Starship later stopped delivering telemetry data.