When SpaceX's newest rocket, Starship, lifted off last month, employees cheered as they watched the video feed. They kept cheering as it pulverized the concrete slab under its launch pad, as one of its engines appeared to explode a few seconds into flight, and even when it somersaulted out of control, before disintegrating over the Gulf of Mexico.
None of that was in the original flight plan for Starship, which was supposed to splash down in the Pacific Ocean. But nobody seemed to care that the rocket made it just 40 miles or so from the company's launch facility in Boca Chica, Texas.
