Elon Musk's SpaceX Starship explodes and goes up in flames during launch

Elon Musk's latest SpaceX launch has - quite literally - gone up in flames.

On Thursday (April 20), during the largest launch in human history, SpaceX crew could only watch as the company's 120-meter Starship rocket system burst into flames.

The devastating scenes occurred just minutes after the rocket ship had blasted off from the Boca Chica, Texas base. It also provided quite a site for the crowds, who had reportedly gathered nearby before the sun came up.

As reported by the Daily Mail, shortly after liftoff, the unmanned rocket - the most powerful of its kind on the planet - started tumbling just four minutes into the flight. This came as it prepared to separate the Super Heavy booster from the Starship.

Nevertheless, Musk was not deterred and saw the launch as a learning experience.

He tweeted shortly after the explosion: "Congrats @SpaceX team on an exciting test launch of Starship! Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months."

This sentiment was echoed by the official SpaceX Twitter page, with reps for the company seemingly apprehensive about the launch and saying prior to lift-off: "With a test such as this, success is measured by how much we can learn, which will inform and improve the probability of success in the future as SpaceX rapidly advances development of Starship."

Additionally, after the launch, the company was not willing to let the explosion dampen its spirits, with officials tweeting: "With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multi-planetary."

It added: "Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on an exciting first integrated flight test of Starship!"

This particular mission is just part of the learning curve for Musk's hopes to one day send people and cargo to the Moon and Mars.

If today's mission were successful, it would have seen Starship orbit the planet once before finally splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.

Musk has previously discussed his ambition for humans to become an inter-planetary species, saying: "I think it's important for the long-term preservation and ultimately the expansion and extension of the scope and scale of consciousness, and the long-term, probably, survival of the humanity and life as we know it, we must become a multi-planet species."

Featured image credit: Federico Rostagno / Alamy