A crashing ‘success’

Musk hails SpaceX

An unmanned SpaceX craft exploded in a massive fireball at the end of a test flight Wednesday in Texas, but CEO Elon Musk hailed the launch as a resounding success.

The Starship SN8 (right) crashed back to earth at around 5:30 p.m. after reaching an altitude of about 40,000 feet over Boca Chica, according to reports.

Musk lauded the test run on Twitter.

“Fuel header tank pressure was low during landing burn, causing touchdown velocity to be high . . . but we got all the data we needed!” he wrote. “Congrats SpaceX team hell yeah!!”

“Mars, here we come!!” he added in a second tweet.

The rocket is part of the transportation system that SpaceX is developing with an eye toward eventually ferrying Earth-weary travelers to the moon and, one day, Mars.

The explosive ending, while visually stunning, was not entirely unexpected.

Musk last month pegged the odds of a flawless test launch at less than 50/50.

“Lot of things need to go right, so maybe 1/3 chance,” he tweeted when asked by a reporter how likely it was the craft would land intact.

Most of the flight went as expected, with the craft ascending skyward for a few minutes after launch before the engines cut as planned.

It then entered free fall and went horizontal, before thrusters kicked in close to Earth for an attempted landing.

But the craft didn’t slow down soon enough, causing a fiery crash (top to bottom, far right). The flight lasted six minutes and 42 seconds.