If you were at a Florida airport recently (and that’s Florida in the US, not the one on the West Rand…), you may have seen the chaos unfold after the SpaceX Starship explosion.
Yep, Starship blew up, and somehow, it messed up flights for a bunch of regular people trying to get from point A to point B.
SpaceX Starship explosion
Starship was launched on the Super Heavy booster, which, after separation, successfully returned and was caught by the launch tower approximately seven minutes post-liftoff.
Meanwhile, Starship was happily on its way into low orbit when things went sideways. It experienced multiple engine failures about eight minutes into the flight, leading to loss of altitude control.
It eventually disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean in a spectacular display of fiery debris.
This wasn’t a mission to send satellites or astronauts into orbit. The rocket was unmanned and SpaceX was conducting a test to refine its tech. It was the eighth flight test of Starship.
Unfortunately, something failed, and instead of a successful test, the rocket turned into a fireball in the sky. The explosion forced the FAA to halt flights in case debris started raining down.
If you’re scratching your head wondering how a space explosion grounded planes, you’re not alone. Let’s break it down.
Why did the SpaceX Starship explosion delay flights?
Rockets don’t just blast off into space and leave the Earth behind.
There’s a huge safety zone around every launch in case something goes wrong. And guess what? Something went wrong.
This isn’t something that happens every day. When a rocket explodes, debris can fall for kilometres. And absolutely nobody wants to be on a plane when that’s happening.
Just saw the ship explode over us in key west pic.twitter.com/Q1SU4iCJX4
— bckwdsmn (@bckwdsmn) March 6, 2025
How bad were the flight delays?
Pretty bad.
People at Miami, Orlando, and Tampa airports suddenly found themselves stuck. Flights were delayed for up to an hour.
Even after the FAA cleared things, airlines had to play catch-up. It was a logistical nightmare. Ever had a domino effect ruin your day? That’s exactly what happened here.
Even short delays can cause a ripple effect, messing up schedules across the country. If you missed a connection because of this, you weren’t alone.
Wait, do rockets explode often?
Not usually. SpaceX has a solid track record, but space travel is risky.
When you’re launching a massive metal tube full of fuel into the sky at crazy speeds, things don’t always go as planned.
I feel I need to add a caveat here. People are also quick to label a rocket explosion as a failure. It’s not always.
I don’t like SpaceX CEO Elon Musk (the man who could have ended world hunger for $6 billion but bought Twitter for $44 billion instead) any more than the next sane person.
But rocket explosions are just part of testing. Spaceflight can only advance when engineers push limits, break things, and learn from what goes wrong.
You would much rather have a rocket explode 2,420,562 times during unmanned test flights than just once during an actual, official, manned excursion into space….
The live stream can be viewed here:
Watch Starship's eighth flight test → https://t.co/alyJTRtgTh https://t.co/7xtpEucyQB
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 6, 2025
SpaceX’s quality systems engineering senior manager, Kate Tice said:
“We had a successful liftoff, followed by successful stage separation. The booster had a successful catch-back at the tower.”
“Unfortunately, we lost the altitude control of the ship.”
Dan Huot, from Communications at SpaceX said:
“We were about 20 seconds away from the ascend burn. We did see the ship start to go into a spin, and at this point, we lost contact with the ship.”
Will this keep happening?
Probably.
SpaceX and other companies are launching rockets all the time now. And unfortunately, Florida airports are right in the middle of it.
Every time there’s a launch, there’s a chance that flights will be delayed. Especially if the test goes to hell in a handbasket in under 10 minutes.
This could mean that in the future, travellers might need to check rocket launch schedules along with their flight status.
Sounds wild, but here we are.
As space travel keeps expanding, airports and airlines have to work around rocket schedules.
TL;DR: SpaceX Starship explosion delays flights
A rocket exploded, and flights got delayed.
It’s a weird sentence, but it’s also a real problem as space travel keeps growing.
If you’re flying in or out of Florida in the States, keep an eye on both the weather and what SpaceX is up to.
