SpaceX launch: How it really went... in 59 seconds Elon Musk's SpaceX company's mammoth new rocket, Starship, has exploded on its maiden flight. No-one was hurt in the uncrewed test that lifted off from Texas' coast on Thursday morning local time. After two to three minutes into the flight, the rocket - the biggest ever developed - started to tumble out of control and was soon destroyed by onboard charges. Mr Musk has said his company will try again in a couple of months. SpaceX engineers still class Thursday's mission as a success. They like to "test early and often" and are not afraid to break things. They will have gathered a mass of data to work towards the next flight. A second Starship is almost ready to take flight. "Congrats @SpaceX team on an exciting test launch of Starship! Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months," Mr Musk tweeted. The Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses rocket launches in the US, said it would oversee a mishap investigation. A spokesman said this was standard practice when a vehicle was lost in flight. Reuters Starship reached a maximum altitude over the Gulf of 39km The top segment of Starship, also known as the ship, had taken flight previously on short hops, but this was the first time it had launched with its lower-stage. This immense booster, called simply Super Heavy, was fired while clamped to its launch mount in February. However, its cluster of engines on that occasion were throttled back to half their capability. If, as promised, SpaceX went for 90% thrust on Thursday, the stage should have delivered something close to 70 meganewtons. That's double the thrust put out by the Saturn V rocket that famously sent men to the Moon in the 1960s and 70s. Starship may not have destroyed its launch pad but later pictures indicated the forceful departure had done a fair amount of damage to concrete surfaces. The plan for the mission had been to send the ship on one near-complete revolution of the Earth, ending with a splashdown in the Pacific, a couple of hundred km north of Hawaii. There was no expectation that the ship or Super Heavy would be recovered. However, long term, this is the plan. The idea is to land both halves, refuel them and launch again - over and over. If this can be achieved, it will be transformative. Starship has a prospective payload performance to orbit of more than 100 tonnes per flight. When this is allied to the low cost of operation - principally, just the cost of fuel - it should open the door to an exciting future. "In the industry, there's certainly a very high expectation at the potential of this vehicle for disruption," said space consultant Carissa Bryce Christensen. "Its massive capacity, from a commercial standpoint, could be significant. A very large vehicle that's human-rated could be important for the emergence of space tourism. The other element is the vehicle being inexpensive. So, you've got a vehicle with two transformational aspects - massive capacity and, potentially, at a very low price," the CEO of BryceTech told BBC News. SpaceX