√What a blast! Debris from Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship rocket launch destroys nearby car

It turns out you can park too close to the largest rocket ever launched…

Footage has emerged of a car being pummelled by debris expelled by the launch of the Starship rocket – built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company – last week.

The Chrysler Grand Voyager people mover – sold in the US as a Dodge Grand Caravan – was owned by spaceflight news publisher, NASA Space Flight, and was set up with cameras and monitoring equipment (though the car was unoccupied).

The vehicle was positioned about 500 metres from the SpaceX launchpad in Boca Chica, Texas.

During the launch, the thrust from the Starship rocket – said to be the most powerful ever launched – sent chunks of rock, concrete and other debris at high speeds in every direction, and a large chunk of rock was sent flying through the rear-left window pillar of the unfortunate van.

Footage of the incident was captured by LabPadre, a live-stream service that provides a 24-hour camera to document SpaceX developments and launches.

The apocalyptic debris cloud is quickly overwhelms the camera site, with other monitoring equipment seen knocked over and damaged.

Reports following the launch have noted most cameras were destroyed with many losing their image data in the process.

While the footage that did survive will may still be valuable to the analysts, we expect that next time, all cars will be parked a little further away.

Starship first flight remote camera pickup part 1: utter carnage. @NASASpaceflight pic.twitter.com/kLt41vRO5s
— Jack Beyer (@thejackbeyer) April 22, 2023