Month Top:

Starship Flight 1 emerges from the plume of concrete dust after the engines dug a hole below the orbital launch mount in Boca Chica, Texas on April 20, 2023.

If you look closely, you can see shockwaves emanating from the side of the exhaust plume beneath the Super Heavy booster caused by the supersonic to subsonic transition of the flow coming out of the Raptor engines. These shockwaves / sound transitioning from going really quickly (supersonic) to the speed of the nearby air (subsonic), are what cause the “crackle” and “pop” sounds you hear and feel when watching a rocket launch into the sky. Each of these little bits of exhaust slowing down rapidly creates its own mini sonic boom/shockwave and causes rocket launches to be so loud.

Month bottom:

Booster 7 / Ship 24 flying through the morning sky on Flight 1 of Starship. If you look closely at the base of Booster 7, you can see there are several engines not functioning. Not all the Raptor engines ignited or sustained ignition during the liftoff due to the massive plume of flying concrete chunks (some as big and as heavy as an M1 Abrams Tank, thrown hundreds of feet into the air) and dust that the Raptor engines dug into the ground before clearing the orbital launch mount.

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