Photographer Loses $40K Worth of Gear After it was Blown Up by SpaceX Rocket

A photographer who set up nine cameras to capture the SpaceX Starship launch had six of them destroyed by chunks of concrete thrown from the launch pad.

Scott Schilke regularly covers rocket launches for Spacenews and was present at the recent Starship launch from Texas that went up in smoke on April 20.

“It turned out Elon was wrong that the concrete could handle one more launch without any protection,” Schilke tells NBC2. “The GoPros are destroyed, I did get the SD card out of it and it’s pretty amazing footage.”

Schilke’s cameras were not the only ones destroyed in the launch with a Reddit user posting shocking photos of his Nikon bodies and lenses that were wiped out by Starship.

Nikons are not Starship-proof?
by u/FDExaminer in Nikon

Schilke posted the awesome footage to his social media channels where you can plainly see huge chunks of concrete flying toward the camera until one of them takes out the instrument.

He also captured some incredible photos of the Starship launching, which Musk and SpaceX hope will one day take people to the Moon and even Mars.

Schilke appealed to his “favorite company” on social media to replace his broken GoPro cameras.

“I personally lost all four of my GoPro 8 and 7 battling with the world’s most powerful rocket at 16 million pounds of thrust nearly double what Artemis 1 launched at last year,” he writes while tagging the action camera company.

“I am a loyal GoPro user and advertiser for your company. Can you help me out to replace the equipment that didn’t survive SpaceX Starship Super Heavy at Starbase Texas? I could use your help.”

It’s not just Schilke’s camera gear that was destroyed, federal agencies tells Bloomberg that the launch led to a 3.5-acre fire on state park land in Boca Chica State Park in Texas. arm of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Image credits: Feature photo courtesy of Depositphotos and SpaceX