Elon Musk's SpaceX Starship Explodes After Launch

Turns out, Twitter isn't the only thing in Elon Musk's life going up in flames ... because his highly-anticipated rocket launch just blew up only minutes after taking the skies.

Thankfully, the SpaceX Starship wasn't carrying any people or satellites when it took off in southern Texas Thursday morning for an around-the-world trip. All seemed fine to the folks on the ground until a massive explosion sent the rocket plummeting back down to Earth.

The rocket was careening out of control when it was intentionally blown up ... You hear mission control say, "It appears that the automatic flight termination system has been activated."

Starship is massive, 400 feet long and is both the biggest and most powerful ever built. This was the rocket's first launch -- it was supposed to originally go up Monday, but that was called off after a valve got stuck during fueling.

Elon apparently wasn't deterred by the explosion, tweeting out only a few minutes after the failure, "Congrats SpaceX team on an exciting test launch of Starship! Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months."