Contrails, or rocket launch?

[moa999]

Did any debris actually reach ground, or had it all burned up in the upper atmosphere before it became a risk to aircraft?

 

[Quickstatus]

Unknown if debris fell on populated areas
The Starship was about 120 altitude when it exploded over Bahamas/Turks and Caicos.

 

[RooFlyer]

Juan Browne's take. Not a fan of Musk's modus operandi.

 

[Quickstatus]

They clearly did not expect their new toy was at disassembly risk any more than thousands of other launches

No, RocketMan has always said that failure is one of the possible outcomes. The point is he does not care if it fails. He iterates it until it does not fail. Until then...

 

[jb747]

From what I saw yesterday, apparently the actual disassembly was caused by the destruct system. It happened some minutes after the loss of telemetry, and only 30 seconds before objects were visibly re-entering. So, that sounds like the system destroyed it to ensure that it would hit the atmosphere in small bits that are less likely to reach the ground. As for the islands, I'd expect anything that did come down was well to the east. In any event, hundreds of kms from the point at which the video was being shot.