The Starship mega rocket, which might one day carry people to Mars and
beyond, successfully completed its first test flight on Thursday morning
thanks to SpaceX.
The team was attempting stage separation when the rocket exploded, or
underwent a "rapid unplanned disassembly," around four minutes after
launch.
But it's an amazing accomplishment for a maiden test flight that the rocket
cleared the launchpad and flew for four minutes; it's an exciting first step
for the rocket.
With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multi-planetary
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 20, 2023
Here is the breathtaking picture captured by the ship's camera as Starship
accelerated away from Earth.
The spaceship began to spin and lose control before exploding when the team
attempted to disconnect the stage one Starship rocket from the Super Heavy
booster underneath.
Here is when the spaceship started to disintegrate.
With the livestream replay that is provided below, you may see everything
that transpired in real time.
This was the second attempt at a test flight; the first, on Monday, was
aborted ten minutes before takeoff owing to pressurization problems.
Over the week, the crew investigated those problems and recycled the fuel
from the first launch attempt.
Liftoff of Starship! pic.twitter.com/4t8mRP37Gp
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 20, 2023
Musk wrote in a tweet that the frozen pressurant valve taught the SpaceX
team a lot.
All systems currently green for launch https://t.co/VxZOEaD652
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 20, 2023
Incredible 40 floors high is Starship. It consists of the spacecraft, a
reusable crew and cargo capsule measuring 50 meters (164 feet), mounted atop
a Super Heavy rocket booster of 70 meters (230 feet).
The 33 Raptor engines on the rocket underwent a successful test firing in
February, although the Super Heavy booster was tethered down the entire
time.
The Federal Aviation Administration just gave SpaceX approval last Friday
to launch Starship in its complete form.
Before to this, Musk had only given the rocket a 50% probability of
succeeding in reaching orbit on its first test flight.
During the Morgan Stanley Conference on March 7, Musk stated, "I'm not
claiming it will go to orbit, but I am ensuring excitement!"
He did, however, estimate that by the end of the year, the rocket had an
80% chance of succeeding in entering orbit.
The ultimate objective of Starship is to develop into a reusable rocket,
similar to Falcon 9, that can carry people to other planets and
return.
Of course, it took the Falcon 9 a ton of unsuccessful attempts and a ton of
landing pad explosions before it could repeatedly take off and land
safely.
Nowadays, the rocket is frequently used to deliver and retrieve cargo and
passengers to and from the International Space Station.
The Space Launch System (SLS), which was successfully launched for the
first time in November, is the Mars heavy rocket that NASA is also
developing.
By November 2024, the space agency hopes to launch people into lunar
orbit.
Starship will be reusable and more potent than SLS. The objective of SpaceX
is to launch a starship into orbit, refuel it with another starship, and
then send it on to other planets.
In an interview at the Morgan Stanley Conference, Musk stated that "full
quick reusability... is the major breakthrough that is needed to prolong
life beyond Earth." "It significantly reduces the cost of access to
space."
"This machine may enable interplanetary life. It is a major issue."