History was made today when a private company leapfrogged NASA by launching the largest and most powerful rocket ever. At 8:36 a.m. CDT, SpaceX’s unmanned Starship took off from the company’s Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, and was conducting an orbital test flight, but four minutes into her flight, an explosive detonation occurred. woke up
Under mostly clear skies and moderate winds, Starship took off as the 33 Raptor liquid fuel engines in the Falcon Heavy’s first stage accumulated 16,700,000 pounds of thrust. At the 1:20 mark, the rocket passed the point of maximum Q or maximum mechanical stress.
The next phase of the flight was the separation and ignition of the second stage, but the rocket went into an uncontrolled spin and broke apart at the 4 minute mark. Ideally, separation would be followed by the first stage making a gentle ocean landing, while Starship’s second stage would make her 90 minutes later for a soft water landing 62 miles (100 km) northwest of Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands. I got on track.
SpaceX stresses that the loss of a rocket does not mean mission failure. The purpose of the maiden flight was to pass a rocket larger than a fully assembled Saturn V through the launch pad. Everything after that was considered a bonus.
Starship has twice the thrust of the planned Block 3 Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, and can carry 20 tons more payload into low earth orbit, making today’s successful flights one of the most successful flights in NASA circles. may cause concern. With the ability to refuel in space, it is also claimed to be able to deliver 100 tons to the Moon when fully operational.
To make matters worse, the estimated flight cost is estimated at less than US$10 million, while the SLS is estimated to cost over US$4 billion per flight. Starship is completely reusable. On average she will take off once a year or once every two years.
In addition to this, SpaceX claims that Starship will be able to fly to the Moon and one day land directly on Mars. Not only NASA, but also ESA and China may need to do a serious recalculation if Starship does well. As promised.
The video below summarizes Starship’s first orbital launch.
spacecraft flight test
Source: SpaceX
