The launch of the biggest rocket ended in an explosion
The Starship test flight: the first test flight from the Boca Chica launch site in South Florida, and a first test to the Moon and Mars
Future Starship flights are meant to kick off a new era of space exploration, including sending humans to the Moon and Mars, and could enable new types of astrophysics and planetary science. The rocket was uncrewed on this first test flight.
The Super Heavy rocket and its stage broke apart right after liftoff from the Boca Chica launch site in southern Texas.
A test flight was designed to go close to the stars. The ship was supposed to fly to an altitude of 146 miles, making most of a lap around the earth. The Super Heavy rocket was planned to splash down off the Texas coast soon after launch, and the Starship vehicle would have splashed down at the end of its trip 90 minutes later, off the coast of Kauai, Hawaii.
And the crowd at SpaceX’s Starbase in Texas, which cheered enthusiastically throughout the countdown, didn’t seem to mind the deviation from plan, continuing to cheer and clap even as the malfunction became evident and the Starship stack began to spin instead of separate, and then burst into plumes of white smoke. “Everything after clearing the tower was icing on the cake,” said SpaceX commentator Kate Tice. “As we promised, an exciting end to the Starship inaugural integrated test flight.”
Before this week, the company didn’t respond to media requests about the launch, but did reveal a few details about it. But there were some clues it was imminent: The FAA included the launch in their operations plan advisory, with backup dates through April 22. State Highway 4 and Boca Chica Beach will be closed on April 17 with potential for backups over the following two days.
The first full test of the rocket was partially successful. It might change the way we view the Moon and Mars.
It was the very first time that a rocket powered by up to 33 engines fired in one direction at the same time, which is something that doesn’t happen often. “Starship gave us a rather spectacular end to what was a truly incredible test,” Insprucker said later.
When it’s stacked atop its rocket booster, Starship is 120 metres tall. The craft can be used to carry 150 tonnes of equipment into space. The cost of going to space will be slashed by the use of recovered and reuse parts.
Space flight has always been constrained by cost, mass and volume, according to a planetary scientist at NASA. All of the constraints are lifted with the help of Starship.
Frequent access to space was promised by NASA when the space shuttles flew 135 times between 1981 and 2011. But NASA eventually retired the shuttle in favour of developing the more powerful SLS to travel farther away from Earth.
Still, developing any new rocket is challenging, as today’s flight showed. SpaceX has a number of other Starships built and will likely test another one in the near future. A lot could happen this year, according to Forczyk. Or not.
