The spaceship reached space for the third time

Launching the Largest Rocket Ever Built: A Lunar Landing System for Space Experiment and NASA’s SpaceX Space Mission

A huge rocket was successfully launched in a test launch. The rocket went off on its maiden flight from Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas.

The company has made improvements and possibly changed procedures, but they are still unsure whether this will be the launch that proves the largest rocket ever built can fly.

“They say that the third time is a charm,” says Paulo Lozano, director of the space propulsion laboratory at MIT. He says it’s not a simple task to launch a rocket of that size.

The rocket is the largest of its kind. It stands nearly 400 feet tall, and its first stage, known as Super Heavy, is powered by 33 Raptor engines that must all work together to heave it towards orbit.

Musk believes the machine can be used to travel to the moon and Mars. Its durable stainless steel construction makes it easy to reuse, at least in theory, and could dramatically reduce the cost of launching satellites and people into orbit. NASA has given billions to SpaceX to develop Starship as a lunar landing system that could deliver astronauts to the lunar surface.

Elon Musk’s Giant Starship Rocket is Launching Again. Here’s What to Expect in the Flying Test of the Booster

The liftoff was smooth, as all 33 of the Starship’s “Super Heavy” booster engines fired in synchrony. The giant rocket lumbered off the pad, climbed out over the Gulf of Mexico and then the Starship separated cleanly from the booster and proceeded to orbit, where it began a series of in-flight tests.

This time it was said that several changes had been made. Based on photos taken by rocket-watchers near the site, the fire suppression system appears to have been beefed up and the oxygen-dumping system has also been tweaked. It doesn’t guarantee they’ve solved every single issue, but he said it will probably solve that problem.

Additional tasks have been added to the flight test. While in space, it will try to open its doors. And it will conduct a test to see whether it can transfer propellant from one fuel tank to another. It is crucial to move fuel around as the vehicle will need to top off its tanks for both lunar and Martian trips.

Source: Elon Musk’s giant Starship rocket is launching again. Here’s what to expect

How will Starship re-enter the vacuum of space? “It’s very hard to pump fuel into the atmosphere,” says Markovian Liewenstein

The propellants have high vapor pressure, according to him. They will be exposed to the vacuum of space if they are exposed. The act of pumping fuel is hard in zero gravity because there’s no force to push the fuel towards the bottom of the tanks.

After it reenters Earth’s atmosphere, Starship will try to relight its engines. Both of those people say they’ll be watching that process.

“You have to protect it from a lot of heating as it enters the atmosphere,” he says. He says the underside of the ship is covered with tiles that protect it from harmful rays, but they’ve been falling off on tests. So it remains to be seen whether they can actually keep enough tiles on Starship for it to make it through re-entry.”

The signal was lost before the period of re-entry ended, and Starship did not contact again after that. SpaceX says it believes the spacecraft broke apart as it fell back towards Earth.