Even during ground tests, SpaceX has had a hard time getting all of those engines, clustered together at the base of the rocket, to power on consistently at the same time. ET, with the Super Heavy booster igniting all 33 of its Raptor engines. The rocket and spacecraft lifted off the launchpad at 8 a.m. The Starship system made it much farther into flight than the first attempt in April. But the Starship spacecraft was able to briefly continue its journey. That process ended up destroying the Super Heavy booster, which erupted into a ball of flames over the Gulf of Mexico. The Super Heavy booster and Starship spacecraft successfully separated after liftoff, as the Starship lit up its engines and pushed away. "I think people will be shocked by the cadence that emerges next year.SpaceX’s gargantuan deep-space rocket system, Starship, safely lifted off Saturday morning but ended prematurely with an explosion and a loss of signal. "They have the next number of vehicles already lined up in the factory ready to go," he said. Though such a pace is expected to be driven largely by the FAA's review and the extent of Starship's technical failures. Jaret Matthews, CEO of lunar rover startup Astrolab that has booked space on a future Starship flight, toured SpaceX's Starbase site earlier this year and said he expects the company to swiftly resume tests after the Saturday flight. So SpaceX needs to deliver on a timeline." "NASA has a timeline where they're trying to get to the moon, and this is their primary vehicle to do it. "The clock is ticking," said Chad Anderson, a SpaceX investor and managing partner of venture capital firm Space Capital. Musk - SpaceX's founder, chief executive and chief engineer - sees Starship as eventually replacing the company's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket as the centerpiece of its launch business that already lofts most of the world's satellites and other commercial payloads into space. NASA chief Bill Nelson, who has made competition with China a core need for speed in Artemis, said Saturday's Starship test was an "opportunity to learn - then fly again." space agency is counting on to play a central role of landing humans on the moon within the next few years under its human spaceflight program, Artemis, successor to the Apollo missions. NASA, SpaceX's primary customer, has a considerable stake in the success of Starship, which the U.S. SpaceX's worker safety culture underpinning its speedy development ethos is facing scrutiny by lawmakers after a Reuters investigation documented hundreds of injuries at the rocket company's U.S. SpaceX in a post on social media platform X said "success comes from what we learn," adding that the core Starship stage's engines "fired for several minutes on its way to space."Ī fully successful test would have marked a key step toward achieving SpaceX's ambition producing a large, multi-purpose, spacecraft capable of sending people and cargo back to the moon later this decade for NASA, and ultimately to Mars. "There's not money and patience for unlimited tests, but for a vehicle that is so different and so big, two, three, four, five tests is not excessive," Christensen said.Īt roughly 43 miles (70 km) in altitude, the rocket system executed the crucial maneuver to separate the two stages - something it failed to do in the last test - with the Super Heavy booster intended to plunge into Gulf of Mexico waters while the core Starship booster blasts further to space using its own engines.īut the Super Heavy booster blew up moments later, followed by the Starship stage's own explosion. "More things were successful than in the previous test, including some new capabilities that were significant," said Carissa Christensen, CEO of space analytics firm BryceTech.
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