The world’s largest rocket, Starship, developed by SpaceX for trips to the Moon and Mars, exploded in mid-air shortly after its first-ever launch, but Elon Musk praised his teams, hailing a “huge” first test flight.
In a gigantic fireball, this 120-meter-tall black and silver behemoth tore itself from the ground at around 8:30 a.m. local time (9:30 a.m. Quebec) at the Starbase space base in far south Texas, in the United States, to the cheers of the SpaceX staff.
But four minutes after launch, SpaceX crews intentionally detonated the entire rocket.
The Starship spacecraft, which is the second stage of the rocket, was supposed to separate from the launch vehicle after three minutes, but this separation did not take place.
“The vehicle experienced multiple engine failures during the test flight, lost altitude, and began to fall,” SpaceX said. “The in-flight kill system was deployed on both the launch vehicle and the vehicle,” the company added.
Such a procedure is common in the event that the fall of the flying object could pose a hazard.
“Calculated Risks”
Despite this explosion, SpaceX teams welcome the test.
“We managed to get off the launch pad, which is honestly all we could have hoped for,” SpaceX engineer Kate Tice said during the company’s live video.
The purpose of this test was to collect as much data as possible to improve the following prototypes.
“We learned a lot for the next lift-off test in a few months,” Elon Musk posted on Twitter.
Starship is larger than both NASA’s new SLS megarocket (98 m), which first lifted off in November, and the legendary Saturn V, the Apollo lunar program’s rocket (111 m).
The spacecraft’s launch thrust is also about twice that of those two launch vehicles, making it the most powerful in the world.
It had never flown before in its full configuration, with its super powerful first stage dubbed Super Heavy and fitted with no fewer than 33 engines.
Only the vehicle’s second stage, the Starship spacecraft, which gives its name to the entire rocket, had performed suborbital tests (at an altitude of about 10 km).
It was he who was selected by NASA to become the lander in a modified version of the Artemis 3 mission, which must officially bring astronauts back to the lunar surface in 2025 for the first time in more than half a century.
NASA boss Bill Nelson praised SpaceX. “Every great success in history has required a certain amount of calculated risk,” he wrote on Twitter, saying he looks forward to the next test.
Expected explosion
If the planned separation had succeeded 3 minutes after launch, the Starship spacecraft would then have had to start its six engines and continue its ascent alone to more than 150 km altitude, only to then fall back into the Pacific Ocean after a no less than a circumnavigation.
But Elon Musk wanted to dampen expectations, saying it’s unlikely to reach orbit on the first try.
He’d been content to hope that the launch pad hadn’t been destroyed by the explosion of Super Heavy’s engines upon ignition.
On Monday, a first launch attempt was aborted in the final minutes of the countdown due to a technical problem.
Slash Prices
The rocket already has customers: Starship’s first manned flight is said to be with American billionaire Jared Isaacman.
The spacecraft must be able to carry up to 150 tons of cargo into orbit.
But its real innovation is that it has to be fully reusable.
Eventually, Super Heavy must come back against its launch tower to land, and the spaceship must come back with retro rockets to land on Earth. After several tests in 2020 and 2021, a first stage prototype had finally landed successfully.
The idea of a reusable launch vehicle, Elon Musk’s big strategy, is to bring prices down to “a few million” dollars a flight, he says.
An imperative for the billionaire, who estimates that humans will need hundreds of Starship rockets to have any chance of becoming a multiplanetary species. His ultimate goal is to establish an autonomous colony on Mars.