Elon Musk’s latest leap into space exploration ended in a fireball on Thursday, but experts at NASA hailed the launch of the world’s largest rocket ever built as a success.
The $3 billion Starship spacecraft, which will eventually take NASA astronauts to the moon, was supposed to separate from its launch vehicle three minutes after flight, but it failed and it exploded over the Gulf of Mexico.
Still, Musk, who gave the rocket a 50-50 chance, congratulated his team and said they “learned a lot for the next test launch in a couple of months.”
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson was also effusive in his praise, stating that “every great achievement throughout history has required some measure of calculated risk, for with great risk there is reward.”
“I look forward to everything SpaceX learns, towards the next flight test – and beyond,” added Nelson.
The $3 billion Starship spacecraft, which will eventually carry crew and cargo, was scheduled to separate from the first-stage rocket booster three minutes into flight, but the separation failed to materialize and the rocket exploded in a fireball over the Gulf of Mexico
Elon Musk (front center) in the control room watches the SpaceX spacecraft lift off from the starbase in Boca Chica, Texas
Space enthusiasts on South Padre Island, Texas watch the launch of the SpaceX spacecraft
NASA has selected the Starship spacecraft to carry astronauts to the Moon in late 2025 — a mission called Artemis III — for the first time since the Apollo program ended in 1972.
SpaceX said that “in a test like this, success depends on what we learn, and today’s test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX tries to shape life on multiple planets.”
“We cleared the tower, which was our only hope,” said Kate Tice, a quality systems engineer at SpaceX.
A crowd of SpaceX employees, watching a live stream together at the company’s headquarters near Los Angeles, cheered wildly as the rocket left the launch tower and exploded into the sky again.
SpaceX lead integration engineer John Insprucker said the test flight will provide a wealth of important data that would pave the way for the company to conduct further testing.
Aside from the launch itself, the test mission missed several other goals, such as launching the spacecraft into space and re-entering Earth’s atmosphere 60 miles off a Hawaiian coast at supersonic speeds, where it would have been subject to important aerodynamic forces and blistering heat prior to its immersion in the Pacific Ocean .
Still, it was a major milestone in SpaceX’s quest to send astronauts back to the moon and eventually to Mars, as a key partner in NASA’s newly inaugurated human spaceflight program.
Musk previously estimated the total development cost of the Starship project to be between $2 billion and $10 billion. He later changed this to “closer to two or three”. [billion] when it’s up to 10.’
SpaceX’s ambition and achievement is all the more impressive as it is a private company, while NASA is a government-backed agency that has been in existence since the 1950s and has a wealth of research and resources.
Eric Berger, senior space editor at science website Ars Technica, said: “To the layman, seeing NASA at work that cannot afford to fail, this looks like a failure. But for those who know a little bit more, and about iterative design, this has been a tremendous success. SpaceX has 2-3 more rockets ready for use.
“SpaceX does things differently. His process is faster but also more chaotic. Luckily, they can afford to “fail.” You can build 10 super-heavy first stages in the time NASA builds a single SLS rocket. If the first five fail but the next five succeed, what is a better result?’
At 394 feet tall and weighing 394 tons, the spacecraft is larger than NASA’s largest spacecraft to date, Saturn V, which stood 363 feet and weighed 207 tons.
SpaceX engineers spent just eight months building the first Starship prototype, while it took NASA seven years to complete Saturn V.
Starship consists of a 164-foot spacecraft designed to carry crew and cargo, sitting on a 230-foot Super Heavy first stage launch vehicle.
SpaceX conducted a successful test launch of the 33 massive Raptor engines on the first-stage booster in February, but the Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket were flown together for the first time on Thursday.
The integrated test flight should assess their performance in combination.
Starship is both larger and more powerful than SLS, capable of lifting a payload in excess of 100 tons into orbit. It generates 17 million pounds of thrust, more than double the Saturn V rockets that sent Apollo astronauts to the moon
Pictured is the trajectory Starship was supposed to take before it exploded on Thursday
SpaceX’s starship breaks down into its Raptor engine, the Super Heavy Booster, and its starship, which is the component that travels through space
The massive 365-foot rocket lifted off at around 9:30 a.m. after the countdown clock paused to complete final checks
This launch vehicle has 33 Raptor engines capable of generating 17 million pounds of take-off thrust
Launch was originally scheduled for Monday but was pushed back to Thursday due to a frozen pressure valve on the first stage booster.
Before the test, Musk had warned of possible technical problems and tried to downplay expectations of the first flight.
“It’s the first launch of a very complicated, gigantic rocket. There’s a million ways this rocket could fail,’ he said.
NASA will launch astronauts into lunar orbit in November 2024 on its own heavy rocket called the Space Launch System (SLS), which has been in development for more than a decade.
Starship is both larger and more powerful than SLS, capable of lifting a payload in excess of 100 tons into orbit.
Elon Musk’s mother celebrates on a balcony in Texas while watching the launch. He is interviewed by space reporter Ellie in Space
Kimbal Musk, Elon’s brother, was also there to support the epic SpaceX mission. He is interviewed by space reporter Ellie in Space
Thousands of people have lined up around SpaceX’s starbase in Texas to watch the launch of Starship
On the unmanned mission, SpaceX’s spacecraft nearly completed one orbit, while the booster launching it into orbit lands back in the Gulf of Mexico about eight minutes after launch. The crowds have been waiting since the sun came up
It generates 17 million pounds of thrust, more than double the Saturn V rockets that sent Apollo astronauts to the moon.
The plan for the integrated test flight called for the Super Heavy Booster to separate from Starship after launch and land in the Gulf of Mexico.
However, they failed to separate, and the launch vehicle and Starship spacecraft spiraled out of control and exploded four minutes into the test flight, in what SpaceX euphemistically called a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” situation.
Had a separation occurred, Starship, which has six of its own engines, would continue to an altitude of nearly 150 miles and nearly orbit Earth before touching down in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii about 90 minutes after liftoff.
“If we get far enough away from the launch pad before anything goes wrong, I would consider that a success,” Musk said before the test. “Don’t blow up the launch pad.”
SpaceX envisions eventually launching a spacecraft into orbit and then refueling it with another spacecraft so it can continue its journey to Mars or beyond.
The ultimate goal is to establish bases on the Moon and Mars and put humans on the “path to a multi-planet civilization,” according to Musk.
“That is our goal. I think we have a chance.’
HOW WILL STARSHIP WORK, IS IT THE MOST POWERFUL ROCKET EVER AND WHERE WILL IT LAUNCH?
HOW STARSHIP WORKS
Starship is said to be SpaceX’s first fully reusable rocket, which is one reason Musk’s vehicle could fly 200 times cheaper per launch than most other rockets.
How will it work?
When ready to land on Earth, Starship will first re-enter the atmosphere at a 60-degree angle before hitting the ground in a horizontal position.
This type of return uses our planet’s atmosphere to slow the vehicle’s descent, but makes it unstable.
Starship is said to be SpaceX’s first fully reusable rocket, which is one reason Musk’s vehicle could fly 200 times cheaper per launch than most other rockets
Because of this, Starship uses four steel landing flaps positioned near the front and rear of the craft to control its descent, functioning much like a skydiver uses his arms and legs to control a free fall.
As Starship nears the ground, it returns to a vertical position and then uses its Raptor engines as retro-missiles to guide it down for a safe landing.
In November 2019, Musk claimed that a Starship launch could cost as little as $2million (£1.8million) each time, thanks to the efficiency savings of reusing a rocket.
For comparison, NASA’s new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket is estimated to cost a staggering $4.1 billion (£3.3 billion) per launch.
IS IT THE BIGGEST ROCKET EVER?
Yes. And not only that, it’s also the strongest.
Musk’s craft has 16 million pounds (70 meganewtons) of thrust, nearly double that of the other new-generation rocket being developed by NASA, known as the SLS.
You may remember SLS for successfully launching the Orion spacecraft into orbit last November as part of the Artemis I mission, during which it flew around the moon and back.
The spacecraft is 120 m (395 ft) tall, with the ship itself measuring 49 m (164 ft) and the booster 70 m (230 ft).
No wonder, but SpaceX’s Super Heavy rocket and accompanying Starship spacecraft are heavy.
When it’s full of fuel, the whole thing costs £11million.