Elon Musk’s company was aiming to send the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built on a round-the-world trip from the southern tip of Texas, near the Mexican border. The nearly 120-metre Starship carried no people or satellites.
SpaceX later said multiple engines were not firing as the rocket ascended, causing it to lose altitude and begin to tumble. The rocket was intentionally destroyed by its self-destruct system, exploding and plummeting into the water.
The 33-engine booster was supposed to peel away from the spacecraft three minutes after liftoff, but that didn’t happen.
Instead of a best-case-scenario 1 1/2-hour flight with the spacecraft taking a lap around the world, the whole thing lasted four minutes. It reached a maximum speed of about 2,100 kilometres an hour and as high as 39 kilometres.
Mr. Musk, in a tweet, called it “an exciting test launch of Starship! Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months.”
The Federal Aviation Administration said it would oversee the accident investigation, noting that no injuries or public property damage were reported. The agency also said that until it determines that there is no threat to public safety, Starships are grounded.
The SpaceX intends to use Starship to send people and cargo to the moon and, eventually, Mars. NASA has reserved a Starship for its next moonwalking team, and rich tourists are already booking lunar flybys.
At 394 feet and nearly 17 million pounds of thrust, Starship easily surpasses NASA’s moon rockets – past, present and future. NASA successfully launched its new 98-metre moon rocket last November on a test flight, sending the empty Orion capsule around the moon.
The stainless steel Starship rocket is designed to be fully reusable with fast turnaround, dramatically lowering costs, similar to what SpaceX’s smaller Falcon rockets have done soaring from Cape Canaveral, Fla. Nothing was to be saved from this test flight, with the spacecraft – if all had gone well – aiming for a watery grave in the Pacific near Hawaii.
The futuristic spacecraft flew several miles into the air during testing a few years ago, landing successfully only once. But this was to be the inaugural launch of the first-stage booster with 33 methane-fuelled engines.
SpaceX has more boosters and spacecraft lined up for more test flight; the next set is almost ready to go. Mr. Musk wants to fire them off in quick succession, so he can start using Starships to launch satellites into low-Earth orbit and then put people on board.
Source: www.aljazeera.com
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