This Thursday was the date set for the launch of Starship SN24, the largest and most powerful rocket in the history of the space race.
This project by Elon Musk's SpaceX company consists of the Starship spacecraft and a propulsion system called Super Heavy. The set is 120 meters long, 10 more than the Saturn V rocket used by NASA in 1969 to reach the Moon. The Starship is intended to be a totally reusable launch system, that is, unlike other rockets, both the ship and the propulsion system can be used in different missions, which would serve to lower the costs of operation. SpaceX intends to use this rocket to reach the Moon and Mars.
It should be noted that this maiden flight scheduled for today was a test flight. The rocket carried no cargo or crew. Its objective was to go into orbit and go around the Earth a little less than once to end up landing in Hawaii. The launch was made from SpaceX's Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas at 13:33 UTC. The rocket was equipped with 33 Raptor engines. After the launch he lost three of them and a little later another two. As a result of this and other damage sustained during launch, the rocket began to drift and its destruction system was activated at 13:37 UTC, exploding over the Gulf of Mexico, thus preventing it from being able to land. fall on any inhabited area.
In the history of the space race there have been more failed launches. Some of them killed astronauts, which is the most terrible thing. Fortunately it was not what happened this Thursday. Elon Musk has made it clear that he is not giving up because of this setback: "Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months.", he pointed today. If you missed it, you can watch the full launch video here. The countdown starts from the 45:00 point of the video (I have inserted it so that it starts there):
In the video, from the time of launch, you can see some information about the state of the rocket at the bottom: from left to right, we see a drawing with the active motors (in white) and the inactive (in black), the speed and altitude data of the flight, a graph with the inclination of the rocket with respect to the earth's surface and a clock counting the duration of the flight.
Despite the botched ending, this was an impressive release. I hope the next one is successful.
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Photos: SpaceX.
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