SpaceX Just Unleashed Its Starship Rocket for the First Time
After today’s near-ground-level test of the Starship prototype, SpaceX is aiming to send two more vehicles into orbit.
SpaceX
Late on Thursday night, at a launch facility in Boca Chica, Texas, SpaceX performed the first flight test of its next-generation Starship rocket,
which may one day carry humans to Mars. This time around, the prototype
vehicle, dubbed Starhopper, was supposed to stay close to home: The
plan was for it to fire up its Raptor engine, rise to an altitude of
about 60 feet, move sideways a few yards, and land.
When launch time came, smoke obscured any view of the rocket. But when the smoke cleared, Starhopper was back on the ground, not far from where it had started. Elon Musk confirmed the successful hop on Twitter, writing, “Water towers *can* fly haha!!” (As it happens, a water tower would have come in handy: When the rocket landed, it promptly started a fire near the launchpad.)
When launch time came, smoke obscured any view of the rocket. But when the smoke cleared, Starhopper was back on the ground, not far from where it had started. Elon Musk confirmed the successful hop on Twitter, writing, “Water towers *can* fly haha!!” (As it happens, a water tower would have come in handy: When the rocket landed, it promptly started a fire near the launchpad.)
“This particular hop is
one in a series of tests designed to push the limits of the vehicle as
quickly as possible to learn all we can, as fast as we safely can,” a
SpaceX spokesperson said. It’s the first step toward test flights in the
upper atmosphere, which Elon Musk said would “hopefully” occur in the next few months.
Starship
looks as though it was plucked straight from the pages of a pulp
science fiction novel. Bullet-shaped and clad in stainless steel, it
will ultimately be nearly 200 feet tall. The water-tower-like
Starhopper, however, is much shorter: In January, strong winds toppled
the rocket’s nose cone, so SpaceX decided to do the first hop without
it. The nose cone won’t be necessary until later anyway, when it will
encase the rocket’s payload and handle the crushing aerodynamic forces
of higher-altitude tests.
Thursday’s
flight was originally scheduled to take place early last week, but a
fireball on the launchpad during testing forced SpaceX to delay it.
Although video
of the fireball seemed to show Starhopper being consumed by flame, the
prototype emerged mostly unscathed. As Musk pointed out on Twitter,
a big advantage of stainless steel—as opposed to carbon fiber, which
was the original plan—is that it’s “not bothered by a little heat.”
Still, the company took time to make sure everything was functioning
normally leading up to its second attempt.
On
Wednesday, SpaceX once again fueled Starhopper for its first flight, but
ended the test just seconds after the engines ignited. The rocket never
left the ground; it was engulfed in a large cloud of smoke and flame
that emanated from the top of the vehicle. Although SpaceX did not
announce the cause of the mishap, there were no explosions and
Starhopper wasn't significantly damaged.
SpaceX plans to use Starship both as a cost-effective launch system for its Starlink internet satellites
as well as as a cargo carrier for commercial customers. In the long
term, according to Musk, the rocket is bound for Mars. Like the
company’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, Starship will be capable of landing itself after a trip to orbit; the main difference is that it packs a lot more power than its predecessors.
This
is due to SpaceX’s new Raptor engine, which replaces the Merlin engines
used on the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. Each Merlin engine produces a
little over 200,000 pounds of thrust at sea level; the test version of
the Raptor engine has achieved 380,000 pounds of thrust. In the future,
Musk has said, improved versions of the Raptor engine will generate more than half a million pounds of thrust.
Thursday’s
Starhopper test used just a single Raptor engine, but subsequent
flights to higher altitudes will use at least three. The final version
of Starship will be mounted on a Falcon Superheavy, which will use 31
Raptors—providing twice the thrust of the Saturn V, which launched the Apollo missions and remains the most powerful rocket ever flown. Musk, never one to underpromise, said he expects the company to begin producing a new Raptor engine every three days by the end of the summer.
The
Starhopper flight comes on the heels of two tethered tests earlier this
year, in which the rocket was strapped to the launchpad so it only got a
few feet off the ground. Late last month, the Federal Aviation
Administration granted SpaceX a permit to conduct an “unlimited number of flights” with Starship over the next year, which was the last regulatory hurdle before untethered flights could begin.
Two
Starship prototypes destined for orbit are under construction in Texas
and Florida. The SpaceX teams at each facility are technically in
competition, but they keep each other updated and share knowledge about
their building techniques. It’s effectively a way to A/B test the
construction of the vehicle, a common technique in software engineering that aims to lower production times.
The
rapid development of Starship bodes well for Musk’s extraterrestrial
ambitions, despite a recent setback to SpaceX’s commercial crew program following an explosion in April. He’s already sold a Starship ride
to the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, who will fly around the
moon with a group of artists as soon as 2023. What happens next is
anyone’s guess, but Musk’s sights are firmly set on Mars. Soon enough, he’ll have the rocket he needs to get there.
More Great WIRED Stories
- How Waze data can help predict car crashes
- Notifications are stressing us out. How did we get here?
- The simple way Apple and Google let abusers stalk victims
- How nine people built an illegal $5 million Airbnb empire
- Disney's new Lion King is the VR-fueled future of cinema
- 📱 Torn between the latest phones? Never fear—check out our iPhone buying guide and favorite Android phones
- 📩 Hungry for even more deep dives on your next favorite topic? Sign up for the Backchannel newsletter
View Comments
- Meredith Fore
Where Do Supermassive Black Holes Come From?
- Rhett Allain
How Long Would It Take to Bicycle to the Moon?
- Matt Simon
Now We Know How the Zombie Ant Gets Its Bite
- Alex Baker-Whitcomb
Elon's Brain Computer, Big Tech's Big Day in Congress, and More News
- Matt Simon
Climate Change Is Very Real. But So Much of It Is Uncertain
.jpg)
