The SpaceX Starship Launch is no longer ‘on the cards’. It’s happening, finally! The Starship, which has the tagline, ‘SERVICE TO EARTH ORBIT, MOON, MARS AND BEYOND’, was about to be launched, back in December.
Even on Technowize, in our special feature in early-November, we highlighted that the NASA Advisory Council was trying to facilitate the SpaceX Starship test launch. Mark Kirasich, a very senior NASA official, who has been overseeing the project, was quoted saying — “We track four major Starship flights. The first one here is coming up in December, part of early December.”
But now, after a loooong delay, it almost appears to be a reality soon, as the SpaceX Starship launch is slated to happen today itself! However, going by the ‘embarrassing’ history, even the Hawthorne-headquartered company’s CEO Elon Musk sounded cautious, “I guess I’d like to just set expectations low.”
Let’s dig deeper into the story and unravel all you need to know about the first-ever SpaceX Starship test flight.
All eyes will be on how SpaceX’s blue-eyed boy, Starship fares, after all these years of hype with billions of dollars being injected in the process. [Image Credit: SpaceX]
SpaceX Starship Launch: Fly Baby, Fly!
What connects Tintin and Elon Musk? The answer is — Destination Moon! Musk who again made the headlines for wrong reasons lately, with the Twitter logo change, has some contractual bindings. For the uninitiated, the $2.89 billion deal between SpaceX and NASA forces the former to successfully demonstrate that Starship can actually land humans on the Moon by late 2025.
Starship is a wonder kid, which happens to be the world’s most powerful launch vehicle ever, being capable of carrying up to 150 metric tons fully reusable and 250 metric tons expendable. For years, SpaceX in collaboration with NASA, has been designing it as a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to ‘Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond’.
But as Musk is pretty close to creating history with the first-ever SpaceX Starship launch, he has shown doubt which reflects his extra-cautiousness, this time. The Tesla boss said, “If we get far enough away from launch pad before something goes wrong, then I think I would consider that to be a success. Just don’t blow up the pad.”
He further added that a postponement is not a distant possibility — “There’s a good chance that it gets postponed since we’re going to be pretty careful about this launch.”
However, the Federal Aviation Administration, entrusted with licensing commercial rocket launches, has voiced in favor of Musk, “After a comprehensive license evaluation process, the FAA determined SpaceX met all safety, environmental, policy, payload, airspace integration and financial responsibility requirements.”
Standing tall at 120m (400ft), the Starship is anticipated to have almost double the thrust of any rocket in human history. If everything goes well, it’s likely to fly from South Texas at around 9AM ET. The SpaceX Starship launch stream can be viewed live on the company’s official YouTube channel.
Hence, the SpaceX Starship launch could be a hit or miss. And Musk being Musk, has said in his impeccable style, “People (came) from all around the world to see what will either be a great rocket launch or the best fireworks display they’ve ever seen.”
All eyes will be on how SpaceX’s blue-eyed boy, Starship fares, after all these years of hype with billions of dollars being injected in the process. We will surely keep you posted with exclusive updates. Meanwhile, stay tuned with us for more top stories from the tech world.
