Today, Elon Musk and his SpaceX made the second attempt to launch the largest launch vehicle in human history. The SuperHeavy superheavy rocket with the Starship spacecraft lifted off at 4:33 p.m. Moscow time from the private Boca Chica space center in Texas.
At around 4:35 p.m. Moscow time, at an altitude of 38 km, the launcher entered an uncontrolled rotation and exploded.
Starship is Elon Musk’s ambitious project for deep space missions. It is being developed as a fully reusable transport system designed to transport crew and cargo to Earth orbit, help humanity return to the Moon, and travel to Mars and beyond.
The launch vehicle is 120 meters tall and has a launch weight of over 5,000 tons and is powered by 33 Raptor engines. Before the launch, 4800 tons of rocket fuel had been filled there, so the worst thing that could happen during the first launch was an explosion. Fortunately, the launch was successful and the single launch pad was not destroyed.
According to the plan for the first SuperHeavy flight, the launcher was to make a dive in the Gulf of Mexico 30 km from the American coast 8 minutes after launch. The Starship upper-stage spacecraft will make an incomplete circle around Earth and drop into the Pacific Ocean near the Hawaiian archipelago about an hour and a half after liftoff.
To launch the spacecraft, SpaceX built the largest launch pad in the world. The Starship tower is 146 meters high and in the future will not only launch the launcher, but also capture it. The launch of a super-heavy rocket will be of great importance for the future development of world astronautics, especially in the field of long-range flights. Recall, earlier Elon Musk promised that a person would set foot on the surface of Mars in 2026.
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