Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, exploded during its first flight on Thursday, but Elon Musk congratulated his SpaceX team on an \u201cexciting\u201d test of the spacecraft designed to send astronauts to the Moon, Mars and beyond.
\nThe uncrewed rocket disintegrated minutes after successfully blasting off at 8:33am Central Time (1333 GMT) from Starbase, the SpaceX spaceport in Boca Chica, Texas.
\nThe Starship spacecraft that will eventually carry crew and cargo had been scheduled to separate from the first-stage rocket booster three minutes into the flight, but separation failed to occur and the rocket blew up in a ball of fire over the Gulf of Mexico.
\nDespite the failure to complete the full 90-minute flight test and reach orbit, Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of the private space company, declared it a success.
\n\u201cCongrats SpaceX team on an exciting test launch of Starship!\u201d Musk tweeted. \u201cLearned a lot for next test launch in a few months.\u201d
\nSpaceX said that \u201cwith a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today\u2019s test will help us improve Starship\u2019s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multi-planetary\u201d.
\n\u201cWe cleared the tower which was our only hope,\u201d said Kate Tice, a SpaceX quality systems engineer.
\nThe US space agency Nasa has picked the Starship spacecraft to ferry astronauts to the Moon in late 2025 \u2014 a mission known as Artemis III \u2014 for the first time since the Apollo programme ended in 1972.
\nNasa chief Bill Nelson congratulated SpaceX, saying \u201cevery great achievement throughout history has demanded some level of calculated risk, because with great risk comes great reward\u201d.
\nStarship consists of a 164-foot tall spacecraft designed to carry crew and cargo that sits atop a 230-foot tall first-stage Super Heavy booster rocket.
\nSpaceX conducted a successful test-firing of the 33 massive Raptor engines on the first-stage booster in February but the Starship spacecraft and the Super Heavy rocket were being flown together for the first time.
\nThe integrated test flight was intended to assess their performance in combination.
\nMusk had warned ahead of the test that technical issues were likely and sought to play down expectations for the inaugural flight.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s the first launch of a very complicated, gigantic rocket. There\u2019s a million ways this rocket could fail,\u201d he said.
\nNasa will take astronauts to lunar orbit itself in November 2024 using its own heavy rocket called the Space Launch System (SLS), which has been in development for more than a decade.
\nStarship is both bigger and more powerful than SLS and capable of lifting a payload of more than 100 metric tonnes into orbit.
\nIt generates 17 million pounds of thrust, more than twice that of the Saturn V rockets used to send Apollo astronauts to the Moon.
\nThe plan for the integrated test flight was for the Super Heavy booster to separate from Starship after launch and splash down in the Gulf of Mexico.
\nThey failed to separate however and the booster rocket and Starship spacecraft began spinning out of control, exploding four minutes into the test flight in what SpaceX euphemistically called a \u201crapid unscheduled disassembly\u201d.
\n\u201cIf we get far enough away from the launchpad before something goes wrong then I think I would consider that to be a success,\u201d Musk said prior to the test. \u201cJust don\u2019t blow up the launchpad.\u201d
\nSpaceX foresees eventually putting a Starship into orbit, and then refueling it with another Starship so it can continue on a journey to Mars or beyond.
\nThe eventual objective is to establish bases on the Moon and Mars and put humans on the \u201cpath to being a multi-planet civilisation,\u201d according to Musk.
\n\u201cWe are at this brief moment in civilisation where it is possible to become a multi-planet species,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s our goal. I think we\u2019ve got a chance.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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