Start the test flights of the space rocket prototype with which Elon Musk hopes to transport people to Mars

SpaceX, the aerospace company founded by Elon Musk and directed by Gwynne Shotwell, is about to launch his first rocket prototype designed to send people to Mars. According to a communication received by some residents of the Boca Chica area, a beach in South Texas with a space launch pad, testing could begin this Monday.

A few days ago, SpaceX moved to Boca Chica the lower part of its test hopper Hopper test, the prototype of the spaceship. Shortly after, the engineers added a Raptor rocket engine, the newest and most powerful machine developed by SpaceX, at the base of the vehicle.

The Boca Chica launch pad was built in 2014 by SpaceX for the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, but early last year, Elon Musk announced it would be the center of rocket operations. Spatialship, the ship with which he hopes to reach Mars.

While the Hopper test is still not able to get into space, it is badumed that the tests are related to the hardware and some critical design points that SpaceX needs to create a spaceship (formerly Big Falcon Rocket ). The company said the prototype "will be fixed during the initial test" and that "jumps" (short take-offs and landings) will not be visible from outside the platform.

Starship was designed to feature two fully reusable parts: the Starship spacecraft itself and a "super propeller" of just over 120 meters in height, which uses a back-to-the-air system. bleeding ". Unlike ships developed by NASA that use heavy ceramic tiles to protect themselves from burns in the atmospheres of Mars and Earth, Starship "bleeds" fuel from the rocket through small pores to cool down. In theory, placing a liquid between the Starship steel blanket and the hot plasma generated by pbading atmospheric gases would prevent the destruction of the ship.

If the tests give the expected results, Starship could go to space in 2020, send its first crew around the moon in 2023 and bring the first group of people to Mars in 2024. The project plans to transport 100 people to the maximum . 150 tons of freight each trip to Mars.

The tests that will start on Monday with the ship Test Hopper are to confirm that the basic principles on which Starship will be built work correctly according to the calculations and forecasts established by SpaceX engineers.

In his social networks, Musk confirmed that this week's tests will be done with a single engine, while the ship will have three engines when it performs a suborbital flight.

Test Hopper is a relatively precarious prototype that will not fly into orbit around the Earth. According to plans he has submitted to US authorities, it is a fleet that will fly up to about 5000 meters.

Although Musk announced earlier this year that the company would build a higher version capable of entering orbit, but after strong winds affected parts of the prototype in February, plans seem to suggest that SpaceX has abandoned this idea and is building a prototype of a full size vessel at its Boca Chica headquarters.