SpaceX fires Super Heavy Starship rocket thruster for the first time

While billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos fight for a place in history Pioneers of space tourism, Elon Musk and SpaceX have just set fire to the rocket that could one day send humans to Mars.

On Monday, SpaceX lit up its Super heavy booster for the first time, at the company’s Starbase rocket development site in Boca Chica, Texas.

The sustain test shot only lasted a few seconds, but Musk described it on Twitter as a “full 3 Raptor test shot on Super Heavy Booster!”

Complete 3 Raptors Shooting Test on Super Heavy Booster!

– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 20, 2021

It is a scaled-down Super Heavy test prototype, with the final model expected to contain up to 32 Raptors, allowing it to lift heavy payloads beyond Earth’s gravity well, propelling them downward. moon, Mars and possibly beyond.

This large booster is designed to dock with SpaceX’s spacecraft, which is also being tested in Texas. You may remember seeing pictures of a few Prototype spacecraft land hard after test flights at high altitude and exploding violently.

When the whole system is ready, the idea is that a spaceship loaded with cargo or passengers will be placed on top of a Super Heavy, which will propel it out of our atmosphere. The Super Heavy can then return for a landing on Earth for reuse, just like a Falcon 9 first stage.

SpaceX plans to conduct the Starship’s first orbital test flight using a Super Heavy booster in the coming months. This mission is expected to see Starship launch from Texas, take a quick trip to space, and then make a freshwater landing off the coast of Hawaii.

The space excitement continues.

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