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The last SpaceX Starship The prototype got its engines running for the fourth time on Tuesday evening (November 24), keeping the vehicle on track for a historic test flight next week.
The Starship SN8 prototype performed its fourth “static fire” test at 6:23 PM EST (11:23 GMT) Tuesday at SpaceX’s facilities in South Texas, near the seaside village of Boca Chica.
Static fires, in which the engines ignite briefly while a vehicle remains bolted to the ground, are common preflight checks for SpaceX rockets. And SN8 (“Serial No. 8”) is indeed gearing up for a flight – a test that will take it to a target altitude of 15 kilometers, much higher than any other Starship prototype.
Related: Starship and Super Heavy: the vehicles colonizing SpaceX’s Mars in pictures
Good static Starship SN8 fire! Aim for the first 15km / ~ 50km altitude flight next week. The objectives are to test the climb of engine 3, the body flaps, the transition from the main tank to the main tank and the landing flip.November 24, 2020
Tuesday’s test kept SN8 on track for this leap forward, SpaceX Founder and CEO Elon musk said.
“Good static shot of the Starship SN8! Aim for the first 15 km / ~ 50 km altitude flight next week. Objectives are to test 3 engine climb, body flaps, transition from main tank to main tank and the landing rollover, ” Musk tweeted Tuesday night, approximately 45 minutes after the test.
Starship is SpaceX’s next-generation space transportation system, which the company is developing to transport people and payloads to Mars and the Moon, launch satellites into orbit, and do whatever SpaceX needs.
The final version will consist of a 165-foot-tall (50-meter) spacecraft called Starship and a giant rocket called Super Heavy, both of which will be fully reusable. Starship and Super Heavy will be powered by SpaceX’s new Raptor engine, which burns liquid methane and liquid oxygen. Starship will carry six Raptors, and Super Heavy will have around 30 of the engines, Musk said.
The first Super Heavy prototype has yet to be built. But SpaceX has already built and tested a number of Starship test vehicles, three of which have already taken off. A stocky craft called the Starhopper flew in the summer of 2019, and SN5 and SN6 took off in August and September, respectively.
These three prototypes were single-engine craft, and they reached a maximum altitude of about 500 feet (150 m). SN8 will go much higher and therefore is quite different from its predecessors, with three Raptors as well as a nose cone and stabilizer flaps.
Starhopper, SN5 and SN6 carried out their brief test flights. Musk doesn’t give SN8 much of a chance to do the same, although he has said it wouldn’t be a disaster if the vehicle crashes and burns.
“A lot of things must be going well, so maybe 1/3 of luck,” he said. tweeted Tuesday night. “But that’s why we have SN 9 and SN10,” he added in another tweet.
SN8’s three previous static fires occurred on October 20 November 10 and November 12. The third test did not go as planned; the Raptors’ ignition shattered the top layer of the test bed, sending shards of material into the engine bay and causing an early shutdown, Musk explained in a tweet last week.
But SN8 has bounced back quickly, and it will fly high soon, if all goes according to plan.
Mike Wall is the author of “Over there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book on the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
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