© Twitter/@SpaceX/screenshotSpaceX's SN8 starship prototype is seen exploding on impact as it attempted to land during a test flight, near SpaceX's facility in Boca Chica, Texas, December 9, 2020.
Elon Musk's ambitious Starship project seems to have suffered a setback when the SN8 prototype underwent a rapid unscheduled disassembly event while attempting to land after a high-altitude suborbital flight test in Texas.
The Starship serial number 8 (SN8) took off from the SpaceX site in Cameron County on Wednesday evening. At first everything went well, with the vehicle launching successfully, reaching the apogee and flipping over to begin its descent... only to end in a fiery crash as it
just missed the landing pad.
The "landing flip maneuver," first for a vehicle of this size, was supposed to be the cherry on top of the cake for SpaceX. However, the flight aimed to test a number of other things, from the performance of the Starship's Raptor engines to its aerodynamic re-entry capabilities and propellant transition. Those appear to have gone well enough.
"With a test such as this, success is not measured by completion of specific objectives but rather how much we can learn, which will inform and improve the probability of success in the future as SpaceX rapidly advances development of Starship," the company said ahead of the launch.
"Fuel header tank pressure was low during landing burn, causing touchdown velocity to be high," SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted, but the company "got all the data we needed" from the test, he said."Mars, here we come!" he added.
SpaceX has produced ten serial prototypes of the Starship and conducted two low-altitude flight tests this year, along with 330 ground engine starts. While SN8 is gone, SN9 is "almost ready to move to the pad," the company said.
The project aims to produce "a fully reusable transportation system capable of carrying both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, and beyond."
Early tests of the Starship went poorly, with the first couple of prototypes
exploding or
imploding on the launch pad or just after takeoff. A single-engine Starship managed to rise to an altitude of about 500 feet (150 meters)
back in August - not quite Mars, but better than nothing.
Musk's quest for the stars has also attracted the attention of the Pentagon, which is interested in weaponizing it for its own needs closer to earth. In October, the US Transportation Command inked an agreement with SpaceX to explore the possibilities of using the Starship as a military transport.
Reader Comments
In a datacenter I worked in that was built out in stages, one of the new areas had a UPS fire. Someone connected something prematurely and the fire started when no one was around. We were told to tell clients (since the entire building reeked) that we'd experienced and "unplanned welding incident." Technically, the UPS did have new welds that were unplanned due to the event, so...
Imagine being able to launch one of these behemoths as a troop carrier, and half an hour later land it anywhere on the planet, directly from above, bypassing border defenses. Nobody could scramble jets fast enough to intercept. The ultimate no-knock raid.
There's your 'Space Force'.
Look again!
What Really Happened?
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. Have a wonderful day!
Around here, as they fall back to earth, they are breaking the sound barrier so we hear their returning sonic booms. Likewise, when the shuttle would land over us (came from the WSW) the double sonic boom would be really loud over here in Cocoa.
R.C.