SpaceX ’ s Starship, the Biggest Rocket Ever Built, Is Poised to Fly

Time was, nobody gave much thought to the town of Boca Chica, a little community at the toe of Texas, hard up against the Gulf of Mexico. Distinguished mostly by its proximity to the city of Brownsville, the county seat of Cameron County, Boca Chica was the site of the Civil War battle of Palmito Hill, is home to a state park, a public beach, and a nearby ship channel and, well, that’s about it. Or that was about it—until nine years ago. Today, Boca Chica is where the future of human space flight is being shaped. And as early as Wednesday, April 19, the town will have distinguished itself as the place from which the tallest, most powerful rocket ever designed, SpaceX’s Starship, will blast off. (The original launch date of Monday, April 17, announced in a tweet from SpaceX, was postponed due to unspecified technical problems in the first stage of the rocket.) On April 14, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) gave its long-awaited clearance for the launch, saying in a statement, “After a comprehensive license evaluation process, the FAA determined SpaceX met all safety, environmental, policy, payload, airspace integration, and financial responsibility requirements. The license is valid for five years.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The launch will be a signal achievement for SpaceX, which broke ground in 2014 on the rocket construction and launch facility, grandly—but not entirely unjustifiably—dubbed Starbase by co...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized feature healthscienceclimate Space Source Type: news