Despite test flight failure, Starship poised to transform space science

Like a mighty firecracker, Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, blew up today, 4 minutes into its first attempt to reach space. After sailing into the skies above Boca Chica, Texas, SpaceX’s 119-meter rocket tumbled and exploded after its upper stage failed to separate from its booster. Despite the setback, CEO Elon Musk remained cheerful on Twitter and looked ahead to another attempt in a few months. Success, when and if it comes, will represent a major leap for SpaceX, which has already transformed the space industry with cheap and frequent launches of its smaller Falcon 9 rocket. Starship is expected to carry at least 100 tons to low-Earth orbit, on par with the Saturn V rocket that took people to the Moon during NASA’s Apollo program. Musk has said he hopes to eventually fly Starship three times a day for as little $1 million a launch. Such prospects have whetted the appetites of not just explorers and entrepreneurs, but also space scientists. “Its capabilities are just unprecedented,” says Jennifer Heldmann, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, who believes the giant rocket could accelerate research on the Moon and Mars. Laura Forczyk, who owns the space consulting firm Astralytical, says Starship is “the first step toward reinventing science payloads.” Musk first unveiled the Starship concept in 2016 as a means of getting people to Mars. It was designed for in-orbit refueling by o...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news