Throngs of spectators watched from South Padre Island, several miles away from the Boca Chica Beach launch site, which was off-limits. As Starship lifted off with a thunderous roar, the crowd screamed: “Go, baby, go!”
Musk, in a tweet, called it “an exciting test launch of Starship! Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months”.
In the weeks leading up to the flight, Musk gave 50-50 odds that the spacecraft would reach orbit and not end up in what SpaceX calls a “rapid unscheduled disassembly”. He said not blowing up the launch pad would be a win.
“You never know exactly what’s going to happen,” said SpaceX livestream commentator and engineer John Insprucker. “But as we promised, excitement is guaranteed and Starship gave us a rather spectacular end.”
The company intends to use Starship to send people and cargo to the moon and, eventually, Mars. Nasa has reserved a Starship for its next moonwalking team, and rich tourists are already booking lunar flybys.
Despite the abbreviated flight, congratulations poured in from Nasa chief Bill Nelson and others in the space industry. Retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield tweeted, “Huge accomplishment, huge lessons, onwards to the next attempt.”
At 394 feet and nearly 17 million pounds of thrust, Starship easily surpasses NASA’s moon rockets — past, present and future. The stainless steel rocket is designed to be fully reusable with fast turnaround, dramatically lowering costs, similar to what SpaceX’s smaller Falcon rockets have done soaring from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Nothing was to be saved from this test flight, with the spacecraft — if all had gone well — aiming for a watery grave in the Pacific near Hawaii.
The futuristic spacecraft flew several miles into the air during testing a few years ago, landing successfully only once. But this was to be the inaugural launch of the first-stage booster with 33 methane-fueled engines.
SpaceX has more boosters and spacecraft lined up for more test flights; the next set is almost ready to go. Musk wants to fire them off in quick succession, so he can start using Starships to launch satellites into low-Earth orbit and then put people on board.
It was the second launch attempt. Monday’s try was scrapped by a frozen booster valve.
Jason and Lisa Flores drove down from Corpus Christi to watch the launch with their daughter, and noticed something was amiss.
Lisa Flores cried seeing the liftoff and then realised, “It’s not working out the way it was supposed to.”
Elizabeth Trujillo, 13, wearing a Star Wars shirt and carrying toy binoculars, skipped school to see the launch from the beach with her mother and other relatives. The crowd cheered when Starship cleared the tower.
Despite the failed attempt, “it was worth it”, said Jessica Trujillo, Elizabeth’s mother. “Just hearing and seeing the view, the excitement of the crowd, it was priceless.
“Practice makes perfect. They just got to practise some more.”
