The combined Starship and Super Heavy rocket is set to lift off from SpaceX’s launch facility in Boca Chica, Texas that could generate more than 17 million pounds of thrust on liftoff.
The opening of the test window is at 9 a.m. EDT with SpaceX set to live stream the attempt on its YouTube page with commentary beginning about 45 minutes before the attempt.
The FAA on Friday gave Elon Musk’s company the OK for the flight after several years of assessment.
“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,” the FAA made in a statement. “We carefully analyzed the public safety risks during every stage of the mission and required SpaceX to mitigate those risks.”
The mission will let fly the combination of Starship 24, as in the 24th prototype of the company’s next-generation spacecraft, and the Super Heavy 7 booster that have been on the pad since early April.
At launch, Super Heavy 7′s thrust comes from 33 Raptor 2 engines with a goal to send the Starship up over the Gulf of Mexico before falling away for a splashdown without a signature booster recovery for this test flight. The Starship spacecraft with six of its own Raptor 2 engines will then attempt to continue its suborbital flight that takes it 2/3 the way around the Earth for its own splashdown landing near Hawaii.
Even if it simply gets off the ground, it would become the most powerful rocket launch ever attempted breaking the 10.2 million pounds of thrust generated during four attempts by the Soviet Union of its N-1 rocket from 1969-1972. Those rockets all suffered failure midflight and never made it to space.
NASA’s Space Launch System rocket that flew on Artemis I last November is the current title holder for rocket power to make it to space when it sent the Orion capsule on its lunar mission through the heft of 8.8 million pounds of thrust. The SLS bested the power of the Saturn V rockets during the Apollo era.
The goal is to eventually be able to recover both booster and Starship with vertical landings as it does with its current stable of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters. But for Starship, the company recovers both booster and spacecraft.
“Starship is a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, help humanity return to the moon, and travel to Mars and beyond,” the company posted on its website. “With a test such as this, success is measured by how much we can learn, which will inform and improve the probability of success in the future as SpaceX rapidly advances development of Starship.”
NASA has high hops for the program’s success as it awaits a version of Starship to act as the Human Landing System on the Artemis III mission to the moon that will bring back humans, including the first woman, to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972.
That mission is slated for no earlier than December 2025, and Starship has to make a test landing on the moon one time before it flies with NASA astronauts on board.
Starship has its own spate of human flights for Starship planned as well, but first it has to get what’s predicted to be hundred of flights under its belt flying payloads such as its Starlink internet satellites.
That starts with this combined booster and spacecraft flight,. the first of what the company has said will be a steady lineup of test flights to get the launch system ready for commercial use.
So far the company has only flown test versions of Starship without the booster to low altitudes.
“These flight tests helped validate the vehicle’s design, proving Starship can fly through the subsonic phase of entry before re-lighting its engines and flipping itself to a vertical configuration for landing.” the company stated.
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