SpaceX had trouble on the Starship’s stage after failing back-to-back, but the engineers made significant progress on the Rockets’ huge booster.
The most obvious sign for SpaceX was at 9:40 a.m. local time (10:40 a.m. ET; UTC; 10:40 a.m. ET; UTC) on Thursday at the company’s Starbase launch site in southern Texas. With its unmistakable orange exhaust explosion, SpaceX launched an overweight booster that has reached the edge of space. The burn lasted for about eight seconds.
This is SpaceX’s first test of a “flying” super booster, which paves the way for this particular rocket (specified booster 14) and will soon fly again. SpaceX confirmed the Booster 14’s feeding light, which the magazine had previously launched and returned to Earth in January, will conduct Thursday’s static fire tests under the next Starship launch conference, and the Booster 14 appears to be closer to flight preparation than any booster at the SpaceX plant, which is not far from the launch site.
SpaceX said 29 of the 33 methane-fuel Raptor engines on the booster have been flying. SpaceX wrote on X: “The first overweight reuse will be a step towards our goal of zero-contact Reflight.
The successful reference to the super heavy booster will be an important milestone for the Starship Project, while engineers struggle with problems on the rocket’s upper stage, known as the ship.
What’s the difference
Super Heavy’s engine, capable of producing nearly 17 million pounds of thrust, is the power of NASA’s Saturn V rocket, bringing astronauts to the moon. Overweight is probably the most complex rocket booster ever. Of course it is the biggest. To understand the size of this booster, imagine the fuselage of the Boeing 747 giant jet stands at the end.
SpaceX has now launched eight full-size test flights, super heavy boosters and Starship’s upper stage stacked together to form a rocket that is 404 feet (123.1 meters) high. The Rockets’ booster segment has performed well so far, with seven successive successes since Starship’s debut.
Recently, SpaceX has recovered three super heavy boosters in four attempts. SpaceX has extensive experience in restoring and reusing the Falcon 9 booster. The total number of landings for the Falcon Rockets is now 426.
SpaceX is the first time that the Falcon 9 booster is reused in March 2017. This is an operational flight with a mission worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Eight years ago, SpaceX returned from its first mission and spent nearly a year on refurbishing and retesting. The rocket has a higher mileage on the ground than on the plane, first returning to its Florida launch base on the SpaceX drone ship, and then moving to SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California for a thorough inspection and renovation.
After the engineers finished the job, they transported the booster to the SpaceX test site in McGregor, Texas for testing, and finally sent the rocket back to Florida for final launch preparations.
Super Boosters will not have such a journey. First of all, it is more difficult to transport than the shorter Falcon 9. SuperHeavy’s design also features improvements provided by the lessons learned in the Falcon 9 program. This helped SpaceX put Super Heavy on the cusp of Reflight in less than three months.
