SpaceX Starship is ready for a 15 km high flight next week. SpaceX is ready to move on to the next phase with Starship. The company’s largest and most powerful spacecraft is still under construction and testing, but we’ve already seen it take off on a few occasions. For next week it is preparing for its highest flight, a total of 15 kilometers high. The aim is to land successfully after the flight. Even Elon Musk himself does not have much hope that it will go well.
- SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Resilience successfully docks onto the ISS
- SpaceX successfully launches the Crew Dragon on its first operational mission
- Microsoft Azure connects directly to the SpaceX Starlink satellites
In August of this year, Starship made one of its first flight tests. Just the main body and with the ship unfinished, it achieved a height of about 150 meters. Now that the ship is closer to completion, they will try a flight 100 times higher.
They have announced that they expect to make the first high altitude flight for the Starship next week. SpaceX Starship is ready for a 15 km high flight next week. There is no specific date nor do they have 100% certainty that they will accomplish. There are many factors that come into play, from the development of the ship to the weather conditions.
The tests are expected to be conducted with the SN8 prototype. Previously, the SN6 prototype flew and was practically only the body. This time it already has the nose on top and the fins as well. Tests such as these are being carried out to see if the aircraft is capable of resisting the strong pressures and temperatures caused by the engines.
Be that as it may, there is not much chance of success. Elon Musk sees a 33% chance of success. So, next week we’ll see if the giant ship goes up into the atmosphere and comes down or ends up being shattered at some point in that process.
Anyway, SpaceX has prepared the SS9 and SN10 prototypes as well. This is SpaceX’s strategy with Starship: to have and build different prototypes in parallel to test new iterations quickly and not depend on a single model. This undoubtedly accelerates the development process, although it also involves considerable consumption of economic and human resources.
SpaceX Starship is ready for a 15 km high flight next week. Starship is gigantic, a ship designed for interplanetary travel. With 50 meters of height and three Raptor engines, the ship is one of the chosen ones to take astronauts to the Moon and even to Mars. Elon Musk actually dreams high, hopes to put a million people on Mars before 2050, and Starship is a crucial step to that target.
