Watch SpaceX launch Starship prototype rocket SN8’s high-altitude check

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SpaceX is getting ready to launch the most recent prototype of its next-generation Starship rocket on Wednesday, in a high-altitude flight that represents the corporate’s most formidable check to this point.

Starship prototype Serial Quantity 8, or SN8, will goal to fly as excessive as 12.5 kilometers, or about 41,000 ft. That is considerably larger than the pair of 500-foot flight exams that SpaceX accomplished with prototypes SN5 and SN6 earlier this 12 months.

The try comes a day after SpaceX almost launched the rocket however was stopped brief by a final second engine challenge. The corporate has since reset for one more try.

Notably, the purpose of the SN8 flight isn’t essentially to achieve the utmost altitude, however slightly to check a number of key components of the Starship system.

“This suborbital flight is designed to check quite a lot of goals, from how the automobile’s three Raptor engines carry out to the general aerodynamic entry capabilities of the automobile (together with its physique flaps) to how the automobile manages propellant transition. SN8 can even try and carry out a touchdown flip maneuver, which might be a primary for a automobile of this dimension,” SpaceX stated in a press release on its web site.

Given the a number of improvement milestones the corporate is enterprise with the SN8 flight, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk gave the rocket low odds of full success on the primary strive.

“Lot of issues have to go proper, so perhaps 1/three probability,” Musk stated.

Starship SN8 is constructed of chrome steel, with the prototypes representing the early variations of the rocket that Musk unveiled final 12 months. The corporate is creating Starship with the purpose of launching cargo and as many as a 100 folks at a time on missions to the Moon and Mars.

Whereas SpaceX’s fleet of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets are partially reusable, Musk’s purpose is to make Starship totally reusable — envisioning a rocket that’s extra akin to a industrial airplane, with brief turnaround instances between flights the place the one main price is gasoline.

The corporate is constructing and testing the Starship prototypes at its rising facility in Boca Chica, Texas. The power on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, about 20 miles east of the Texas metropolis of Brownsville on the Mexico border.

SpaceX additionally famous that it has accomplished over 16,000 seconds – or almost 4 and half cumulative hours – of exams operating its Raptor collection of engines, that are constructed to energy Starship.

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