Elon Musk's Martian dream had another rude awakening.
Starship, the most powerful SpaceX rocket and spacecraft ever built and assembled to transport future astronauts to the Moon and beyond, was launched with apparent success this Saturday from the Boca Chica base in Texas, unlike its experiment on last April, which jumped into the air shortly after crossing the sky.
Then, when the device with which Musk pursues his goal of traveling and colonizing Mars – some hope that it will come true and stay there – had already reached a height of 150 kilometers, his company's controllers lost the signal, once the second stage had already separated.
“I think we have lost the second stage,” said John Insprucker during the broadcast on X, the former Twitter, also owned by the richest man in the world. Insprucker noted that everything indicated that “an automatic detonation” had occurred.
According to engineers, the rocket's lower booster stage exploded unexpectedly, in what is called “an unscheduled rapid disassembly.” The top of the Starship continued its journey through space for a few more minutes and disintegrated.
Despite this new disappointment, SpaceX described this test as an “incredible success.” No one doubts that there has been progress. The rocket went further than the other time.
Jim Free, associate administrator of NASA, the US space agency and Starship's main client, assured that "each of the tests represents being one step closer to putting a woman on the Moon with the Artemis III program."
Musk, founder and owner of SpaceX, congratulated his team. In the other failed attempt he replied that you had to “test, break and try again.”
For the company, “success comes from what we learn in each experiment and this test will improve reliability on Starship as SpaceX seeks to make life multiplanetary.”
