SpaceX’s Starship rocket took longer than expected to automatically destroy itself during its first suborbital flight test, held on the 20th. The information was revealed on Saturday (29) by Elon Musk, CEO and founder of the company.
Starship first launched in full configuration last week. The surprises began right at the beginning of the mission: the activation of more than 30 Raptor engines, present in the Super Heavy propellant, generated so much thrust that they created a “tornado of rocks”.
In other words, they were so powerful that they scattered debris over four square kilometers, and even generated a giant dust cloud. “Basically a man-made dust storm, but we don’t want to do that again,” Musk said.
The huge rocket took to the sky with 30 of its engines running – the booster has 33, but three of them were disabled even before the vehicle left the platform, because they did not seem to be able to offer all the necessary thrust.
As a result, the Starship tilted slightly, and about three minutes after leaving the ground, the explosion came. Shortly after, SpaceX revealed that the end of the rocket was the result of the activation of the flight termination system, but what was not known is that the destruction of the rocket took longer than expected by the company’s engineers.
According to the billionaire, the self-destruct command took 40 seconds to disintegrate the Starship. Even with the result, he noted that the flight test was a success. “The result was more or less what I expected and perhaps even slightly exceeded my expectations,” he added.
The Federal Aviation Administration, the institution that regulates flights in the United States, is investigating the environmental impacts caused by the launch, and will need to grant new authorizations for SpaceX to carry out more tests with the Starship.
Musk estimates that it should take up to eight weeks to fix the structure of the launch pad, and considers an 80% chance that the vehicle will be able to reach orbit this year. “I think there is something close to a 100% chance of reaching orbit within 12 months,” he concluded.
Source: New York Times, CNBC
