The approximately 98-foot-tall (30 meter) car is a stripped-down version of what the last Starship spacecraft will look like, without the nose cone or fins. Its 30 feet (9 meters) wide and its basically a fuel tank and a single Raptor engine topped with a weight that mimics a payload. The resulting shape is something like a thermos lots of will recognize.
The approximately 98-foot-tall (30 meter) car is a stripped-down variation of what the final Starship spacecraft will appear like, without the nose cone or fins. Its 30 feet (9 meters) wide and its generally a fuel tank and a single Raptor engine topped with a weight that replicates a payload. The resulting shape is something like a thermos lots of will acknowledge.
Musk tweeted this footage of the launch late Tuesday:.
Its been a huge August for SpaceX currently, with the businesss Crew Dragon spacecraft effectively returning NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley from the International Space Station and splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico over the weekend..
” Mars is looking real,” Musk tweeted after the hop.
Crazy to think that interplanetary travel may start with this brief and bizarre-looking flight. Cant wait to see the next big step on this long journey.
The long-awaited low-altitude test flight follows a handful of previous prototypes stopped working without ever leaving the ground, mostly during pressurization tests..
SN5 is created to be able to perform an orbital flight, but prior to pressing towards area, it initially had to complete this relatively tiny hop.
The huge metal silo can fly!
GIF by Eric Mack/CNET
Elon Musk and SpaceX took their newest step towards Mars and the stated objective of making humankind a multi-planetary species … by shooting a giant metal thermos into the Texas sky Tuesday night..
The company performed a practically 500-foot (150 meter) “hop” of its SN5 Starship model at its Boca Chica advancement center at 5 p.m. PT..
The almost nine-story-tall test craft sparked its single Raptor engine and slowly increased into the air before then carefully going back to the ground and landing upright not far from where it removed.
For a minute after the engine first fired up, it appeared SN5 was having a hard time to get airborne, but then it rose above its own smoke, hovered and came in for a soft landing. It took a trip simply a tiny portion of the more than 35 million miles Musk hopes the final Starship will traverse to take human beings to Mars..
From the universes to your inbox. Get the newest space stories from CNET weekly.
