Starship is the name given to the latest SpaceX effort that was supposed to launch early this morning. Starship is a combo of a cruising spacecraft and a super heavy rocket. The project is the world’s first to come to this point, and the launch today would have been historic. Sadly, the launch was scrapped just before the countdown hit the T-minus ten-minute mark.
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My kids and I were up and watching the live stream on YouTube, excited to see history in the making, but a frozen valve was detected, and the launch turned into a wet run for the SpaceX team. So while we didn’t get a launch, the team was able to go through the motions that will assist them when the actual launch is rescheduled, which can be anywhere from 24 to 48 hours.
The two-stage Starship system, standing taller than the Statue of Liberty at 394 feet (120 m) high, was initially slated for blast-off from the SpaceX “Starbase” facility at Boca Chica, Texas. The flight was scheduled to last 90 minutes, but a frozen pressurization valve in the lower-stage rocket booster forced SpaceX to scrap the launch.
My kids were disappointed, and I explained to them that while we are disappointed, these projects are immense and have a lot of parts that need to work and work properly together for a successful launch and flight and the safety of all involved. Not to mention the damn thing is expensive, and that faulty valve could have ended this particular Starship.
Getting the vehicle to space for the first time would represent a key milestone in SpaceX’s ambition of sending humans back to the moon and ultimately to Mars – at least initially as part of NASA’s newly inaugurated human spaceflight program, Artemis.
Reuters
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