Starship’s raptor engines fired up today and successfully launched Starship III into space.
The launch took place at SpaceX “Starbase,” just outside Boca Chica, Texas.
The launch represents amazing progress for Americans in space.
Starship III was lost on reentry as it made its journey toward the Indian Ocean, but not before logging a multitude of impressive successes.
Starship is the largest, heaviest, and most capable craft ever launched into space.
Space.com notes that “SpaceX’s Starship vehicle and its Super Heavy booster are the world’s tallest and most powerful rocket. When stacked together, they stand 400 feet tall (122 meters), with the first stage powered by 33 Raptor engines, while the Starship upper stage carries six Raptors.”
Starship will eventually be a reusable rocket capable of carrying staggering 100–150 ton payloads to low earth orbit and 27 tons to geostationary transfer orbit.
By contrast, Soyuz 2 has an 8-ton low earth orbit payload capacity, Atlas IIIB nearly 12, and the Space Shuttle 24.
What will SpaceX be able to achieve when it can reliably lift five times mankind’s previous greatest payloads into space? How about payloads nearly 19 times greater than what the Russians are capable of launching from Kazakhstan?
SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 rockets have already reduced the price of launching people and cargo into space to an all-time low.
CFACT looks forward to seeing that cost go down even further if and when Starship does for the economics of space travel, what jumbo jets did for air travel, and super container ships and tankers did for the sea.
Much work lies ahead, and at its best space travel remains a hazardous endeavor, but landing astronauts on the Moon is rapidly coming back into reach for the first time in over half a century. The first footprints on Mars may not be far behind.
Is there anything free enterprise cannot accomplish?
Bravo SpaceX!