{"id":16940,"date":"2024-03-14T00:46:23","date_gmt":"2024-03-14T00:46:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/14\/spacex-gets-green-light-for-third-starship-test-flight\/"},"modified":"2024-03-14T00:46:23","modified_gmt":"2024-03-14T00:46:23","slug":"spacex-gets-green-light-for-third-starship-test-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/14\/spacex-gets-green-light-for-third-starship-test-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX gets green light for third Starship test flight"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

SpaceX is once again set to fly its gargantuan Starship rocket \u2014 the most powerful launch vehicle ever constructed \u2014 after federal regulators approved the company\u2019s plans for a third test flight. <\/p>\n

The launch could take place anytime during a 110-minute window that opens at 7 a.m. CT (8 a.m. ET) Thursday, according to an email from SpaceX sent Wednesday afternoon. A live stream of the event will begin on the company\u2019s website about 30 minutes before takeoff. <\/p>\n

The Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses commercial rocket launches, gave SpaceX the final green light for the mission on Wednesday afternoon. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe FAA determined SpaceX met all safety, environmental, policy and financial responsibility requirements,\u201d the agency said in a statement. <\/p>\n

This test flight comes after two attempts to get the massive Starship vehicle to orbital speeds in 2023 ended in explosions, with the spacecraft and booster erupting into flames before reaching their intended landing sites. <\/p>\n

SpaceX is known to embrace fiery mishaps in the early stages of spacecraft development, saying these failures help the company rapidly implement design changes that lead to better results. <\/p>\n

Much is riding on Starship\u2019s eventual success. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly characterized the rocket as central to the company\u2019s founding mission: putting humans on Mars for the first time. <\/p>\n

Crucially, the Starship spacecraft is also the vehicle NASA has\u00a0selected\u00a0to land astronauts launched from the United States on the moon for the first time in more than five decades as part of its Artemis program. The space agency is\u00a0in a race with China, vying to become first to develop a permanent lunar outpost and\u00a0set the precedent\u00a0for deep-space settlements. <\/p>\n

The US space agency has committed to investing up to $4 billion in Starship. Under NASA\u2019s current road map, Starship would complete the final leg of the agency\u2019s crewed mission to the moon, taking the astronauts from their spacecraft in lunar orbit and ferrying them down to the surface. The first astronaut landing under the Artemis program is slated to occur as soon as September 2026. <\/p>\n

What success looks like for SpaceX<\/h3>\n

Musk has indicated that he believes Starship has a high chance of successfully completing this third test flight. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to jinx it, but I think the probability of reaching orbit is good \u2014 80%,\u201d he said during a recent talk posted to social media. \u201cCertainly the third flight is a much better rocket than flights one or two.\u201d <\/p>\n

Musk said before the last Starship test flight in November that the vehicle had about a 50% chance of success. The vehicle was not meant to orbit Earth, but it was intended to reach the breakneck speeds that will be required when the vehicle does go into orbit. (Starship ultimately hit about 24,000 kilometers per hour, or 15,000 miles per hour. Reaching orbit typically requires hitting at least 17,500\u00a0miles per hour.) <\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

Related article<\/span> SpaceX\u2019s explosive test flight achieved key milestones. But there is still a long way to go<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The November test flight marked a big improvement compared with Starship\u2019s inaugural liftoff in April 2023, when some of the rocket\u2019s 33 main engines flamed out and the vehicle began tumbling over the Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX destroyed the rocket just four minutes into that first flight to prevent it from veering off course. <\/p>\n

Starship made it much further in November, successfully igniting all its engines and completing a key flight milestone: stage separation. That\u2019s when the Super Heavy rocket booster \u2014 the bottommost portion of the rocket that gives the initial burst of power at liftoff \u2014 breaks away from the upper Starship spacecraft, allowing the vehicle to ignite its engines and continue the mission on its own power. But ultimately Starship was destroyed about 10 minutes into flight. If it had gone to plan, the mission would have lasted about an hour and a half. <\/p>\n

SpaceX has said its approach to rocket development is geared toward speed. The company makes use of an engineering method called \u201crapid spiral development.\u201d This process <\/strong>essentially boils down to a desire to build prototypes quickly and willingly blow them up to learn <\/strong>how to construct a better one \u2014 faster than if the company solely relied on ground tests and simulations. <\/p>\n

After the first and second Starship test flights ended in explosions, the company immediately\u00a0sought to frame these mishaps as successes. In a statement after the November launch, SpaceX said, \u201cWith a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today\u2019s test will help us improve Starship\u2019s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multiplanetary.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SpaceX is once again set to fly its gargantuan Starship rocket \u2014 the most powerful launch vehicle ever constructed \u2014 after federal regulators approved the company\u2019s plans for a third test flight. The launch could take place anytime during a 110-minute window that opens at 7 a.m. CT (8 a.m. ET) Thursday, according to an <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":16941,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16940","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}