For the non-reversible, the Starship consists of two components, the upper Ship stage and the lower Super Heavy Booster stage. While the ship consists of six Raptor engines, the Super Heavy Booster is equipped with 33 engines each capable of producing 230 tons of maximum thrust (about 8,970 tons in total). Visuals of the test fire were shared by NASA Spaceflight’s Chris Bergen as well as SpaceX. The black upper stage rocket was seen standing tall in flames followed by a thick plume of smoke that filled the launch pad within seconds.
About Starship
At 120 meters (394 feet) tall, Starship is the world’s largest rocket under construction, which will be used for deep transport on future planetary missions. As SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has previously argued, Starship will be used to transport crew and cargo to the Moon and eventually Mars, as it is the only heavy-lift vehicle currently capable of doing so. It is worth mentioning that the rocket has not yet made its first orbital flight, which would prove its readiness for deep space missions. Of the two rocket stages, the Booster is 69 meters (230 ft) tall as opposed to the ship which is 50 meters (164 ft) tall. Interestingly, it will grow by five to ten meters over time, Musk said. Since Starship is still under development, NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) is, however, the most powerful complete rocket in existence. At 322 feet tall, the SLS rocket is capable of producing 8.8 million pounds (4,400 tons) of maximum thrust. Meanwhile, the rocket has some long-term goals, such as launching astronauts to Mars in order to establish viable bases. According to Musk’s current plan, SpaceX will launch thousands of Starships to transport about one million people to the red planet by 2050. In addition, Starship has also been awarded a $2.9 billion contract by NASA to develop a human landing system to transport crew and cargo to the Moon.
