SpaceX Starship launch live: Elon Musk’s company loses Starship rocket but gets further than first attempt – BBC News

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There’s no doubt that SpaceX will consider this a great day.
The major problems that beset April’s maiden flight were overcome.

Starship
made what appeared to be a clean getaway, all the engines on the first-stage
booster worked on the way up hill, and the Ship made its separation on time at two minutes and 40 seconds, continuing onwards into space.

And, yes, it got to
space
, about 140km up. So, SpaceX will take all this as a win.

They’ll want to review why the Ship’s computers terminated
its flight, and also why the booster tore itself apart shortly after
separation. But these are questions for tomorrow.

SpaceX already has the next iterations of Starship lined up in Texas ready to make their test flights. These launches will come thick and fast now.

Remember the words of Garrett Reisman, a former Nasa astronaut, SpaceX consultant, and professor of astronautical engineering at the University of Southern California.

“I think the benefit of this rapid development approach is even though things don’t look good at first, when things are blowing up – you learn so much and so quickly that you actually do converge on the correct solution much faster than if you try to get something 100% perfect the first time,” he told BBC News.

“SpaceX does seem to get there in the end.”



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