Spacex’s Successful Failure
Spacex is a name you most likely have heard in the past few years. Founded by Elon Musk, this is a company that hopes to integrate the use of spaceflight into our daily lives. Recently, he has been taking steps towards this goal by making the most powerful rocket that tops the Saturn V and even the Falcon 9. This rocket is called the Starship and is the closest thing to a science fiction spaceship as we’ll get for now.
The Starship is a massive 2 stage rocket that stands an astonishing 120 meters tall and has a diameter of around 9 meters. This rocket lays the path for the future Starship that Elon Musk was planning to send to Mars. The past few weeks consisted of Ignition, Gimbal, and Static Fire Tests that measure how well the Starship will perform later on. This was especially important as the Starship weighed around 5000 tons (11 million lbs.). The first test flight of the model Starship occurred April 17th after a delay a day before. However it ended in devastation as an issue with the engines caused the rocket to float out of a stable trajectory as the rocket was then spun around the opposite direction and exploded as it fell back down to Earth.
Everyone else acted normal as if nothing ever happened despite the seemingly dramatic setback. In fact, astrophysicist Pascal Ehrenfreund said, “This was a test flight”. Though, the others that agree with the reaction of the company make a point as the path to a successful rocket is littered with the numerous attempts it took to get there. But this explosion may have a different reason for happening. More information was released, including the news that the explosion itself was not a mistake as there is a self-destruct mechanism in both rocket stages to prevent the uncontrolled rocket from harming buildings or people below. Spacex is yet to confirm whether the self-destruct was activated manually or automatically.
Obviously there are some that take this failure harshly seeing how each launch costs an estimated 100 Million USD. In my eyes, this is a step closer to the Starship that will be used in the future to get from point A to B. We also get a closer look at Spacex’s other accomplishments as well with their controversial but functioning Starlink Program. Over all, the flight of Starship built a huge audience and anticipation and therefore as the rocket exploded it led to many losing hope even though it is just another part of the process.
