One of Elon Musk’s spaceships exploded during a routine test on Wednesday evening in Texas, the police said in the latest the billionaire’s dream to transform humanity into an interplanetary species.
Starship 36 suffered a “catastrophic and exploded failure” in the base launch installation, shortly after 11:00 pm (0400 GMT on Thursday), an article on Facebook of the County County authorities said.
A video shared with the post showed the Megaroter attached to the launch arm, then a flash and an imposing and fiery explosion.
Space X of Musk said that the rocket was preparing for the tenth flight test when it “experienced a major anomaly when it was on a test stand”, without developing on the nature of the complication.
“A clear safety area around the site has been maintained throughout the operation and all the staff are safe and taken into account,” added Space X on social networks.
“There is no danger for residents of the surrounding communities, and we ask individuals who do not try to approach the area while the security operations continue.”
Starship was not to be launched Wednesday evening when the explosion occurred during a “routine static fire test”, according to the County County authorities.
During a static fire, part of the procedures preceding a launch, the super booster of the starship is anchored on the ground to prevent it from peeling off during the test test.
Starbase on the southern coast of Texas, near the border with Mexico, is the seat of the Musk space project.
Megarot
Standing 403 feet (123 meters) high, Starship is the largest and most powerful rocket in the world and in the center of the long -term vision of Musk of Mars colonization.
Starship is presented as a fully reusable rocket with an payload capacity of up to 150 metric tonnes.
The last setback follows an explosion of a prototype vessel in the Indian Ocean in late May.
The largest and most powerful launch vehicle ever built had taken off on May 27 in the installation of Starbase, but the Super Heavy Booster Booster of first stage exploded instead of executing its splashing planned in the Gulf of Mexico.
The two previous outings also ended badly, the upper stage disintegrated on the Caribbean.
But failures will probably not do much to work the spatial ambitions of Musk.
SpaceX has bet that his philosophy “fail quickly, learn quickly”, which helped him dominate commercial space flights, will eventually bear fruit.
The company has caught the super heavy booster in the giant robotic arms of the launch tower three times – a bold engineering feat which it considers the key to rapid reusability and reduction costs.
NASA also depends more and more on spacex, whose dragon spacecrafts are essential for transporting astronauts to and from the international space station.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) at the beginning of May approved an increase in the annual launches of starship rockets from five to 25, declaring that the increased frequency would have no negative impact on the environment.
The decision rejected the objections of conservation groups which had warned that expansion could endanger the sea turtles and shore birds.
