SpaceX Stacks Starship With Super Heavy Booster to Assemble World's Biggest Rocket
On 6th August, this Friday, Space X, the private space agency, achieved a milestone which according to the company’s founder, would enable humans to perform inter-planetary space travel.
Elon Musk, the company’s founder revealed the pictures of the company’s Starship spacecraft stacked on Super Heavy Booster 4 for the first time. The Starship version is called Starship 20 (SN20). They were stacked in Boca Chica, Texas at R&D facility Starbase.
Starship Fully Stacked pic.twitter.com/Fs88RNsmfH
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2021
This became a historic feat as after stacking the two parts, SpaceX has now assembled the world’s biggest rocket. At 400ft tall, the new rocket beat the 363ft tall Saturn V to achieve the record. The Starship 20 itself is 160ft tall which is equivalent to a 16 storey building.
The Super Heavy Booster 4 was brought to the orbital launch pad on Thursday this week but due to the windy weather, the stack was delayed until the next day.
Elon Musk showed his excitement after the achievement. He tweeted, “An honor to work with such a great team.”. In another tweet, he said, “A dream come true.”, in response to a CNBC reporter’s question, “How did it feel to see it fully stacked?”.
The successful assembling means that he is closer than ever to his dream to make humans multi-planetary species and believes soon the rocket will be able to take humans to Mars. Elon Musk also tweeted, “Due to its size and ability to return science instruments even from deep space, Starship will enable a whole new class of science missions”.
The new rocket is also now the most powerful rocket in the world. The Super Heavy Booster 4 is installed with 29 raptor engines and 4 grid means which will then provide a 70-meganewton force that is double the NASA’s Saturn V, which was the first rocket to carry humans to space. In addition, the Starship 20 is also equipped with 6 engines.
However, Elon Musk says the rocket will not be fully prepared until 2 weeks. He said it in response to the question about what will happen after de-stacking the two parts.
4 significant items:
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2021
- Final heat shield tiles for ship
- Thermal protection of booster engines
- Ground propellant storage tanks
- QD arm for ship
2 weeks.
For the rocket’s first orbital flight, it is going to be launched from Texas and land in Hawaii. However, the launch date for the flight is to be decided as the company is seeking validation from the Federal Aviation Administration after their environmental review.
The whole system is set to be fully reusable and the rocket is set for continuous flights from the base, with a small gap of time duration between the flights. It might be still weeks or months before the rocket might be launched but Elon Musk is hopeful this rocket will help humanity to reach and explore multiple planets and see if they are habitable.
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