Due to a blocked valve, Elon Musk’s SpaceX postponed the unmanned test flight by at least two days and cancelled the highly anticipated first launch of its newly integrated Starship cruise vessel and Super Heavy rocket in the last minutes of countdown.
Originally scheduled to launch from the SpaceX “Starbase” facility in Boca Chica, Texas, during a two-hour launch window that started at 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT), the two-stage rocketship is higher than the Statue of Liberty at 394 feet (120 m).
The California-based corporation, however, said during a live webcast that a frozen pressurisation valve in the lower-stage rocket booster was the reason for postponing the anticipated 90-minute space mission for at least 48 hours. The mission’s next open launch window would therefore be on Wednesday.
Later, SpaceX said via Twitter that it was “working towards Thursday, April 20” for a follow-up launch attempt.
The remark sparked a barrage of comments on the social media site that made fun of Musk’s 2018 notoriety for ingesting marijuana while appearing on a live online broadcast and of 4/20, a day that is widely recognised in cannabis culture.
Musk is the creator, CEO, and chief engineer of SpaceX and the person who paid $44 billion to acquire Twitter last year. He also serves as the company’s CEO, Tesla, Inc.
At least initially as part of NASA’s recently launched human spaceflight programme, Artemis, getting the Starship into orbit would mark a significant step in SpaceX’s desire to bring people to Mars and the moon again.
A successful first flight would also establish the Starship system as the planet’s most potent launch mechanism.
Both the lower-stage Super Heavy booster and the upper-stage Starship cruise ship that it would launch into orbit are intended to be reusable parts that may return to Earth for gentle landings, as has been standard practise for SpaceX’s smaller Falcon 9 rocket.
However, neither stage would be recovered for the purely experimental maiden space trip. Instead, both components of the spaceship would crash land on its first voyage, with the top stage of the Starship coming to rest in the Pacific after almost completing an orbit of the planet.
The Super Heavy booster has never left the ground, despite five sub-space flights by Starship cruise vessel prototypes up to 6 miles (10 km) above Earth in recent years.
SpaceX tested the booster in February by firing 31 of its 33 Raptor engines for around 10 seconds while it was fastened vertically on a platform.
Just last Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration approved a licence for the fully stacked rocket system’s maiden test flight, removing the last remaining legal barrier to the eagerly anticipated launch.
If everything goes according to plan for the upcoming launch attempt, all 33 Raptor engines will fire at once to launch the Starship on a journey that will take it nearly all the way around the planet before it re-enters the atmosphere and free-falls into the Pacific at supersonic speed, about 60 miles (97 km) off the coast of the northern Hawaiian islands.
The Super Heavy booster is anticipated to carry out the first stages of a controlled return flight after detaching from the Starship before crashing into the Gulf of Mexico.
As intended, the Starship rocket has roughly double the power of NASA’s own Space Launch System (SLS), which launched a NASA cruise ship dubbed Orion on its first unmanned mission to orbit in November and completed a 10-day trip around the moon and back.
