Wednesday, August 5, 2020

SpaceX Tests The BIG Rocket: One Short Hop For Elon, One Giant....

Well, as Financial Advisor Mag put it, August 3, BEFORE the Starship SN5 liftoff —but after the astronauts returned via the other SpaceX project:
Love Him Or Hate Him, Elon Musk Is Enjoying A Spectacular Run

And the headline story via New Atlas, August 4:

Watch SpaceX's shimmering Starship prototype fly to 500 feet 
While its feats flying astronauts to and from the International Space Station rightly generate a lot of the headlines, the SpaceX team has been busily working on the vehicle that could take humans well past this point in low-Earth orbit. Development of this Starship spacecraft continues at the company’s Boca Chica site in Texas, where the team just performed a 150-meter (500-ft) hop test of a full-size prototype.

The Starship is the next-generation spacecraft that SpaceX hopes to use to transport people to Mars, and which first took to the skies as a small prototype called Starhopper last year. The latest version, known as Starship SN5, is something much closer to the final version, save for the lack of the nosecone fairing that will carry its payload....
.... MUCH MORE


If you recall, it wasn't all smooth sailing for SpaceX: