Texas: Starship Set for Test Flight Soon! [Date, Time and More]

Elon Musk is preparing for SpaceX's Starship launch in Texas after around two decades in the making. If successful, the Starship will be the biggest ever rocket to fly in history.

The Starship launch's aim has remained the same despite the changes in plans for the vehicle. According to Bloomberg, Musk wants to land people on other planets and fulfill the billionaire's aspiration of a human settlement on Mars.

Caleb Henry, director of research at Quilty Analytics, a space consulting firm, noted that Musk's rocket is the first vehicle that can execute the Tesla CEO's vision of "making humanity multi-planetary."

Starship will be capable of generating 16.7 million pounds of thrust at liftoff and carrying huge payloads to Earth and beyond.

Aside from Musk's plans for the Starship, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will use the rocket to return to the moon.

NASA awarded the company a $2.9 billion contract to help the agency achieve its efforts to come back to the moon.

Aside from its notable size, SpaceX claimed that the Starship is also designed to be "fully reusable," making its operation "relatively inexpensive."

Texas Starship Test Flight Schedule

The biggest rocket in history will be executed on the Starship launch on April 17. It will be flown from SpaceX's Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, on Monday at 8 a.m.

SpaceX reported that it would be 7 a.m. local time, but it is yet to be determined whether SpaceX targets that time or chooses to wait until later in the window. It may not be the exact schedule when the rocket actually lifts off. SpaceX's mission plan noted that Starship and Super Heavy would have a 150-minute window to lift off from Starbase, which will put the launch efforts between 8 a.m. and 10:30 a.m.

It will depend on the readiness of Starship and Super Heavy, including other factors such as weather conditions at the launch site and other safety precautions to be implemented.

SpaceX will be providing a live webcast of the Starship launch starting around 45 minutes before liftoff.

Those in the Texas area of Boca Chica can catch the Starship test flight live, which can be viewed in the waters near Long Island and South Padre Island.

SpaceX will have its own viewing zone on South Padre Island in the Cameron County amphitheater.

Elon Musk's Starship in Texas

SpaceX recently posted its timeline for the flight, with the words "excitement guaranteed" replacing "liftoff," NPR reported.

Elon Musk noted in 2021 to the Space Studies Board of the National Academies that the company started looking at advanced, lightweight composites for the rocket.

However, the billionaire said he realized that the steel was "cheap, abundant" and tough. The fuel for SpaceX's gigantic spaceship is methane, which is cheaper to produce and easier to handle than hydrogen.

In addition, trace amounts of methane are present in the atmosphere of Mars, which presents a possibility that the vehicle could refuel from the planet itself.

Paulo Lozano, director of MIT's space propulsion laboratory, said that most high-powered rockets used hydrogen for fuel since it is lightweight and highly efficient.

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Mary Webber

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