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SOUTH PADRE ISLAND: Elon Musk's massive SpaceX rocket, known as Starship, launched off the Texas coast on Tuesday.
It was the most recent test of the powerful rocket, which is part of Musk's aim to transport humans to the Moon and Mars one day. Spectators flocked to see the thrilling liftoff, hoping that this flight would go better than the last two, which ended in explosions.
The largest and most powerful launch vehicle ever built was launched at 6:36 p.m. (2336 GMT) from the company's Starbase facility near a southern Texas community that just voted to become a city, also known as Starbase.
Standing 403 feet (123 meters) tall, the black-and-white monster is intended to be totally reusable and bears billionaire Musk's vision of humans becoming a multi-planetary society.
NASA is also banking on a Starship derivative to serve as the crew lander for Artemis 3, which would return Americans to the Moon.
However, the past two tests ended with the upper stages bursting in blazing cascades, sending debris pouring down over Caribbean islands and delaying flights, increasing pressure on SpaceX to do it right this time.
Before the countdown, scores of spectators had gathered at neighboring Isla Blanca Park on South Padre Island to see if SpaceX could pull it off.
Piers Dawson, 50, an Australian, told AFP that he is "obsessed" with the rocket and made it a stop on his family vacation, his first trip to the United States with his wife and adolescent.
"All I'm expecting is a successful launch. "Obviously, that's very exciting," Dawson said, adding that he had pulled his 15-year-old son out of school to be here.
Several tiny tourist boats lined the lagoon to gain a sight of the spectacle, while a live broadcast showed Musk seated at ground control in Starbase, sporting a "Occupy Mars" T-shirt.
'Fail fast, learn fast'
To far, Starship has conducted eight combined test flights atop the Super Heavy rocket, with four successes and four failures resulting in explosions.
The corporation hopes that its "fail fast, learn fast" strategy, which helped it become the dominating force in commercial spaceflight, will pay off once more.
However, it noted in a statement that development "won't always come in leaps."
On the plus side, SpaceX has now proved three times that it can capture the Super Heavy first stage rocket in its launch tower's massive robotic arms, a daring feat of engineering that the company claims is critical to making the system fast reusable and lowering costs.
For the first time, the firm will reuse a Super Heavy rocket on its ninth mission.
Because engineers intend to push its boundaries, including a higher fall angle and purposefully disabling one engine, there will be no effort to catch the Super Heavy booster this time. Instead, it will splash down in the Gulf of Mexico.
As with previous missions, the upper-stage spacecraft will aim to travel halfway around the world before splashing down in the Indian Ocean.
The ship will also be stress tested: numerous heat shield tiles have been removed as part of a series of studies aimed at making it recyclable in the long run.
SpaceX also plans to launch its first payload: "simulators" of its Starlink internet satellites, which are likely to burn up in the atmosphere.
The Federal Aviation Administration approved the launch after virtually doubling the airspace exclusion zone to 1,600 nautical miles east of the launch location.
It is cooperating with authorities in the United Kingdom, the British-controlled Turks and Caicos Islands, the Bahamas, Mexico, and Cuba.
The FAA also recently allowed an increase in yearly launches from five to twenty-five, claiming that the increased frequency will have no negative impact on the environment and overruling conservation organizations' concerns.
