The expert compared the explosion of the Starship Musk with the experiments of Sergei Korolev

“They had similar problems with starting engines”

“The ship is lost!” “Still, it’s a success.” So ambiguously reacted on Thursday evening near the space community to the drama that unfolded at the private spaceport Boca Chica in Texas. Elon Musk’s 120-meter super-heavy Starship, which can take a whole company of soldiers on board, nevertheless ended up in space, but was lost a few minutes later.

The creator – Elon Musk gave the order to blow up his brainchild, which at the 36th kilometer began to prescribe a pretzel.

The launch was made at 16.30 Moscow time. Estimated launch cost is $2 million. SN24 was launched into orbit by a Super Heavy launch vehicle with 33 Raptor engines. It was impossible to take your eyes off the broadcast. The complex reached the mark of 36 kilometers, and after that there was an explosion …. We believed in success so much, we held our fists for it. The dream of the founder of SpaceX to populate Mars and the Moon beckons, but so far is not approaching.

21 years ago, at the founding of his company, Elon Musk declared that its goal was to populate other planets. Since then, he has stubbornly moved in the direction set for himself no matter what, hoping for a manned landing on Mars, if not in 2028, then in 2033 – “with the highest probability.”

His main hope is Starship – a ship that, like Noah’s Ark, will be able to load on board a lot (compared to current ships) of representatives of humanity – 100 astronauts at once. True, unlike Noah, Musk is not going to stop on one flight, his plans include space shuttle flights between the Earth and the Red Planet, thanks to which it will be possible to build a million-plus city on Mars.

Since 2019, the new Starship system has been tested more than 10 times, “attempts to toss” the ship itself with its subsequent return and soft landing were carried out seven times. Not everything went smoothly: several times the ship exploded in the air, twice – upon impact with the surface of the landing site – then there was not enough thrust from the engines, then there was a fuel leak. On Monday, April 17, Elon Musk canceled the launch 40 seconds before the start, rescheduled for April 20. And here is another failure.

The launch was excellent, but at the 4th minute, having flown several tens of kilometers, the rocket with the ship entered an uncontrolled rotation. The stage failed to separate, and the rocket was destroyed. Musk gave the command to blow up the complex in the air so that when it falls, it does not damage the launch pad.

Recall what should ideally be. After separation from the first stage (Super Heavy launch vehicle), Starship was supposed to rise to a height of 230 kilometers, go around part of our planet and splash down in the Pacific Ocean, 225 kilometers from the coast of Oahu (Hawaii). The Super Heavy rocket would have made an independent landing in the Gulf of Mexico, near Boca Chica, just 8 minutes after launch. It is assumed that in future missions, both the ship and the launch vehicle will land smoothly, because the reusability of their use is one of the main advantages of the new complex.

The powerful steel starship, as some call it, is by far the largest system to carry passengers and cargo to low Earth orbit, to the Moon and Mars.

However, in the late 60s in the USSR there was a more powerful rocket – not with two stages, like Mask’s, but with four. This is the royal H-1.

“Mask’s Starship is similar to the H-1 only in the number of engines,” cosmonautics historian Alexander Zheleznyakov, author of the book “Tsar Rocket” N-1, comments on the event for MK, “True, the royal brainchild had 30 engines, and Mask had 33 engine. Unfortunately, all four attempts to launch them simultaneously ended in failure for Sergei Pavlovich. We see similar problems with engines in the Starship complex. However, for Elon Musk, this is just the first attempt to launch a ship in conjunction with a launch vehicle, so he still has everything ahead of him.

At one time, many did not believe that he would lift the Falcon into space, but this rocket is now flying successfully. If Musk manages to launch Starship, the US will have a technological advantage for decades, because it will be able to lift up to 100 tons of cargo into low Earth orbit (LEO). By the way, the creators of our Energia launch vehicle could boast of this back in the 80s, which had a potential of up to 120 tons, but according to all other criteria – reusability, the ability to land on any dense surface in the solar system and return back, “Starship” has no equal yet.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 29016 dated April 21, 2023

Newspaper headline:
I launched you, I will blow you up