Starship’s third launch was also medicinal – The rocket was lost, but Elon Musk is excited

The US SpaceX company rocket made a huge leap forward on its third test flight today Thursday (14.03.2024), completing almost all its goals. The super Starship rocket was launched from the company’s base in Boca Chicago, Texas, to send its upper portion around the planet to revert over the Indian Ocean. However, along the way the rocket was lost, without being able to meet the objective of controlled landing. Radio communication was lost towards the end, but the company said it was “unbelievable to see how far we got this time”. SpaceX’s boss, Elon Musk, was also pleased with the result of the flight. The FAA usually supervises accident investigations when spaceships are lost during flight. And even though SpaceX knew starting the flight that Starship and Super Heavy would probably not survive, regulatory authorities still need to clarify what happened. SpaceX and FAA have sometimes had a controversial relationship, as SpaceX has said that service controls last longer than the company would like, delaying testing. Musk promises Starship will “make life multiplanetary” Space founder and CEO X Elon Musk reacted to Starship’s last launch, saying that the world’s strongest rocket would “make life multiplanetary“. He made the brief comment with an accompanying photo of the rocket in an X post, the platform formerly known as Twitter, of which he owns. Starship will make life multiplanetary — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) SpaceX considers the Starship system vital for its founding mission: to first transfer people to Mars. And it is critical that NASA has selected Starship as the landing vehicle that will carry its astronauts to the lunar surface on the Artemis III mission, which is scheduled to take off as early as September 2026. Watch the super hot plasma field grow as Starship re-enters the atmosphere! — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) Musk also published a video on X admiring the plasma created by the extreme heat and pressure that Starship suffered as it returned to the atmosphere.