Cathedral tower
However, the rocket, 120 meters long and taller than the tower of the Utrecht Cathedral, exploded after almost 4 minutes. SpaceX had previously emphasized that the test flight is intended to obtain more information. According to the company, this also happens in the event of a “quick and unplanned breakup” of the ship, as it happened. Eventually the spaceship should take people to the moon and Mars.
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The launch was scheduled to take place on Monday, but was canceled at the last minute because an onboard valve jammed. The craft is 10 meters taller than the rockets that took people to the moon and back between 1968 and 1972. SpaceX hopes to take 100 passengers into space on each flight in the future.
The launch took place from the SpaceX space base on the border with Mexico. The lower part is the 70-metre-long Super Heavy booster, with the engines that must guarantee the take-off of the rocket. Indeed, the 50-meter-long Starship capsule, in which people will then be accommodated, was supposed to continue flying across the Atlantic Ocean, Southern Africa, the Indian Ocean, Indonesia and the Pacific Ocean. After an hour and a half and a nearly complete orbit around the Earth, the spacecraft should have crashed in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.