{"id":96042,"date":"2025-08-26T01:52:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T01:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/96042\/"},"modified":"2025-08-26T01:52:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T01:52:07","slug":"watch-elon-musks-big-rocket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/96042\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch Elon Musk\u2019s Big Rocket"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SpaceX<\/p>\n

SpaceX’s mega rocket Starship is prepared for a test flight from Starbase in Starbase, Texas, Saturday, Aug. 23, 2025. (AP Photo\/Eric Gay)<\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved<\/p>\n

Starship, the rocket that the world\u2019s richest man hopes will take NASA astronauts back to the moon and humanity on to Mars, took a breath on Sunday is now set to blast off from Starbase, Texas, in just a few hours.<\/p>\n

The 10th flight of Starship was originally set for Sunday but was scrubbed about 20 minutes before planned launch time \u201cto allow time to troubleshoot an issue with ground systems.\u201d<\/p>\n

SpaceX has yet to fully recover an intact ship or booster from any of Starship\u2019s previous nine flights, although it did come within about a kilometer of a successful splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico at the end of Flight 9<\/a>. This fact and the dramatic visuals of explosions from previous attempts have led to these test flights frequently being labeled as \u201cfailures\u201d in media coverage and driven a discussion calling the development of Starship itself into question.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to note, however, that SpaceX has actually achieved its primary mission objectives on four or five of Starship\u2019s nine test flights, depending on how you break it down. In many ways, Starship\u2019s development mirrors that of its predecessors, the Falcon-1 and workhorse Falcon 9 rockets, which took several tries to complete missions and stick the landing.<\/p>\n

ForbesUpdated Mars Vision From Elon Musk, SpaceX Hits Different Now, Matters MoreBy Eric Mack<\/a><\/p>\n

Starship is a considerably more complex vehicle and arguably deserves even more grace as SpaceX and its engineers iterate and undertake a dramatic and explosive trial-and-error process in full view of the public.<\/p>\n

That said, Musk has long had a problem with setting realistic timelines and expectations for his ambitions, and Starship is no exception. Musk once aimed to send a crewed Starship to the moon as early as 2023, but we still seem rather far from achieving that milestone here in the second half of 2025.<\/p>\n

Changes Made For Starship Flight 10<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, SpaceX posted a report on Flight 9<\/a>, which saw Starship lost as it re-entered Earth\u2019s atmosphere and the Super Heavy booster disintegrate as it approached the Gulf of Mexico.<\/p>\n

In an email, the company says, \u201chardware and operational changes have been made to increase reliability” as a result of the report\u2019s findings.<\/p>\n

For Monday\u2019s flight, SpaceX plans to again attempt Starship\u2019s first payload deployment, which was skipped during Flight 9. The booster will attempt a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico and Starship will similarly head for a \u201clanding\u201d in the Indian Ocean.<\/p>\n

The entire affair is set for a 6:30 p.m. CDT launch, with the SpaceX Starship livestream set to start about a half-hour beforehand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SpaceX’s mega rocket Starship is prepared for a test flight from Starbase in Starbase, Texas, Saturday, Aug. 23,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,3120,131,128,285,5437],"class_list":["post-96042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-elon-musk","tag-nasa","tag-science","tag-space","tag-spacex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}