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First, a test flight of Elon Musk’s SN8 SpaceX spacecraft was automatically canceled this week 1.3 seconds before lift-off. Reason: Raptor engine failure. During Wednesday’s test flight, which then took off, the rocket’s unmanned prototype crashed while trying to land.
It was evidently a “suicide burn”, a preventive “suicide burn” because the missile could no longer be saved due to a technical failure.
“Many things have to go well”
In the initially successful test flight, the spacecraft had reached a height of nearly 12.2 kilometers and thus reached the specified destination. Problems arose while trying to land. The missile caught fire when it landed on a concrete slab near the launch pad in Boca Chica, Texas.
SpaceX had already warned on its website before the test flight that the prototype should crash or explode, this is not necessarily a sign of the flight failure. “A lot of things have to go right, so maybe 1/3 chance” that the rocket will land in one piece, Musk (49) said beforehand on Twitter.
“Mars, let’s go!”
The space pioneer and Tesla electric car was also unimpressed by the crash. He wrote on Twitter after the accident: ‘The pressure in the fuel tank was low during landing, leading to high touchdown speed and RUD, but we have all the data we need! Congratulations, SpaceX team! »
The altitude test was successful, the conversion to collection tanks worked, and the flap control was accurate to the landing point. “Mars, let’s go!” Musk wrote. The electric car pioneer wants to use the fully reusable spaceships from the Starship program to first get people to the moon and then to Mars. (kes / SDA)
