SpaceX just launched the biggest Starship they have built yet. Friday. Upgraded version. NASA wants this thing on the moon eventually so they were paying close attention. It shot off the coast of Texas with twenty dummy Starlink satellites strapped along for the ride.
They jettisoned the mock payloads about halfway through. The whole thing lasted an hour, stretching halfway around the globe. Engines gave them grief along the way but it didn’t stop the momentum.
Final destination was the Indian Ocean. Impact. Explosion. Walls of flame erupted when the rocket hit the water. Did anyone flinch?
Not SpaceX. They said the fire was expected.
It was a successful test, not a catastrophic failure.
So it went up. It came down. It burned. The data matters more than the splashdown smoke, I guess. The moon still seems like a long way off from that Pacific splash zone.
