Ali Hasan
Elon Musk stays in the news irrespective of the circumstances. This time, its bad news for him as a rocket exploded during a test flight. On 2nd February 2021, a test flight of SpaceX’s Starship, a huge next-generation spacecraft that Elon Musk dreams of one day sending to Mars, came to an explosive end.
That brief flight, to an altitude of about 6 miles and then back to a landing pad, appeared to again demonstrate how the mammoth rocket would tip over on its side as it descended in a controlled belly flop back toward a landing.
But when the prototype fired its engines to right itself back to a vertical orientation, it appeared that one engine did not properly ignite, and Starship hit the ground at an angle, disintegrating in a fireball, leaving a cloud of smoke rising over the test site, which is in Boca Chica, Texas, near Brownsville.
“We’ve just got to work on that landing a little bit,” said John Insprucker, a SpaceX engineer hosting a webcast of the test. On Tuesday evening, the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates rocket launches, announced that it will oversee an investigation of why the prototype crashed.
“Although this was an uncrewed test flight, the investigation will identify the root cause of today’s mishap and possible opportunities to further enhance safety as the program develops,” an agency spokesman said in a statement. For this launch, SpaceX at least had the permission of the F.A.A.
Last week, SpaceX and government regulators seemed to be in a strange standoff. SpaceX had filled the propellant tanks of this prototype of Starship — its 9th one — and looked ready to launch. But then the rocket stayed on the ground when no approval from the F.A.A. arrived.
Mr. Musk expressed frustration on Twitter, describing the part of the F.A.A. that oversees SpaceX as “fundamentally broken.” Mr. Musk wrote, “Their rules are meant for a handful of expendable launches per year from a few government facilities. Under those rules, humanity will never get to Mars.”
The race to send humans to mars is getting close day by day and we hope that one day if the earth is uninhabitable, humanity is able to take a massive step in the right direction and travel to mars to still continue living as a species. How exciting will it be to become a inter planetary species.
