Elon Musk showed a video of the SpaceX spacecraft before the first orbital flight (11 photos + 1 video)

First orbital flight of SpaceX Starship rocket take place on Monday. Elon Musk tweeted new video with the caption "Starship prepares to launch."





Rocket worth 3 billion dollars and a height of 120 meters, which is considered the most powerful in the world, is located on the launch pad in Boca Chica, Texas. Perhaps in a few days we will see how she takes off.

State Aviation Administration (FAA) formerly said Starship launch could happen as early as Monday, 10 April. Reserve dates are also indicated - April 11 and 12.

Despite the fact that Monday is just around the corner, companies SpaceX still needs to get a launch license. Apparently there are problems with her last minute delivery is not expected.



Musk has already warned that there is a 50 percent the probability that the Starship will explode during launch. According to him, this launch will not be boring.





If the launch is successful, it will be a new milestone in the desire of SpaceX to deliver people and cargo to the Moon and Mars, making us a "multiplanetary" species.



SpaceX plans to do this with a two-stage spacecraft consisting of the reusable Starship (passenger part) and a super-heavy rocket booster. Together Starship and Super Heavy are a whopping 120 meters tall and weigh 5 000 tons.



Starship is capable of generating 70 meganewtons of thrust nearly double that of another next-generation rocket built by NASA and known as the Space Launch System (SLS).

Previously, Musk estimated the total development cost of the project. Starship in the amount of 2 to 10 billion dollars. He later said that the cost is likely to be closer to two or three billion than ten.



SpaceX has been testing starship prototypes for many years. known as "BFRs" by launching them into the air and landing them. These launches passed with varying degrees of success - some devices exploded, others returned unharmed.

However, a full-scale orbital flight of the rocket has not yet been was, despite the fact that Musk promised to hold it back in 2022. Now they seem to be promising again, but there is no complete certainty.



Shortly after launch, the Super Heavy booster will separate and will land softly in the sea about 30 km from the coast. Starship will continue to fly along its ground trajectory through the Strait of Florida. It will then soft-land in the Pacific Ocean about 100 km to northwest of Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands. It is expected that all the space flight will last 90 minutes.



If successful, SpaceX will focus on launching valuable satellites and other payloads into orbit on a ship Starship. And there will be not one such ship, but many. In the end, Musk wants to make human life "multi-planetary" - that is, to people could live on several planets - which may require about a thousand starships.



Musk believes that a natural disaster or man-made catastrophe will eventually lead to the end of civilization, requiring relocation to another planet, and Mars "is the only real option."

Starship will be able to deliver up to 100 people at a time the red planet, and this journey will take about nine months in one side.



However, the Martian surface is not the only destination for Starship.

NASA awards SpaceX contract to use Starship to deliver astronauts to the lunar surface as early as 2025 as part of Artemis program (the successor to the Apollo program implemented in the 1960s and 1970s).

A special lunar variant of the ship, known as the Starship HLS (Starship Human Landing System), will deliver astronauts from Tothe Orion spacecraft in lunar orbit the surface of the moon and back as part of the Artemis 3 mission. This manned space flight as part of the lunar program "Artemis" is scheduled for 2025