The SpaceX Super Heavy rocket and Starship spacecraft are expected to take their maiden...
Either way, the launch of 33 rocket engines will be hard to miss.
That's twice as powerful as the Saturn V rocket that sent Apollo astronauts to the moon with 7.6 million pounds of thrust. Super Heavy also surpasses NASA's Space Launch System rocket thatSuper Heavy has 33 engines. No rocket has launched with so many before. Current U.S. rockets have no more than nine engines in a single booster, though the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket combines three Falcon 9 boosters, for a total of 27 engines.
But why so many? Smith said it comes down to redundancy. Think of a commercial airliner. If one engine goes out, the plane typically has one, two or three other engines that will get it to a comfortable landing."Will it work?" Smith asked."Because operationally it has not been proven."Smith will consider the mission a success if Super Heavy survives the 2 minutes and 49 seconds its engines are supposed to be ignited.
"Seeing that thing come down and hit the water, I think would be very striking," said Jason Davis, senior editor at the Planetary Society, a nonprofit that seeks to popularize space exploration. Is there enough demand for a rocket this big? Not yet, space analysts said, but they expect businesses will find new, innovative uses for this cheaper rocket once it's reliable.
And while he agreed that Starship will bring down the cost of accessing space, he said it might not be as dramatic as some are expecting. Because Starship will do work that is now done by another SpaceX rocket: the Falcon 9.
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