“You never know exactly what’s going to happen,” said SpaceX livestream commentator and engineer John Insprucker. “But as we promised,excitement is guaranteed and Starship gave us a rather spectacular end.”

The company intends to use Starship tosend people and cargo to the moon and,eventually,Mars. NASA has reserved a Starship for its next moonwalking team,and rich tourists are already booking lunar flybys.

Despite the abbreviated flight,congratulations poured in from NASA chief Bill Nelson and others in the space industry. Retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield tweeted,“Huge accomplishment,huge lessons,onwards to the next attempt.”

“It fell somewhere between a small step and their hoped-for giant leap,but it still represents significant progress toward a reusable super-heavy lift rocket,” University of Chicago’s Jordan Bimm,a space historian,said in an email.

At 120 metres and 7.6 million kilograms of thrust,Starship easily surpasses NASA’s moon rockets — past,present and future. NASA successfully launched its new 98-meter moon rocket last November on a test flight,sending the empty Orion capsule around the moon.

The stainless-steel Starship rocket is designed to be fully reusable with fast turnaround,dramatically lowering costs,similar to what SpaceX’s smaller Falcon rockets have done soaring from Cape Canaveral,Florida. Nothing was to be saved from this test flight,with the spacecraft — if all had gone well — aiming for a watery grave in the Pacific near Hawaii.

The futuristic spacecraft flew several kilometres into the air during testing a few years ago,landing successfully only once. But this was to be the inaugural launch of the first-stage booster with 33 methane-fuelled engines.

SpaceX has more boosters and spacecraft lined up for more test flight;the next set is almost ready to go. Musk wants to fire them off in quick succession,so he can start using Starships to launch satellites into low-Earth orbit and then put people on board.

It was the second launch attempt. Monday’s try was scrapped by a frozen booster valve.

Jason and Lisa Flores drove down from Corpus Christi to watch the launch with their daughter,and noticed something was amiss.

Lisa Flores cried seeing the lift-off and then realised,“It’s not working out the way it was supposed to.”

Elizabeth Trujillo,13,wearing aStar Wars shirt and carrying toy binoculars,skipped school to see the launch from the beach with her mother and other relatives. The crowd cheered when Starship cleared the tower.

Despite the failed attempt,“it was worth it,” said Jessica Trujillo,Elizabeth’s mother. “Just hearing and seeing the view,the excitement of the crowd,it was priceless.”

“Practice makes perfect. They just got to practise some more,” she added.

AP

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