![]() … I think it matters, you know, to other kids around the world and to all the creative people that it is artists who are going to fly around the moon,” he said. “I felt like so many things I had to overcome in my life prepared me for being here and being part of this and carry the weight the way it is. ![]() “That’s when I realized how alive this machine is and how intense it is and will be when we actually strap ourselves in and leave the planet - which is in itself an absurd thought.”Īnother future crew member, Yemi Akinyemi Dele, said he has no qualms about going on a future flight. Many of us - I think - we’re ready to scramble,” he said. He said members of the Dear Moon crew were invited to get an up-close look at the rocket shortly after the scrubbed launch attempt. ![]() What did give him a “feeling of intensity” was visiting the rocket shortly after the scrubbed launch attempt on Monday. He understood it was an early fight test and he was essentially watching a prototype take flight. Iliya added that watching the rocket explode today didn’t give him any extra nerves for his future spaceflight. “It was just this feeling of joy and energy running through the crowd and through the people.” “This wave of sound just smashed into my body, and I could feel it and I could hear it and I thought: ‘Am I really going inside that machine?’ It was absolutely wild,” Iliya told CNN. Today, he watched Starship take off from South Padre Island in Texas. Karim Iliya, a photographer currently based in Iceland, is one of eight artists and creatives who were selected to join Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa on a future Starship launch slated to travel around the moon - a mission called “Dear Moon.” Spectators watch from South Padre Island, Texas, as the SpaceX Starship launches for the test flight on April 20. The company also thanked its community and the county for supporting the launch. SpaceX said it “learned a tremendous amount” that it will implement into future flights. As is standard procedure, the pad and surrounding area was cleared well in advance of the test, and we expect the road and beach near the pad to remain closed until tomorrow,” SpaceX said in a statement on its website. The flight termination system was commanded on both the booster and ship. The vehicle experienced multiple engines out during the flight test, lost altitude, and began to tumble. The vehicle cleared the pad and beach as Starship climbed to an apogee of ~39 km over the Gulf of Mexico – the highest of any Starship to-date. CT, Starship successfully lifted off from the orbital launch pad for the first time. SpaceX said its first flight test of Starship put on “quite a show” Thursday as the powerful rocket launched and then exploded midair a few minutes later. The SpaceX Starship takes off in Boca Chica, Texas on April 20. Today’s test flight only sought to get to near orbital speeds and make a partial lap of the planet. More than a dozen launches - carrying nothing but propellant - may be required to give a single Starship lunar lander enough fuel to traverse the 238,900-mile (384,500-kilometer) void between the Earth and the moon.īefore SpaceX can even hash out that process, it’ll also need to learn to put Starship into orbit in the first place. The sheer mass of the vehicle will force the company to refuel the spacecraft while it’s still in Earth’s orbit. Before that mission can take off, however, SpaceX has to prove that Starship can make it to the moon. NASA tapped SpaceX’s Starship to serve as a lunar lander, ferrying astronauts from a separate spacecraft down to the lunar surface for the Artemis III mission, which is currently scheduled for as early as 2025. Before Starship can complete its first grand mission or host astronauts, SpaceX has significant technological questions to hash out. This test flight was a small step in a grand project. Onlookers watch as SpaceX's Starship take off near Brownsville, Texas, on Thursday, April 20.
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