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Starship Launch Test Proves Even Water Boilers Can Reach for the Stars

Our romantic view of space exploration goes a bit like this: you climb into a sleek, curved, silvery spacecraft which then takes off with a soft woosh from the pad at some random, luxurious Earth-based spaceport. Elon Musk’s view is sticking you inside a water-boiler shaped cylinder, and sending you on your merry way from Texas.
SpaceX Starship test launch 7 photos
Photo: SpaceX
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The way things are going, we’ll probably have to settle with the Musk way. The boy/man genius proved to be a force to be reckoned with in space as well, after at first sending a car out there on the Falcon Heavy, and then two men on the Crew Dragon. The men came back, the car did not.

What’s next for him? Head for Mars, of course. He plans (he’s even considering moving there permanently himself) on doing so with a stainless steel starship called for now… Starship.

On the drawing board for some time now, the cylinder (sorry, there’s no other way of calling it at this time) underwent it’s first major flight test this week in Boca Chica, Texas. As you can see in the video below, the contraption, with a small rocket engine called Raptor stuck in its behind, took off from the pad and returned without a hitch, looking both majestic and ridiculous at the same time. The rocket took the metal contraption to an altitude of 150 meters (492 feet).

Having passed this milestone, SpaceX is now moving on with the development of the spacecraft. It’s a long and probably bumpy road ahead, but when finished, the Starship should enable a massive migration of humans towards the Moon, and later on to Mars.

If SpaceX gets through with this – and we have no reason to believe it won’t – it will mark humanity’s first step in a whole new chapter of space exploration, as the Starship would become the world’s first true interplanetary vessel.

Until it does though, is still just a flying water boiler.
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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