SpaceX surpasses Apollo with tallest-ever rocket on a launchpad
SpaceX beats the Saturn V moon rocket by a healthy margin
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SpaceX set a world record this week for the tallest rocket ever assembled after it stacked and mated its Starship spacecraft onto the company’s main Super Heavy rocket booster, beating out the NASA Saturn V rocket that sent Apollo 11 astronauts to the moon.
Starship Serial No. 20 (SN20) was hoisted up by crane onto the main Super Heavy booster on the morning of Friday, August 6, outside of Boca Chica, Texas, as part of a stacking test in preparation for Starship’s first ever orbital launch later this year, perSpace.com.
There was no official SpaceX livestream of the testing, but the stacking was captured by bothNASASpaceflight.comandSpadre.com’s24/7 livecams of the testing site. The company, along with SpaceX founder Elon Mush,tweeted outsome pretty impressive pics of the towering rocket from the launchpad as well.
NASA’s Saturn V rocket, which carried Apollo 11 astronauts to the moon in 1969, topped out at 363 feet, while the stacked Starship spacecraft and the Super Heavy Booster combined for a total of 395 feet, about as tall as a 36-story building.
Starship Fully Stacked pic.twitter.com/Fs88RNsmfHAugust 6, 2021
Successfully mating SpaceX’s crew-carrying Starship with the powerful Super Heavy rocket system (which will hopefully carry it into orbit as early as this year) is a major step for the company, and not just for its record-setting height.
Earlier this week, Boeing and United Launch Alliance (ULA) had toscrub their second attemptat launching the Boeing Starliner to the International Space Station (ISS) after an unexpected “valve position indication” appeared in pre-launch tests.
Boeing, one of the biggest names in aerospace, still has not managed to get an automated, uncrewed Starliner capsule docked with the ISS more than two years after SpaceX accomplished its automated, uncrewed docking with the orbiting station, and more than a year after SpaceX’s first successful crewed flight and docking with the ISS in May 2020.
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Back in April of this year,NASA chose SpaceX’s Starshipto bring the first astronauts back to the moon after a decades-long absence as part of NASA’s Artemis program. The rocket that was assembled today will make up the core of that launch, which is expected to take place in 2024.
Starship and Super Heavy still need to undergo server further tests before it is ready for lift off, according to TechRadar’s sister siteSpace.com, including testing its thermal shielding and other launch equipment. It is also awaiting a US Federal Aviation Administration environmental review of its launch operations, with no word yet on when that will be finished.
John (He/Him) is the Components Editor here at TechRadar and he is also a programmer, gamer, activist, and Brooklyn College alum currently living in Brooklyn, NY.
Named by the CTA as a CES 2020 Media Trailblazer for his science and technology reporting, John specializes in all areas of computer science, including industry news, hardware reviews, PC gaming, as well as general science writing and the social impact of the tech industry.
You can find him online on Threads @johnloeffler.
Currently playing: Baldur’s Gate 3 (just like everyone else).
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