100 travelers should bring the "Starship" spaceship from SpaceX to the moon or even to Mars at some point - in commuting back and forth. But at the launch site in Boca Chica in Texas, there was now a setback for the musings of Elon Musk.
The construction exploded in a test of the about 50 meter high prototype MK1 on Wednesday evening. A clip posted on Youtube that comes from a livestream shows how the upper part of the rocket explodes and a large piece of metal is thrown into the sky. A mighty column of steam rises from the test area.
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According to a report, the oxygen tank could be detonated during a pressure test. The content spilled onto the test area. What the substance is, is not known. Maybe the SpaceX designers had been working with liquid oxygen or nitrogen. So far it is not known whether someone was injured in the accident.
Explosion at "Starship" in Boca Chica
The incident is not good news for the Starship program. For the coming weeks, a first test was actually announced, in which the prototype should fly 20 kilometers and then gently land again on earth. However, SpaceX had repeatedly stressed that setbacks on such projects are not uncommon. Whether the damaged MK1 is to be repaired is not certain yet.
Musk is currently working with two competing teams in parallel on the Starship project. A version of the rocket is being built by professionals in the South of Texas. Another version, the MK2, is being built at the Cape Canaveral Space Station in Florida.
In a few years SpaceX wants to send a team around the Japanese artist Yusaku Maezawa for a trip around the moon. This schedule is considered very ambitious.
