He hoped to finally succeed in a test flight of his interplanetary rocket.
The Starship rocket's fourth test flight failed on Tuesday.
The 11th prototype crashed, admitted billionaire Elon Musk, founder of the SpaceX company which intends to transport passengers to the Moon, Mars, and far beyond ...
“Something big has happened,” as it came downhill, he tweeted.
“We should know what it was once we can review the pieces later today,” he tweeted.
He jokingly added, “At least the crater is in the right place!
".
Looks like engine 2 had issues on ascent & didn't reach operating chamber pressure during landing burn, but, in theory, it wasn't needed.
Something significant happened shortly after landing burn start.
Should know what it was once we can examine the bits later today.
- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 30, 2021
The SN11 rocket was launched from South Texas around 1 p.m. GMT (3 p.m. in France), so the weather was foggy It began its 10 km ascent, experiencing problems with video transmission.
Live feed of Starship SN11 flight test → https://t.co/Hs5C53qBxb https://t.co/Dl0iss2aPZ
- SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 30, 2021
During his descent, the video was interrupted.
A priori, the rocket disintegrated in flight.
In this video, we see falling debris.
Final view of SN11 in the air:
➡️https: //t.co/Q2p3q1HS0i pic.twitter.com/PNJta9svkA
- Chris B - NSF (@NASASpaceflight) March 30, 2021
SN8 and SN9 had launched in December and February respectively, but crashed and exploded, while on March 3 SN10 managed to take off and then land, but also exploded a few minutes later.
Despite these failures, according to experts, SpaceX is accumulating valuable data that will allow it to accelerate the development of its space program.
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