SpaceX is already testing tech that might strengthen the bottom beneath its giant Starship rocket’s orbital launch pad, a brand new video shows.
That pad, at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas, took a beating in the course of the first-ever test flight of a totally stacked Starship vehicle — probably the most powerful rocket ever built — on April 20.
The immense power of Starship’s 33 first-stage Raptor engines blasted out a crater beneath the pad that day, sending chunks of broken concrete flying through the dusty air.
Related: Relive SpaceX’s explosive 1st Starship launch in incredible photos
A day after the highly anticipated test flight, Elon Musk tweeted that SpaceX was already working on a solution to prevent or minimize such damage — “a large water-cooled, steel plate to go under the launch mount.”
Such efforts had begun three months prior, the billionaire entrepreneur said. The plate system wasn’t ready in time for the April 20 launch, but SpaceX went ahead with it anyway, assuming that the concrete beneath Starship would survive a single liftoff. That turned out to not be the case, as we saw on April 20.
The steel-plate work has continued apace since then. Indeed, the corporate recently tested a prototype plate against the ability of a single Raptor.
SpaceX tweeted out a 20-second video of the test on Friday (May 19). When the steam clears at the tip of the clip, the plate appears to still be in a single piece — no mean feat, considering what it was up against.
“One hell of a plasma beam!” Musk tweeted on Friday, in a reply to the SpaceX tweet.
One hell of a plasma beam! https://t.co/y8uOTeFlsDMay 19, 2023
SpaceX is developing Starship to launch astronauts to the moon and Mars, and to take over most, if not all, of the corporate’s spaceflight portfolio down the road. NASA is a believer within the vehicle, selecting it as the primary crewed lunar lander for its Artemis moon program.
The April 20 test flight aimed to send Starship’s upper stage most of the best way around Earth, culminating in a splashdown within the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. That did not occur, nevertheless; the vehicle’s two stages didn’t separate as planned, and SpaceX ordered the prototype to self-destruct high over the Gulf of Mexico just a few minutes after liftoff.
SpaceX is constructing multiple Starship vehicles at Starbase and goals to launch the subsequent one soon. Musk said recently that the subsequent Starship flight could occur inside the subsequent month or two — provided the steel-plate system is prepared by then and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration greenlights the mission.