United Nation: Lenka White – US billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has lowered expectations before the Monday SpaceX Starship launch and has encouraged people to study the history of the Soviet N1 rocket.
“Success is not what should be expected tomorrow – that would be insane,” Musk told the Twitter space participants on Sunday. “So I would encourage people to review the history of the Soviet N1 rocket, which has really a very impressive rocket design. But it never reached orbit.”
This is especially relevant if what is meant by success is reaching the orbit, Musk added. But what matters here is that SpaceX is building rockets rapidly, he said.
The Soviet N series rocket was meant to bring Soviet cosmonauts to the Moon and Mars, and to launch huge space stations into orbit. However, the end result was four launch failures and the project’s cancellation.
According to Elon Musk, “scrub” or postponement of the Starship launch will probably happen on Monday. The entrepreneur said that he was not sure what exactly could go wrong or else the support team would have tackled it.
But one of Musk’s biggest wishes is that his rocket does not blow up the launch pad – this would take several months to rebuild. Musk also mentioned that the most challenging part was probably the engines – if one fails, there will be a domino effect, and it can also happen on the launch pad.
SpaceX is planning to launch the Starship rocket from its Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, on Monday at 8 a.m. EDT (12:00 GMT) . This will be the first test flight of Starship and and Super Heavy rocket. The main goal of SpaceX is to have a fully reusable launch system for long-distance missions to the Moon and Mars. NASA plans to use Starship for its Artemis 3 mission to the moon in 2025 – the first manned crew landing on the moon since 1972.
