UNITED NATIONS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th April, 2023) SpaceX is planning another Starship launch in about six to eight weeks while the denotation cord is taking the longest time to fix, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said.
"We are probably ready to launch in 6 to 8 weeks," Musk told his audience on Twitter on Saturday. "Re-qualification of the much longer detonation cord ... to the rocket is probably the long lead item."
Before the next launch, Elon Musk is also planning to implement measures to reduce the amount of debris.
The SpaceX CEO also said that the result of the first launch attempt was very much what he had expected.
Last week, SpaceX carried out the first combined launch of the Starship spacecraft and the Super Heavy first-stage booster. The spacecraft was deliberately blown up during the test flight after it began to lose altitude when multiple engines failed. The spacecraft climbed to an apogee of about 39 kilometers (24 miles) over the Gulf of Mexico, which is the highest point any Starship spacecraft has reached to-date.
The goal for the next attempt is to reach orbit, and, according to Musk's assessment, the chances of success are above 20%.
On Saturday, Elon Musk also appreciated the work of Soviet engineers in the 1960s and 1970s, who aimed to land a person on the Moon using an N1 rocket. Musk said that N1 is very similar to Starship in terms of power and engine structure. The entrepreneur said that his budget for Starship to succeed in flying payloads to the Moon is about $2 billion.
