Expectations Were Low for Today’s Starship Launch Attempt – Rightfully So

SpaceX founder Elon Musk heaped a ton of pessimism onto the scheduled Monday morning launch of the company’s Starship rocket and it appears that his low expectations were deserved as just around 9 minutes to lift-off, the launch was scrubbed and converted into a “wet dress rehearsal” due to a pressurization issue in the first stage.

Live Stream of Starship Launch

“There’s a good chance that it gets postponed since we’re going to be pretty careful about this launch,” Musk said on Twitter Sunday night. “If we get far enough away from launch pad before something goes wrong, then I think I would consider that to be a success.”

“Just don’t blow up the pad,” he added.

This is the first time that SpaceX has attempted to launch a fully assembled starship which, if successful, will be the most powerful rocket ever sent into space.

The launch is scheduled for 8 a.m. CDT (9 a.m. EDT) at SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility in Texas. After liftoff, the spacecraft is set to make it about 150 miles above the Earth’s surface, then re-enter the atmosphere near Hawaii and splash down just over an hour after lift-off.

Musk consistently downplays “firsts” as he did with the first launch of the Falcon Heavy in 2018 when he gave that launch a low chance of success.

“People (came) from all around the world to see what will either be a great rocket launch or the best fireworks display they’ve ever seen,” he said in a CNN interview at the time.

Starship is a critical piece of Elon Musks’ plan to put a human colony on Mars and today turned out to be another rehearsal on the way to that goal.

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