【Musk's Starship will conduct its tenth test flight at 7:30 AM today, will you pay attention?】
Local time at 7:30 PM on August 24, which is 7:30 AM on August 25 Beijing time, Musk's SpaceX will conduct the tenth test flight of the "Starship." This is the fourth test flight this year, with the previous three ending in failure.
From a technical perspective, there are several highlights for this test flight.
First is the test of "reusability." The booster will attempt a soft landing offshore in the Gulf of Mexico and simulate an engine failure; meanwhile, the upper spacecraft will conduct a space engine restart, simulate satellite deployment, and high-pressure atmospheric re-entry tests.
Second is the rectification of previous failures. Previous test flights exposed issues such as propellant leaks, loss of attitude control, and disintegration upon re-entry. These will all be addressed this time and are seen as key to assessing whether SpaceX has genuinely learned lessons and broken through bottlenecks.
Finally, it’s a trial of the business model. If the test flight succeeds, it would mean that the Starship's “low-cost, high-frequency” model begins to have a realistic foundation.
SpaceX has long announced a live broadcast on the X platform, but Musk himself has rarely been low-key, only posting a brief statement on the X platform a few days ago saying, "Preparing to launch Starship." This restraint may reflect the immense pressure he is under.
