SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has merrily responded to visuals of the company conducting its first static fire test of the upper-stage prototype on Monday. The company successfully completed the first six-engine static fire test from its facility at Boca Chica, Texas.
According to Bloomberg, Musk’s SpaceX has spent around $3 billion in 2023. Starship is a next-gen fully reusable rocket which is designed to carry cargo and crew to ‘Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond’. “Starship will be the world’s most powerful launch vehicle ever developed, capable of carrying up to 150 metric tonnes fully reusable and 250 metric tonnes expendable” SpaceX explains the capabilities of Starship.

Inaugural flight of Starship from the SpaceX facility in Texas on April 20 this year saw the rocket take off from its launchpad successfully but suffer multiple engine failures leading to it going out of control. According to the plan, the booster was to separate from the spacecraft minutes after liftoff, however, that didn’t happen and SpaceX was forced to activate the flight termination system that blew up the rocket.

On June 13 Elon Musk had confirmed in an interaction on Twitter that the next launch of Starship is slated within the next 2 months. In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Musk said that the possibility of Starship launching getting to Orbit is much higher because of the more than 1,000 changes made since the first launch.

“So I think the probability of the next flight working — or getting to orbit — is much higher than the last one,” Musk told Bloomberg. “Maybe it’s like 60%; it depends on how well we do at stage separation,” he added.

Musk revealed in the same interview that SpaceX has made a ‘late breaking change’ to the way Starship separates and when the Super Heavy booster breaks free mid-flight. He also said that SpaceX will be doing hot staging this time, meaning Starship will ignite while the Super Heavy Booster is still attached.