the gargantuan rocket that houses the 33 engines had been loaded with fuel, but it seems there was a problem with one of the pressure valves. fully stacked, starship stands about 120 metres tall, towering over nasa s saturn v which launched the apollo missions at 111m tall. and compare that to nasa s artemis rocket, 98m tall, which will one day return astronauts to the moon. it has plenty of oomph too around 17 million pounds of thrust, which has almost twice the power of the artemis rocket. i spoke earlier to our science correspondentjonathan amos, who explained how it works. i was just listening to your numbers there. i like to do some calculations on a piece of paper. and you will remember the old concorde. i was brought up in bristol, in the west country, and it is famous for concorde, the engines, the olympus engines that were produced there, designed there, for concorde. concorde used to fly with four olympus engines. the amount of thrust that this rocket should be able to
rockets that he launches every week now, the bottom half of that rocket is used time and time again. he does not use the top half, the top half is expended. the dream is to get a fully reusable rocket and rapidly reusable. that is to say, it comes back, and just like the jet airliner that lands in new york, they refuel it and it goes again, and that is the idea with this rocket. now, because it is so big, because it is so big, you can put a huge amount in orbit, more than 100 tonnes in one go. if you can also have a rapidly reusable vehicle, the cost of putting a kilo in orbit, it falls through the floor, right, essentially? all you are paying for is the fuel that you put in the rocket. so it is an absolute game changer, if he can make it work, and that is what we are watching to see. they do have a window tomorrow to
dashing down the runway, on reheat, trying to take off. that is how much oomph. i could not have think of the scientific, technical term, but oomph seems to cover it! 33 engines. is this everything they have? are they throwing everything at it? the nearest analogy, actually, is an old soviet rocket called the n1, which the soviets were going to use to send cosmonauts to the moon back in the 1960s. 0bviously, they lost the race to the moon, in part because they could not control the 30 engines that they had at the base of the n1. so it is really hard to co ordinate those engines. they have to be lit up in stages. you have to watch out for crazy resonances. the big concern, the worry is that
JIUQUAN, April 2 (Xinhua) A new carrier rocket made its maiden flight in China on Sunday, sending a satellite into its planned orbit. The rocket is known as
now a look at some other stories making the news today. constance marten and mark gordon will stand trial injanuary 2024 over the alleged manslaughter of a baby girl. the infant s remains were found in a shed in brighton after a 53 day missing persons search. the pair appeared at the old bailey today. they did not enter pleas and were remanded in custody. figures from the nationwide building society suggest house prices have fallen at their fastest annual rate in 1a years. the lender says its data suggests they were down by 3.1% in march compared to 2022. property prices have now fallen for seven months in a row. virgin 0rbit the rocket company owned by sir richard branson is planning to lay off 85% of its workforce. the firm failed to secure new investment and is expected to stop operating for the foreseeable future. earlier this year, a virgin 0rbit rocket failed to complete the first ever satellite launch from the uk. businesses warn they may have