rockets from the apollo programme long ago and it is going to carry as its payload the first starship prototype to fly and it s going to make it almost all the way around one orbit but then it is going to come back down and splashdown near hawaii so this will be the first all up test of the starship system including the falcon super heavy booster so it is really exciting, 33 clustered engines in the first stage. this is going to be pretty historic. so this is historic, it s a powerful rocket, it is a large, enormous rocket. what is it designed to do? why does it have to be so big and so powerful? spacex has designed the starship to be fully reusable, that is really an important point and also elon musk of course, he says he started spacex all those years ago because he himself wants to travel to mars and wants to establish human colonies on mars, therefore that is
elon musk and his spacex team are preparing to launch what is described as a mammoth rocket named starship into space on monday. the stainless steel machine is 394 feet tall more than twice the height of a nasa space shuttle. the rocket and spacecraft combination can hold more than 100 people. i spoke with former nasa astronaut and chemical engineer leroy chiao to get a sense of what to expect during tomorrow s launch. first of all, spacex have launched rockets before stopping what makes this one in particular so exciting? well, this is by far the biggest rocket that will ever attempt to fly. it actually generates much more thrust, more than twice the thrust of the satin moon rockets from the apollo programme long ago and it is going to carry as its payload the first starship prototype to fly and it s going to make it almost all the way around one orbit but then it is going to