“We’re really dying to get this rocket off the bottom,” Mr. Musk mentioned on Sunday night time throughout an audio dialogue with customers of Twitter.

Right here’s what you want to know concerning the flight.

When is the Starship launch, and the way can I watch it?

Starship and the Tremendous Heavy booster that can carry it to orbit are scheduled to be loaded with propellants early on Monday morning at a SpaceX check website in Texas, simply outdoors town of Brownsville. The launch website, which SpaceX calls Starbase, is near the Gulf of Mexico.

SpaceX has scheduled the flight as early as 9:20 a.m. Japanese time, and it might launch any time between then and 10:30 a.m. The corporate had earlier mentioned it might launch as early as 9:00 a.m.

SpaceX mentioned it might start a livestream on its YouTube channel 45 minutes earlier than the rocket is able to liftoff. Or you possibly can watch it within the video participant embedded above.

If issues come up and SpaceX will not be capable of launch on Monday, it’s going to proceed to strive all through the week. Whereas the launch website appeared hazy on Sunday afternoon, SpaceX said the climate seemed “fairly good for tomorrow morning however we’re maintaining a tally of wind shear.”

However Mr. Musk set low expectations for Monday’s launch, suggesting it was more likely to be known as off for technical causes.

“There’s an excellent likelihood that it will get postponed since we’re going to be fairly cautious about this launch,” he mentioned. “If it does go fallacious, there’s loads to go fallacious.”

What’s Starship?

It’s the tallest rocket ever constructed — 394 toes tall, or practically 90 toes taller than the Statue of Liberty together with the pedestal.

And it has probably the most engines ever in a rocket booster: The Tremendous Heavy, the decrease part that can propel the higher Starship automobile to orbit, has 33 of SpaceX’s highly effective Raptor engines protruding of its backside. They’re able to generate 16 million kilos of thrust at full throttle, excess of the Saturn V that carried the Apollo astronauts to the moon.

Starship is designed to be totally reusable. The Tremendous Heavy booster is to land very similar to these for SpaceX’s smaller Falcon 9 rockets, and Starship will be capable to return from house belly-flopping via the ambiance like a sky diver earlier than pivoting to a vertical place for touchdown.

Why is SpaceX constructing Starship?

SpaceX’s present Falcon 9 rocket is the most frequently launched rocket in the world. It has launched to house 24 occasions in 2023, most not too long ago on Friday night time.

Starship is the following step. It will be capable to carry much more cargo and lots of extra individuals than Falcon 9. And since it’s absolutely reusable, Starship might tremendously scale back the price of launching payloads to orbit.

NASA is paying SpaceX to construct a model of the automobile to hold astronauts from lunar orbit to the moon’s floor for the Artemis III and IV missions later within the decade. The spacecraft can also be central to Mr. Musk’s imaginative and prescient of sending individuals to Mars.

What is going to occur in the course of the flight?

For Monday’s check flight, Starship will fly a part of the way in which across the Earth, ranging from Texas and splashing down in waters off Hawaii.

Ultimately SpaceX hopes to frequently land each the Tremendous Heavy booster and Starship orbital automobile to reuse them for future launches. However the spacecraft for Monday’s flight will crash within the ocean and sink. They’re meant as a primary check of the autos, and the info will allow engineers to repair what doesn’t work and make enhancements.

Mr. Musk on Sunday night time mentioned a key objective of the flight was to get the rocket a long way from the launch website with out one thing going fallacious.

“Simply don’t blow up the launchpad,” he mentioned.

About eight minutes after Monday’s launch, the Tremendous Heavy booster will splash into the Gulf of Mexico. The Starship automobile will fly increased into house, reaching an altitude of about 150 miles and touring across the Earth earlier than re-entering the ambiance. If it survives re-entry, about 90 minutes after launching, it’s going to splash into the Pacific Ocean some 62 miles north of the island of Kauai.

However with all the brand new programs in Starship, the SpaceX founder acknowledged the difficulties of attaining the entire flight targets.

“There’s 1,000,000 methods this rocket might fail,” Mr. Musk mentioned. “I might go on for hours.”