{"id":26164,"date":"2019-09-26T15:33:26","date_gmt":"2019-09-26T20:33:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=26164"},"modified":"2019-09-26T15:33:26","modified_gmt":"2019-09-26T20:33:26","slug":"its-not-a-spacegoing-bunny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2019\/09\/26\/its-not-a-spacegoing-bunny\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s Not A Spacegoing Bunny"},"content":{"rendered":"

I managed to miss the latest SpaceX<\/strong><\/em> test of their Starhopper<\/em> spacecraft from last month. Here’s NewScientist’s<\/strong><\/em> description<\/a> of Starhopper<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Starhopper is a scaled down prototype for SpaceX\u2019s planned Starship spacecraft. Starship is planned to be the top half of the ship that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says he will use to send\u00a0humans to Mars<\/a>, where it will land upright with the capacity to take off again.<\/p>\n

The final Starship will be powered by six Raptor engines, which are also being developed by SpaceX, but Starhopper only has one, so it doesn\u2019t make true launches, just smaller \u201chops\u201d to check the design. This test was also the first time a Raptor engine has flown. When the engine itself was tested at full power on 16 July an enormous fireball engulfed the entire spacecraft, and a second fire occurred during testing on 24 July. But neither fire seems to have done any damage and the problems appear to have been fixed \u2013 25 July\u2019s test did not have any\u00a0unexpected conflagration<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This latest test was a 150 meter hop.<\/p>\n