SpaceX Fires Up Its Biggest, Baddest Rocket Yet: Starship V3

To fulfill its promise of reaching the Moon and Mars, SpaceX needs a really big rocket. Like, really big. The latest version of Starship is the largest and most powerful megarocket ever built, and it just hit a critical milestone. On Wednesday, SpaceX concluded the first static fire test of Starship Version 3. Engineers briefly fired Booster 19’s engines on Launch Pad 2 at the company’s Starbase launch site in South Texas. This was not only the first major test for Starship V3, but also the first time the rocket’s Raptor 3 engines have been fired together—and the first static test conducted on the newly constructed Pad 2. A cryptic X post from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk previously suggested Starship V3 could embark on its first test flight—Flight 12—in early March. Clearly, that didn’t happen. On March 7, Musk amended his earlier statement, saying the megarocket will lift off for the first time in about four weeks. That pushed the launch to April, and if all further testing proceeds as planned, this seems feasible. Over several days of testing, engineers loaded cryogenic fuel and oxidizer into Booster 19 for the first time. During the static fire test, they successfully fired 10 of the b