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How can I watch SpaceX’s Starship launch?

A live broadcast will be streamed on SpaceX’s website, and is scheduled to begin about 45 minutes before the launch.

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What makes SpaceX’s Starship unique

Starship is made of stainless steel, an unlikely first-choice for building a rocket given its weight. But Musk has gone with the material given it’s cheap, plentiful, and more heat tolerant than carbon steels.

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The rocket is also powered by methane, another unorthodox pick for a spacecraft—usually, these rely on liquid hydrogen along with other propellants. Methane’s advantage is that it’s relatively cheap and can also be found in the Martian atmosphere—a factor that may be important to Musk, who has ambitions of one day colonizing Mars.

The anatomy of SpaceX’s Starship, by the digits

394: Starship’s height in feet, with its two components stacked, coming in nearly 100 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty

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150: Starship’s maximum fully reusable payload capacity in metric tons

33: Number of Raptor engines powering Super Heavy

16.7 million: Super Heavy’s maximum thrust in pounds, exceeding the current record of 10 million thrust in pounds produced by the Soviet Union’s N1 rocket, first launched in 1969

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100: Number of people Starship could carry to Mars

What happens if the Starship launch fails?

Preparations are still underway for the launch at time of writing, but SpaceX tweeted yesterday (Apr. 16) that its team is looking at potential “wind shear” conditions that could postpone liftoff.

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Should that occur, SpaceX has set alternate launch times on Tuesday and Wednesday this week, according to Reuters.

Musk said on Sunday (Apr. 16): “There’s a million ways this rocket could fail. We’re going to be very careful and if we see anything that gives us concern, we’ll postpone.”

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