Recently Elon Musk shared a picture of SpaceX’s Super Heavy Booster that would launch the Starship into space and people were quite impressed with the beast rocket stage made from 29 raptor engines. Now it seems like SpaceX has taken it one step further, stacking the Starship spacecraft on top of the rocket booster and assembling the whole rocket system together for the first time. Needless to say, this is going to be the tallest rocket at about 400 ft or 122m to have been assembled in the history of space flight.
The rocket was assembled at SpaceX’s South Texas development site with the orbital launch stand propping the system up. While the rocket launch system is nearly 400ft tall, the stand gives it an additional 75ft, making it roughly 475ft tall which is a magnificent sight to behold. It’s interesting to note that this makes the rocket system taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza that stands at 454 ft in height. Sadly, this structure won’t stay in this position for long and will be dissembled into two parts for more testing and analysis before it can be reassembled for the final launch test.
There is still no exact date announced for the orbital launch yet as it mostly depends on the testing and reassembling process and how long it takes to perfect the mechanism so it doesn’t end up exploding like the previous Starship during trials. However, the company was able to have their first successful launch and landing of the starship in May so many speculate that SpaceX might attempt the orbital launch sometime later this year and it won’t be a long wait. If this reusable rocket launch system is a success, it could open new doors for space traveling in the future.