The commercial spaceflight company SpaceX is preparing to test a huge, stainless-steel rocket. The machine could one day carry humans to the moon, Mars and beyond.
But first, it has to fly. The first launch attempt is set to take place in South Texas during a 150-minute window that opens at 8 a.m. Eastern on Monday.
Starship is unlike any other rocket, and SpaceX acknowledges that the first test flight will be extremely risky.
"It's a very complex machine; it has so many different components," says Paulo Lozano, director of MIT's space propulsion laboratory. The rocket is larger than any ever built. Success will depend upon dozens of engines, firing in perfect synchrony.
The stakes could not be higher, at least to hear SpaceX CEO Elon Musk speak about the mission.
"Eventually the Sun will expand and destroy all life," Musk said, standing before the giant rocket about a year ago. "It is very important — essential in the long-term — that we become a multi-planet species."
Musk hopes Starship will provide a critical step to becoming multiplanetary, by allowing large payloads to be carried into orbit for cheap. His goal is for Starship to someday transport the first people to Mars.
SpaceX also has a business interest in seeing its mammoth rocket fly. Starship could be used to launch large numbers of the company's internet-providing "Starlink" satellites. Starlink is seen as a key part of SpaceX's future, and Starship would allow the network to rapidly grow, says Tim Farrar, the president of TMF associates, a telecom consulting firm.
NASA is also paying SpaceX around a billion dollars to develop a version of Starship to visit the moon, though that mission is likely still several years away.
The launch of Starship comes at a difficult time for the tech industry, Farrar notes. SpaceX is currently trying to raise additional capital to keep the development of Starship and Starlink going.
For now, investors seem happy to let SpaceX try out its massive, potentially interplanetary rocket. But he says that if the launch fails and Starship falls further behind schedule, it could affect all of SpaceX's business, especially in the current financial climate.
When SpaceX recently posted its timeline for Monday's test flight, it replaced "liftoff" in its mission timeline with two words: "excitement guaranteed."
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