China space watchers hail SpaceX Starship’s ‘breathtaking’ test flight

State-owned media and industry employees praise the massive US rocket’s successful and record-breaking landing

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Starship, the world’s most powerful rocket, lifts off from the SpaceX test site in Boca Chica, Texas on Thursday. Photo: SpaceX

Published: 12:00pm, 7 Jun 2024Updated: 6:16pm, 7 Jun 2024

Chinese space enthusiasts and media outlets have highly praised Thursday’s performance of SpaceX’s Starship rocket, after both stages made it back to Earth intact on its fourth flight attempt.

Starship is not only key to chief executive Elon Musk’s vision of sending people to Mars, but also critical in Nasa’s plans to return US astronauts to the moon, now set for 2026.

Standing 121 metres (nearly 400ft) tall, the world’s most powerful rocket lifted off at 8.50am Eastern time from the US company’s test site in Boca Chica, Texas.

About eight minutes into the flight, Starship’s first stage – also known as the Super Heavy Booster – successfully landed in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, despite the failure of one of its 33 engines at ignition.

More than an hour later, the second stage of the rocket splashed down in the Indian Ocean in a controlled manner, although its heat insulation tiles were severely burned during atmospheric re-entry.

“How powerful and breathtaking,” a Chinese space start-up employee wrote on her Weibo account.

A Beijing-based rocket engineer, who spoke to the South China Morning Post on the condition of anonymity, said he would give the flight’s achievement a score of 90 out of 100.