Month: April 2023

SpaceX’s Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, took off from a launch pad on the coast of South Texas on Thursday at 9:28 a.m. ET, but exploded midair before stage separation. Thursday’s launch marked the vehicle’s historic first test flight.

The massive Super Heavy rocket booster lifted off and sent a massive boom across the coastal landscape as it soared out over the Gulf of Mexico. About two and a half minutes after takeoff, the Super Heavy rocket booster was scheduled to expend most of its fuel and separate from the Starship spacecraft, leaving the booster to be discarded in the ocean. The Starship was meant to use its own engines, blazing for more than six minutes, to propel itself to nearly orbital speeds.  According to SpaceX, the flight reached its highest point 24.2 miles (39 kilometers) above the ground and the explosion occurred about four minutes after liftoff.

Clearing the launch pad was a major milestone for Starship, and although it ended in an explosion, Thursday’s test met several of the company’s objectives for the vehicle. SpaceX tweeted, “With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multi-planetary. As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation” 

In a post-launch tweet, Elon Musk congratulated the team on “an exciting test launch” and said they “learned a lot for next test launch in a few months.”  In addition, NASA administrator Bill Nelson took to Twitter to share his congratulations on the flight test: “Congrats to @SpaceX on Starship’s first integrated flight test! Every great achievement throughout history has demanded some level of calculated risk, because with great risk comes great reward. Looking forward to all that SpaceX learns, to the next flight test—and beyond.”

SpaceX will need a new launch license from the FAA to make another attempt, but the company does not expect the process to be as laborious as securing the license for Thursday’s launch.

Editorial credit: YMZK-Photo / Shutterstock.com

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed legislation on Thursday that effectively would ban transgender women and girls from competing in female school athletics.  The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which would bar federal funding for schools that allow transgender girls to play on women’s sports teams, passed the House by a 219-203 vote.

Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs or activities that receive funding from the federal government, and applies to schools and other educational institutions. According to the legislative text. the bill passed by the House, authored by Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., would amend Title IX to prohibit transgender women and girls from playing on sports teams consistent with their gender identity. It seeks to amend federal law to require that “sex shall be recognized based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth,” for the purpose of determining compliance with Title IX in athletics.  The text of the bill says it would a violation “for a recipient of federal financial assistance who operates, sponsors, or facilitates athletic programs or activities to permit a person whose sex is male to participate in an athletic program or activity that is designed for women or girls.”

The bill is unlikely to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate, however, and President Biden said Monday that he would veto the bill was it to reach his desk: “Politicians should not dictate a one-size-fits-all requirement that forces coaches to remove kids from their teams. At a time when transgender youth already face a nationwide mental health crisis, with half of transgender youth in a recent survey saying they have seriously considered suicide, a national law that further stigmatizes these children is completely unnecessary.”

Editorial credit: DCStockPhotography / Shutterstock.com