Related article: The Definitive Guide to SpaceX’s Starship Megarocket That success will be achieved during the rocket’s first flight is hardly a certainty. Last month, SpaceX CEO Musk predicted a 50% chance of success for the inaugural mission. “I’m not saying it will get to orbit, but I am guaranteeing excitement,” Musk said during a Morgan Stanley Conference interview held on March 7. SpaceX typically takes an iterative approach to product development and Starship is no exception. The company wrote on its Starship launch page: “With a test such as this, success is measured by how much we can learn, which will inform and improve the probability of success in the future as SpaceX rapidly advances development of Starship.” Indeed, you gotta start somewhere, even if that “somewhere” results in the total loss of the vehicle. Starship upper stage prototype coming in for a landing, March 5, 2021. Photo: SpaceX To be fair, this launch isn’t coming out of the blue. The Starship upper stage has performed successful high-altitude flights and managed to land safely on the surface during a final test done in May 2021. The Super Heavy booster has also undergone tests, including a full-scale static fire test on February 9, during which 31 of its 33 engines were engaged. The stage is now set for the first orbital demonstration of the nearly 40 stories tall Starship megarocket. Assuming all goes well, here’s how it’ll all go down. Commencing Starship countdown, Raptor engines on The fully integrated Starship is currently mounted at the nearly 500-foot-tall (146 meters) launch and catch tower at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. The specially constructed tower, with its two gigantic “chopstick” arms, is designed to “catch” the booster upon its return, but SpaceX won’t perform this daring stunt during the inaugural mission. For this test, SpaceX is using a Super Heavy it calls Booster 7 and a Starship upper stage known as Ship 24. These two components were stacked together at the launch mount on April 5. On the day of the launch, SpaceX’s flight director will run a poll and give the go-ahead for propellant load, setting the two-hour countdown clock into motion. The process of loading supercooled liquid oxygen and methane into the booster will happen some 20 minutes later, followed by the loading of the same propellants into the Starship upper stage. Chilling of the 33 Raptor 2 engines will commence once the countdown clock is down to less than 17 minutes. The Raptor startup sequence will begin with 8 seconds left to go, followed shortly thereafter by the much-anticipated liftoff. Make Starship go now With—hopefully—all 33 engines engaged and the rocket moving along its intended trajectory, the vehicle will travel along an easterly path above the Gulf of Mexico. Starship will reach MaxQ—the moment of maximum aerodynamic stress—at the 55-second mark of the mission. The booster’s boosting duties will end towards the three-minute mark of the mission, quickly followed by stage separation and ignition of the methane-fueled upper-stage engines in the vacuum of space. The mission profile.