SpaceX's Starship Prototype "Hops" 150 Meters

It's been nearly 10 years since SpaceX began doing "impossible" things. In a series of test flights with an experimental suborbital vehicle dubbed "Grasshopper," Elon Musk's pioneering spaceflight company proved it could launch a rocket, and then land it in a controlled fashion back where it started -- paving the way for it to build reusable spacecraft. Now, SpaceX is doing this again, but on a much larger scale.

Those decade-past experiments used a freestanding, early-model Falcon 9 first stage that measured 106 feet tall and 12 feet wide, and was powered by one tiny Merlin 1-D engine. On Tuesday, SpaceX used a significantly scaled-up its test vehicle. It deployed a more robust Raptor SN27 engine to launch its fifth Starship prototype -- the SN5, which is similar to Grasshopper in height, but with a diameter of 30 feet -- to a height of 150 meters, and then landed it in one piece.  

Image source: Getty Images.

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Source Fool.com