SpaceX’s Starship Super Heavy Booster Looks Like Kraken As It Emerges from Water!

Alien tentacles? A sea creature? No, it’s a piece of SpaceX rocket. SpaceX has shared images of Starship Super Heavy booster flight 4 on social media. The image quickly became viral, because at first glance they look like the scenery of a sci-fi film.

Monstrous Starship booster rises from the sea

The company’s founder and CEO, Elon Musk, posted a photo on X: “Like the ruins of a futuristic, long-dead civilization,” Musk wrote.

The Starship rocket was damaged after its June test flight, where it reached orbital speed and both stages returned to Earth, with the booster landing in the Gulf of Mexico. This fourth flight was a major step forward, as the rocket survived extreme heat and pressure during reentry.

Previously, SpaceX said it had no intention of recovering the B11 booster, which sank to a depth of about 55 meters. But then the company changed its plans. It’s unclear why SpaceX went into trouble to salvage the hardware from the sea; Musk did not provide a reason in his X posts.

SpaceX is ready for the fifth test flight but is waiting for approval from the FAA. The rocket is prepared, and engineers have completed preflight tests, but the FAA won’t issue a launch license until late November due to safety and environmental checks. Meanwhile, the FAA fines SPaceX for 2023 Falcone flight violations.

Although SpaceX didn’t originally plan to recover the booster from the sea, it was recently retrieved. The reason for this is unclear, but the company may want to gather more data or simply not leave the hardware behind.