SpaceX Starship Reaches Orbit for the First Time, Eighteen Years to the Day After Falcon 1

SpaceX Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, reached Earth orbit for the first time this week, a milestone the company had been chasing across thirteen earlier test flights that never made it past a suborbital trajectory. The achievement did not come easily. A tense engine problem partway through ascent briefly put the entire mission in doubt before flight controllers decided to push ahead.