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  At 10:45pm CT Thursday, Starhopper’s single Raptor engine roared to life. [credit:
  Trevor Mahlmann for Ars Technica ]

BOCA CHICA BEACH, Texas—It flew. It really did. On Thursday night, SpaceX’s stainless steel Starship prototype took to the skies for the first time.

It was a beautiful night for Starhopper’s debut. In the wake of a rare mid-summer front, temperatures in South Texas fell below their sultry averages for late July, with somewhat drier air. By 10:45pm local time, a mostly cloudy sky had broken into a mostly clear night along the coast. So when Starhopper leaped into the skies, it did so beneath the stars—toward the stars.

Never before had SpaceX taken this stubby, cobbled-together spacecraft off its leash. Never before had the company’s next-generation Raptor rocket engine flown free. And so as the engine roared to life Thursday night, no one wearing a SpaceX badge was quite sure what would happen when they set Starhopper free.