Former NASA astronaut Winston Scott said Thursday that SpaceX's Starship program reflects the bold, risk-tolerant approach that once defined America's early space program, as the company prepared for the 13th test flight of the world's most powerful rocket.

Speaking on Newsmax's "Wake Up America," Scott said the latest Starship launch is critical because NASA is relying on the vehicle to support future Artemis missions that aim to return U.S. astronauts to the moon.

"Absolutely. And this is a big launch," Scott said.

Before discussing the mission, Scott noted the historic significance of the day.

"Leroy, good to see you again, Leroy. I flew missions together back in the shuttle days," Scott said to fellow former NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao. "Also, today is the anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11, the famous moon landing back in 1969. So a couple of tidbits that I'll throw out to you."

Scott said Starship represents an unprecedented leap in launch capability.

"But yeah, this is a very, very important launch," he said. "This rocket is the biggest, most powerful rocket ever built. You're talking about 18 million pounds of thrust, compared to only 7.5 million pounds for the Apollo Saturn V."

He said the flight includes several ambitious objectives.

"It's a complex vehicle. You're talking about hot stages," he said. "They're going to deploy some satellites. They want to do the flyback for the booster with a soft landing. They want to have the rocket ship itself do a suborbital flight and do a soft landing in the Indian Ocean."

Scott cautioned that the mission remains part of an ongoing development program.

"So a lot of things riding on the flight, but it is an incremental developmental flight," he said. "Things may or may not go according to plan, but we've got our fingers crossed and we're very excited about it."

NASA selected a lunar version of SpaceX's Starship as the Human Landing System for its Artemis program. Artemis III, currently targeted for the middle of the decade, is expected to attempt the first crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17 in 1972, while later Artemis missions are intended to expand a sustained U.S. presence on and around the moon.

Starship also remains central to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's long-term goal of sending humans to Mars.

Asked about SpaceX's willingness to accept failures during testing, Scott said unsuccessful outcomes often produce the greatest technical advances.

"Excellent. Well, you know, we don't think about it that way," he said. "But when we learn more from quote unquote, failure than we learn from when things go well, so everything, there's a blow-up, there's a malfunction or whatever.

"It's when we really learn, learn and learn how to go forward," he added.

Scott contrasted SpaceX's development philosophy with NASA's current approach.

"What we may or may not remember is that SpaceX reminds me of NASA," he said. "Back in the old days, they were not risk-averse. Unfortunately, NASA over the years has become just a little bit risk averse, more so than they should be."

He said SpaceX's aggressive engineering culture has helped accelerate innovation.

"But you've got SpaceX is kind of like a young dog on the block," Scott said. "And they're anxious, they're hungry, they're aggressive. And that's what we need to have a successful space program. So I applaud SpaceX and the atmosphere under which they operate."

The Starship test flight was expected to evaluate multiple systems, including satellite deployment, booster recovery objectives and improvements made following previous test flights, while providing additional data for future NASA and SpaceX missions.