Elon Musk: SpaceX planning its first Starship rocket launch by March

  • SpaceX founder Elon Musk has post­ed new details about Star­ship: a ful­ly reusable and poten­tial­ly indus­try-upend­ing rock­et sys­tem that may land the peo­ple on Mars.
  • In Sep­tem­ber, Musk unveiled the first 16-sto­ry pro­to­type. How­ev­er, a pres­sure test in Novem­ber caused the Star­ship to part­ly explode, shoot­ing its giant domed bulk­head hun­dreds of feet into the air.
  • Over the week­end, Musk shared pho­tos and of a new ship under con­struc­tion at SpaceX’s South Texas launch site. He also told fans that its first flight “is hope­ful­ly 2 to 3 months away.”
  • But Musk added that the first Star­ship to launch — if it does fly by the spring — may be just one of per­haps 20 dif­fer­ent pro­to­types the com­pa­ny could build.
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At SpaceX, the rock­et com­pa­ny found­ed by Elon Musk, progress some­times like a dra­mat­ic explo­sion and an assem­bly line of shiny new space­ships.

Dur­ing a fuel-tank-pres­sur­iza­tion test on Novem­ber 20, an acci­den­tal explo­sion blew the top off SpaceX’s first 16-sto­ry pro­to­type of Star­ship, a steel rock­et sys­tem that may one day fer­ry colonists to Mars. How­ev­er, just five weeks after that fail­ure, Musk said a brand-new ver­sion of the rock­et ship may launch before the end of March.

“First flight is hope­ful­ly 2 to 3 months away,” Musk tweet­ed over the week­end.

Musk shared the video while vis­it­ing SpaceX’s work yard in Boca Chi­ca, Texas, where work­ers were toil­ing away on new domes for the ship. The 30-foot-wide domes cap a Star­ship’s fuel tank, and it is the same part that popped off the first pro­to­type, flew hun­dreds of feet into the air (as one video on shows), and smacked into marshy grass­es across the road from the com­pa­ny’s launch site at the south­ern tip of Texas.

“Was up all night with SpaceX team work­ing on Star­ship tank dome pro­duc­tion (most dif­fi­cult part of pri­ma­ry struc­ture),” Musk tweet­ed with a video show­ing parts being worked on.

Musk also added: “We’re now build­ing flight of Star­ship SN1, but each SN will have at least minor improve­ments, at least through SN20 or so of Star­ship V1.0.”

Put anoth­er way, Musk is not feel­ing too attached to Star­ship pro­to­types because SpaceX may build as many as 20 dif­fer­ent ver­sions before engi­neers set­tle on a “1.0” design to fly car­go and peo­ple.

One of those pas­sen­gers includes the Japan­ese tech entre­pre­neur and bil­lion­aire Yusaku Maeza­wa, who has pur­chased Star­ship’s first crewed flight around the moon for an unknown sum of mon­ey.

SpaceX’s new Starship will rely on Tesla’s most powerful electric-car motor

Spacex starship sn1 serial number 1 steel test model boca chica south texas sunset flickr 48954138902_e9ae0d1a65_o

Star­ship ser­i­al No. 1, or SN1, in Boca Chi­ca, Texas.

SpaceX


On Mon­day, Musk shared anoth­er of progress on Star­ship SN1, showed the ship’s huge dome. The image showed geo­des­ic dome weld­ed to a shiny cir­cu­lar band of steel. Many oth­er bands of steel weld­ed togeth­er will make up the Star­ship’s tube-shaped body.

When a fan asked Musk what would move Star­ship’s wing­like flaps, Musk tweet­ed that sev­er­al Plaid elec­tric motors — the strongest man­u­fac­tured by Tes­la, the car com­pa­ny of which Musk is CEO — would do the work.

SpaceX also plans to build a 22-sto­ry rock­et boost­er called Super Heavy for its new launch sys­tem. Dur­ing launch, a Star­ship space­ship would ride atop a boost­er in a stack about 387 feet (118 meters) tall, dis­con­nect after the boost­er runs low on fuel, and rock­et its way into orbit. 

Spacex starship mars rocket size ship super heavy booster scale dimensions measurements illustration


Saman­tha Lee/Business Insid­er


The whole Star­ship sys­tem, if real­ized, would be the most pow­er­ful launch­er ever cre­at­ed; each launch would pack enough thrust to haul about 100 tons (about sev­en ful­ly loaded school bus­es’ of mass) and 100 peo­ple into orbit at a time.

What’s more, both parts are being designed to be ful­ly reusable many times with lit­tle to no repair. If it works and costs about $5 mil­lion per launch, as Musk has pre­vi­ous­ly inti­mat­ed, the scheme could low­er the cost of launch­ing peo­ple and car­go into by 10 to 100 times.

Musk said in Sep­tem­ber that he hoped to launch a Star­ship into orbit by mid-2020 and maybe even fly a per­son before the end of that year. Gwynne Shotwell, the pres­i­dent and chief oper­at­ing offi­cer of SpaceX, said dur­ing a recent NASA tele­con­fer­ence that “we are aim­ing to be able to drop Star­ship on the lunar sur­face in 2022” and fly Maeza­wa around the moon in 2023.

How­ev­er, both SpaceX lead­ers made these state­ments before the first Star­ship pro­to­type­’s burst­ing. The com­pa­ny will also have to clear sev­er­al reg­u­la­to­ry and prac­ti­cal hur­dles — includ­ing the exis­tence of a ham­let called Boca Chi­ca Vil­lage with­in 1.5 miles of its launch pad — before it can launch any pro­to­types to orbit from South Texas.

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