Blog Musk Delivers New Details on Starship

SpaceX shared new details Saturday on its plan to make humans interplanetary.

Chief Executive Elon Musk stood in front the the company’s next-generation Starship spacecraft built in Boca Chica, Texas and delivered a more thorough overview of the company’s plans for the rocket program. Musk said the “holy grail” for the program is around “rapid reusability.” Musk said the goal is to accomplish rapid reusability to the point where the company can fly the booster 20 times a day and fly Starship up to four times a day.

Musk believes that through rapid testing, the company will achieve reliability to carry humans on Starship as early as next year. 

The Super Heavy booster that will carry Starship into orbit will be about 1.5 times the height of the Starship itself. It will be powered by 37 Raptor engines.

Musk also detailed how it will be “totally nuts” to see Starship land. 

The Starship will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere in a horizontal position to increase drag “like a skydiver.” Starship will then perform a flip maneuver to become vertical for touch-down on six legs.

The Starship Mk1 is expected to conduct a sub-orbital, 70,000 feet test flight within two months. Musk said that the following test flight could be an orbital launch with the full Super Heavy booster.

SpaceX believes that someday Starship will carry up to 100 passengers on long-haul planet-to-planet flights.

Watch the full event above.

 

[Ulmo]

I don’t think it’s an accident of physics that inseminating planets looks like inseminating humans. There is a similarity of similar processes.

 

[Jaxkat]

As an engineer from the slide rule age Im surprised large/ heavy planes and rockets at this point are not launched on a maglev or similar sloped ramp..since we are talking reuse and constant launches..the energy savings adds ☝..

 

[MichaelP90DL]

I really didn't expect a spaceship that so closely resembled cartoon rockets from the 1950s and '60s. But, hey -- Whatever works.

 

[thecloud]

I really didn't expect a spaceship that so closely resembled cartoon rockets from the 1950s and '60s. But, hey -- Whatever works.

Wasn't Elon's original plan to send mice first?

 

[MichaelP90DL]

Wasn't Elon's original plan to send mice first?

I heard that it was.

 

[bxr140]

As an engineer from the slide rule age Im surprised large/ heavy planes and rockets at this point are not launched on a maglev or similar sloped ramp..since we are talking reuse and constant launches..the energy savings adds ☝..

Potentially in the future, but those concepts require massive amounts of energy and have to be massive in size because of the practical limits of acceleration. Going straight up is still the most energy efficient since it gets you out of the atmosphere ASAP.

 

[Jaxkat]

Potentially in the future, but those concepts require massive amounts of energy and have to be massive in size because of the practical limits of acceleration. Going straight up is still the most energy efficient since it gets you out of the atmosphere ASAP.

 

[MichaelP90DL]

Potentially in the future, but those concepts require massive amounts of energy and have to be massive in size because of the practical limits of acceleration. Going straight up is still the most energy efficient since it gets you out of the atmosphere ASAP.

Hmmm. Something just occurred to me. Rockets should be launched from the southern hemisphere, the further south the better. That way they would be launched going down instead of up, and that would be far more efficient.

 

[bxr140]

Hmmm. Something just occurred to me. Rockets should be launched from the southern hemisphere, the further south the better. That way they would be launched going down instead of up, and that would be far more efficient.

Maybe.

But I'm not sure the toilets on Starship are designed to swirl the wrong way.