It is one of the most eagerly-anticipated space launches of the year and – according to Elon Musk – it certainly ‘won’t be boring’.
That’s because the SpaceX billionaire has admitted there is a 50 per cent chance that his $3 billion (£2.4 billion) Starship rocket could explode during its first orbital lift-off, which is set to take place over the next few weeks.
‘I’m not saying it will get to orbit, but I am guaranteeing excitement,’ he said of the vehicle that was built to go to Mars, before adding: ‘Won’t be boring!’
‘I think it’s got, I don’t know, hopefully about a 50 per cent chance of reaching orbit,’ Musk said during an interview at the Morgan Stanley Conference last week.
Although he didn’t specifically say that the rocket would blow up, the history of SpaceX’s suborbital test flights suggests that a failure to reach orbit would likely be because of an explosion.
Warning: Elon Musk has admitted there is a 50 per cent chance that his $3 billion (£2.4 billion) Starship rocket could explode during its first orbital lift-off, which is set to take place over the next few weeks
Although he didn’t specifically say that the rocket would blow up, the history of SpaceX’s suborbital test flights suggests that a failure to reach orbit would likely be because of an explosion
If the first orbital launch attempt is unsuccessful, the Tesla CEO went on to add that SpaceX is building several more Starship rockets and that overall he believes there is an 80 per cent chance one of them will reach orbit before the end of the year.
The mission – which will send Starship around Earth once before it splashes down in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii – will act as an early milestone in Musk’s ambition for the craft to one day carry people and cargo to the moon and Mars.
NASA is counting on Starship to ferry astronauts to the lunar surface in a few years, while further down the road, Musk wants to use the mammoth Starships to send large numbers of people to the Red Planet.
Musk has said SpaceX is ready to blast Starship into orbit from the company’s launch facility in Boca Chica, Texas, once it receives a launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration.
That could come within the next few weeks.
In January, the rocket and its accompanying craft achieved a major milestone after being fuelled up and fully stacked for the first time ever in what is known as a ‘wet dress rehearsal’.
Altogether, Starship towers 394ft (120m), making it the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built.
It is capable of generating 17 million pounds of lift-off thrust, almost double that of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) mega moon rocket that sent an empty capsule to the moon and back late last year.
No spacecraft is currently capable of sending humans to the Red Planet — but all that could change with the development of Starship.
Its creation is part of Musk’s grander vision of making us a ‘multi-planetary species’, first by starting a human colony on Mars and even getting to the point of building cities.
That may seem ambitious, but the tech supremo’s long-term objective for Starship is for it to possibly carry people to destinations in the ‘greater Solar System’, including gas giants such as Jupiter or one of its possibly-habitable moons.
The thinking is that if there were ever a global apocalypse on Earth, the human race would have a better chance of several if people lived on different worlds in our solar system.
If the first orbital launch attempt is unsuccessful, Musk went on to add that SpaceX is building several more Starship rockets and that overall he believes there is an 80 per cent chance one of them will reach orbit before the end of the year.
Last month, Musk wrote on Twitter that SpaceX would attempt the first orbital launch of its Starship rocket in March. The company is just waiting on a launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration
Starship will be capable of carrying up to 100 people to the Red Planet on a journey that is 250 times further than the moon and would take around nine months each way.
Musk and SpaceX have remained tight-lipped about a lot of the details regarding Starship, including images of what the inside will look like, but the 51-year-old has previously said he is looking to install around 40 cabins in the payload area near the front of the upper stage.
‘You could conceivably have five or six people per cabin, if you really wanted to crowd people in,’ the Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter boss added.
‘But I think mostly we would expect to see two or three people per cabin, and so nominally about 100 people per flight to Mars.’
A base on Mars? In terms of a Starship capsule travelling to the Red Planet, Musk wants to install around 40 cabins in the payload area near the front of the upper stage. This artist’s impression shows what it would be like having multiple Starship vehicles on the Martian world
Powerful: Musk’s vehicle (pictured earlier this week) packs 16 million pounds (70 Meganewtons) of thrust, which is almost double that of the other new generation rocket created by NASA and known as the Space Launch System (SLS)
The Martian surface is not the only destination for Starship, however.
In April 2021, NASA announced that it had selected SpaceX’s next-generation vehicle as the first crewed lunar lander for its Artemis III mission — due to put the first woman and first person of colour on the moon in 2025.
The Starship HLS – or Starship Human Landing System – will include SpaceX’s Raptor engines, while also pulling inspiration from the Falcon and Dragon vehicles’ designs.
It will feature a spacious cabin and two airlocks for astronaut moonwalks.
However, 2025 won’t be the Starship HLS’ first moon landing. That’s because NASA wants the vehicle to perform an uncrewed test touchdown before it returns human boots to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972.
The other uses for Starship are to deposit satellites into low-Earth orbit and possibly carry out space tourism trips.
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