SpaceX will give update on Starship rocket next week

Elon Musk has announced plans to give an update on SpaceX’s massive deep-space Starship rocket next week.

The billionaire entrepreneur tweeted that there would be a presentation at 20:00 CT (02:00 GMT) in Texas, where SpaceX has been developing Starship at its test facility in Boca Chica.

It will be the first update on the vehicle in almost three years.

Starship, which will return humans to the lunar surface and could one day ferry more than 100 people a time to Mars, is set to make its first orbital flight in March at the earliest. 

In August 2021, SpaceX stacked its Starship onto of the Super Heavy booster for the first time

Since 2016, Musk has been giving periodic presentations on his plans to build a giant rocket to send people to deep space and onto the Red Planet.

He was asked on Twitter yesterday: ‘When is the Starship presentation happening @elonmusk?’

In reply, the SpaceX CEO replied: ‘Thursday next week at 8pm Texas time.’ 

No other details have been given about the event. 

During Musk’s last update in September 2019, he gave a presentation at Boca Chica standing in front of a full prototype of Starship. 

The vehicle is fully reusable and designed to launch on top of a giant booster called Super Heavy. 

The combined system will stand 394ft (120m) tall and is also referred to as Starship.

So far, SpaceX has carried out a few high-altitude test flights with the vehicle but has yet to launch it into orbit. 

The company was hoping to do so in January but is currently awaiting approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to launch Starship to orbit out of Boca Chica, which won’t be granted until March at the earliest.

The FAA assessment is looking at environmental impacts of SpaceX’s initial mission profile and reviews debris recovery, local road closures in Boca Chica, Texas, where the firm’s launch site is located, and other issues. 

The Starship program aims to develop vehicles for the interplanetary travel of cargo and humans to the moon, Mars and beyond.

To perfect the rockets, SpaceX plans to conduct several test launches over the next few years, all of which will require a permit or vehicle operator license from the FAA.

Although Musk seemed appreciative of the FAA’s timeline, the billionaire has not always been happy with the agency.

Starship requires the booster stage to reach orbit. When combined the two reach a whopping 394ft tall, larger than the Statue of Liberty and its full plinth

How other rockets compare: The fully reusable Starship will be able to carry a payload of more than 220,000lb into low Earth orbit, making it the largest rocket ever created

A year ago he slammed the FAA on Twitter for its rules regarding space launches that caused a delay in SpaceX launching its Starship Serial Number 9 (SN9) rocket. 

‘Unlike its aircraft division, which is fine, the FAA space division has a fundamentally broken regulatory structure,’ Musk tweeted. 

‘Their rules are meant for a handful of expendable launches per year from a few government facilities. Under those rules, humanity will never get to Mars.’

The FAA has stayed quiet while Musk airs his frustrations online, but the division told DailyMail.com in January last year: ‘We will continue working with SpaceX to resolve outstanding safety issues before we approve the next test flight.’

STARSHIP: ELON MUSK’S ‘BIG F***ING ROCKET’

The BFR (Big F***ing Rocket), now known as Starship, will complete all missions and is smaller than the ones Musk announced in 2016.

The SpaceX CEO said the rocket would take its first trip to the red planet in 2024, carrying only cargo, followed by a manned mission in 2026 and claimed other SpaceX’s products would be ‘cannibalised’ to pay for it.

The rocket would be partially reusable and capable of flight directly from Earth to Mars.

Once built, Musk believes the rocket could be used for travel on Earth — saying that passengers would be able to get anywhere in under an hour.

To date, the Starship series of rockets have seen 9 test flights — some resulting in successful short-distance hops, while others led to explosions or crash landings.

The most recent experimental launch — involving the Starship SN15 prototype — took place on May 5, 2021 and saw the craft complete a 33,000 feet high-altitude flight test into low-lying clouds, complete with successful ascent, engine cut-offs, flip manoeuvre, flap control and soft touchdown.

A small fire did erupt at the base of the rocket following its landing, but this was later extinguished.