'In the long run - long run meaning, I don't know, two or three years - we should achieve full and rapid reusability,' he said. Musk said the goal is to make Starship reusable and bring down the price to a few million dollars per flight.

SpaceX foresees eventually putting a Starship into orbit, and then refueling it with another Starship so it can continue on a journey to Mars or beyond. It generates 17 million pounds of thrust, more than twice that of the Saturn V rockets used to send Apollo astronauts to the Moon. Starship is both bigger and more powerful than SLS. NASA will take astronauts to lunar orbit itself in November 2024 using its own heavy rocket called the Space Launch System (SLS), which has been in development for more than a decade. The Super Heavy booster was anchored to the ground during the test-firing, called a static fire, to prevent it from lifting off. SpaceX conducted a successful test-firing of the 33 Raptor engines on the first-stage booster of Starship in February. SpaceX test-fires Starship booster in milestone for debut orbital launch

'Information that allows us to improve the design of future Starship builds.' 'The payload for this mission is information,' he said. 'If we get far enough away from the launchpad before something goes wrong then I think I would consider that to be a success,' he said. 'If it gets to orbit, that's a massive success,' Mr. Starship, which has six engines of its own, will continue to an altitude of nearly 150 miles, completing a near-circle of the Earth before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean about 90 minutes after launch. If all goes according to plan, the Super Heavy booster will separate from Starship about three minutes after launch and splash down in the Gulf of Mexico. Starship consists of a 164-foot (50-meter) tall spacecraft designed to carry crew and cargo that sits atop a 230-foot tall first-stage Super Heavy booster rocket.Ĭollectively referred to as Starship, the spacecraft and the Super Heavy rocket have never flown in combination together, although there have been several sub-orbital test flights of the spacecraft alone. space agency NASA has picked the Starship spacecraft to ferry astronauts to the Moon in late 2025 - a mission known as Artemis III - for the first time since the Apollo program ended in 1972.

Musk said he wanted to 'set expectations low' because 'probably tomorrow will not be successful - if by successful one means reaching orbit.' SpaceX set to launch next International Space Station crew for NASA

Starship by Editorial Planeta S.A.U.