SpaceX’s huge Starship spacecraft may be ready to fly this summer. “Starship will be ready to fly next month. I was in the high bay & mega bay late last night reviewing progress,” Elon Musk said via Twitter on June 14.
“We will have a second Starship stack ready to fly in August and then monthly thereafter,” Musk added in another tweet adding that “For the first time ever, there is a rocket capable of establishing permanent bases on the moon and Mars.”
We will have a second Starship stack ready to fly in August and then monthly thereafter
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 14, 2022
A lot of work has gone into the design and development of the Raptor engines. The Raptor engines are next gen engines that will power the Starship on its forays into space. Each Super Heavy booster is set to have 33 of them while the Starship will be equipped with 6 Raptor engines.
On the other hand, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is powered by nine less-powerful Merlin engines in its first stage and one in its upper stage.
One step closer to the first orbital flight test of Starship https://t.co/MEcQ6gST6Q pic.twitter.com/jxqEsM62gc
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 13, 2022
Starship consists of a huge first-stage booster called Super Heavy and a 165-foot-tall (50 meters) upper-stage spacecraft known as Starship. SpaceX is developing the Starship to take astronauts and cargo to the moon, Mars and other destinations in space.
Despite announcing readiness to launch its Starship, SpaceX still has to get U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approval which is not easy. The FAA has issued an environmental assessment of Starship’s activities at Starbase. The FAA pinpointed 75 things that SpaceX must do to minimise its impact on the surrounding area which is a biodiversity hotspot.
Starship SN24 in the High Bay pic.twitter.com/vDZ4yBV1MF
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 15, 2022
If all goes well, Starship is set to go very far in its space career as NASA has picked it to be the first crewed lunar lander for its ‘Artemis’ programme. The ‘Artemis’ programme aims to put a man on the moon in 2025 or 2026.
Elon Musk has optimistically said that Starship could start launching people to Mars in the same time frame, although he generally sets very aggressive targets for his companies.
