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Elon Musk Unveils Design for SpaceX Mega-Rocket ‘Starship’
The Wire Science
The Wire Science

Elon Musk Unveils Design for SpaceX Mega-Rocket ‘Starship’

29/09/2019

New Delhi: Elon Musk unveiled the design for SpaceX’s next-generation rocket Starship that the company hopes will soon carry people to the Moon and at a later stage, to Mars. Speaking from the company’s facility in Boca Chica in Texas, the entrepreneur said, space travel should be made as affordable as air travel.

Speaking at the event, Musk said, “Consciousness is a very rare and precious thing, and we should take whatever steps we can to preserve the light of consciousness. I think we should do our very best to become a multiplanetary species and extend consciousness beyond Earth, and we should do it now.” On Twitter, SpaceX said that “ultimately, Starship will carry as many as 100 people on long-duration, interplanetary flights”.

He said the “critical breakthrough” required for humans to become a spacefaring civilisation is to “make space travel like air travel”. This would be possible through a “rapidly reusable rocket”, which he described as “the holy grail of space”.

According to Wired, the prototype unveiled by Musk will be known as Mark 1, while an identical rocket called Mark 2 is being assembled by SpaceX at Cape Canaveral in Florida. Mark 1’s first flight will occur in “one to two months” and it will be launched on a suborbital trajectory, to reach a maximum altitude of 12 miles (19.3 km). The website reported that the rocket’s first orbital flight could occur within six months of the suborbital flight.

Made of stainless steel, Starship is over 160 feet tall and will weigh about 1,400 tons when loaded with fuel. According to reports, SpaceX chose a stainless steel exterior because “it is lighter and can withstand higher temperatures than materials such as composites”.

CNBC reported that Starship is the top portion of “a massive rocket” that would be built in similar sections to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets. It will be placed on the Super Heavy booster, which will be 1.5 times the size of Starship, the next piece of hardware that the company will build. The booster will be fitted with up to 37 Raptor engines, which produce twice the thrust of the engines used on Falcon 9 rockets, according to Wired.

Techcrunch reported that the long-term plans include plans to refill the Starship’s propellant in space, by docking with tanker Starships already in orbit. This would be necessary to make trips to the Moon or Mars.

During the event, Musk said that SpaceX will need to produce 100 Raptor rocket engines between now and its first orbital flight, according to the website. SpaceX is currently producing one engine every eight days, but within a few months, the output will be one every two days within. By early Q1 of 2019, the company wants to target producing one engine every day.

The end-goal is to achieve “rapid reusability” which would allow SpaceX to “fly the [Super Heavy] booster 20 times a day” and “fly [Starship] three or four times a day.” Musk was optimistic that the company would be able to fly people on test Starship flights as early as next year.

The event was scheduled to mark eleven years since the day SpaceX sent its Falcon 1 rocket into orbit, the first private liquid-fueled rocket to do so. Since then, Musk’s company has pioneered self-landing rockets, launched a sports car into space, and is scheduled to send NASA astronauts to the International Space Station.

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