![]() “There might be a few bumps along the way, but it will work.” Starship is designed to be the first all-purpose space vehicle: a reusable and refuelable spacecraft that can take scores of people and millions of tons of cargo from Earth directly to the moon and eventually Mars - and do it over and over again. In the early development of Starship, several prototypes failed and were destroyed during testing.“It will work,” he declared. The company's rapid growth in Cameron County has been welcomed by some locals for creating jobs and attracting tourists but criticized by others for displacing a beachfront community and endangering the wildlife refuge around Starbase. Additionally, Musk said he thinks "Texas has the right amount of rules and regulations" for the experimental project. SpaceX has resumed construction on a Starship launchpad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, but Musk said the R&D work on the rocket meant the company "didn't want to disrupt" the current launch operations in Florida. It's basically here and Cape Canaveral" in Florida, Musk said. "That doesn't actually leave a lot of options. Musk emphasized that the location represents a clear path to orbit, given the need to launch eastward to "have help from Earth's rotation." It also features a "good clear area" that is sparsely populated. The SpaceX CEO also laid out why the company chose this area in Texas for Starship manufacturing and launches, saying the facility, nicknamed "Starbase," required "a confluence of factors." "That will be important down the road, but our focus right now is just getting to orbit," Musk said. ![]() He pointed to SpaceX's experience building life support systems for its Dragon spacecraft, which have flown 18 people safely to low Earth orbit to date. While SpaceX will need to develop Starship's interior and life support systems, with contracts to deliver both NASA astronauts and private passengers to the moon in the next few years, Musk said the company is "not focusing a lot" on the issue currently. The company is "close to achieving" a production rate of a Raptor 2 engine per day, he said. Raptor 2 also "cost about half as much" to build, he said, and production is ramping up. The Raptor 2 engines represent "an almost complete redesign" compared with the first generation, Musk said, but are "significantly simplified" and more powerful. Musk said Thursday that Raptor is the "problem I'm spending the most time personally" working on, alongside development of "full self-driving" at Tesla. Each Starship requires seven Raptor engines, and each Super Heavy booster will need 33 engines.Ī crisis in Raptor engine development late last year led to the departure of a SpaceX executive. ![]() The top technical hurdle for Starship currently is the development of its second generation of Raptor engines, which power the rocket and its booster. I feel at this point highly confident that we'll get to orbit this year," Musk said. "Might be a few bumps along the road but. SpaceX needs a license from the Federal Aviation Administration, with the regulator expected to complete a key environmental assessment in a month or so. While that milestone was expected to be reached last year, development progress has been delayed and the orbital flight test is also pending regulatory approval. SpaceX has completed multiple high-altitude flight tests with Starship prototypes, but its next major step is to reach space. The key to that cost efficiency is Starship's projected capability in the amount of mass to orbit each launch can carry, paired with SpaceX's goal of fully reusing each rocket and booster in a way Musk compares to commercial air travel. "I'm highly confident it would be less than $10 million," Musk said. But, even though Starship is many times larger and expected to have a multibillion-dollar development cost, Musk says the next-generation rocket will be far less expensive per launch. SpaceX has steadily brought down the cost of its current fleet of Falcon 9 rockets to below $30 million per launch, by landing the most expensive part of the rocket and reusing it multiple times.
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