SpaceX to attempt first Starship orbital launch in January: Elon Musk

SpaceX, pushing its orbital capabilities fast around landing on the Moon and then onto Mars, will attempt to launch its futuristic, bullet-shaped Starship to orbit in January. Founder Elon Musk while maintaining that the risk of the mission will be very high with a limited guarantee of success, said that they will make progress.

“There’s a lot of risks associated with this first launch, so I would not say that it is likely to be successful, but we’ll make a lot of progress,” Musk said during a virtual meeting organised by the National Academy of Sciences. NASA has contracted with SpaceX to use Starship for delivering astronauts to the lunar surface as early as 2025. Musk plans to use reusable ships to eventually land people on Mars.

Musk said he’s confident Starship — launching for the first time atop a mega booster — will successfully reach orbit sometime in 2022. After a dozen or so orbital test flights next year, SpaceX then would start launching valuable satellites and other payloads to orbit on Starships in 2023, he said.

Starship and its first-stage booster — called the Super Heavy — will be the biggest rocket ever to fly, towering 394 feet (. Liftoff thrust, Musk noted, will be more than double that of NASA’s Saturn V rockets that carried astronauts to the moon a half-century ago.

While engineers ready the vehicles for launch next year, a full-scale Starship model flew to an altitude of more than 10 kilometers in May before successfully landing back at the SpaceX complex near Texas’ southernmost tip. To date, about 90 per cent of Starship’s development costs have been covered by SpaceX, according to Musk, with NASA covering the rest with its lunar lander contract. He did not say how much had been spent so far.

The Starship and Super Heavy for the first orbital test flight have both been completed, according to Musk. By the end of November, the company hopes to be finished with the launch pad and tower, with testing in December. The Federal Aviation Administration should be done by the end of the year with its review, leading to a launch in January or February at the latest, Musk noted.

SpaceX has already emerged as one of the biggest players and commercial space operations with its regular flights to and from the space station. The company recently launched four astronauts to the flying outpost on its Dargon capsule onboard Falcon-9 reusable rocket. Prior to launch, SpaceX successfully returned the second rotational crew with four astronauts from the ISS.

Musk plans to build multiple Starships in the near term. He envisions needing 1,000 of them to make life truly interplanetary, his ultimate goal.